China’s appetite for energy

Figures from OU Environment course, picture taken in Shanghai in 2005. The Shanghai economy has been growing by around 10% each year.

I’ve been watching a film on development and energy demand in China. A tenfold increase in wind power in the next decade, the 3 Gorges Dam with 54 generators producing the equivalent of nearly three quarters of the entire electricity demand for the UK, methane plants powered by the waste from 100,000 pigs at a time, and yet more coal, to a population of over 1.3 billion people.

China produces the kind of statistics that make you go cross-eyed.