It’s why no rational person ought to worry about their carbon footprint.
Hohhot is a northern Chinese city and the capital of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. It’s also the hot spot for Chinese coal production.
As reported by Environment and Energy Daily,
China’s coal production of 3.2 billion metric tons in 2010 accounted for almost half of the world’s coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. An EIA analysis showed that China’s coal production increased 188 percent in the past decade. U.S. coal production has been almost flat.
Production in Inner Mongolia has been bounding upward by double-digit percentages, and it produced 782 million tons of coal in 2010, according to China’s state-run media. The region has more than 700 billion tons of coal locked away in reserve, a source that’s attracting attention from Western coal companies elbowing into Asia’s coal market.
St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the largest U.S. producer, has made profit potential in the Asian market a big piece of its message to investors concerned about the flagging U.S. coal and power market. Its executives have spent much of the past year forging relationships with China and filling out its Asian offices. They call it “Project Dragon.”
China’s net coal imports hit an all-time high in September, according to Peabody’s data, and power generation increased 20 percent compared to 2010.
As Peabody exec Fred Palmer told The Guardian in March of this year:
- “We’re 100% coal. More coal. Everywhere. All the time.”
- “We don’t have a political allegiance. We’re Americans and our political party is coal.”
- “Anyone who has the notion that we’re going to move away from fossil fuels just isn’t paying attention.”
You may try to limit tour carbon footprint, but that will be more than offset by China’s carbon nation-print.