China closed small power stations with more than 9 gigawatts of generating capacity over the first nine months of the year, as part of a campaign to improve energy efficiency, the country's top economic planner said on Tuesday. Another 1 GW will be closed by the end of the year, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Larger-scale generators will replace the plants, saving up to 13.6 million metric tons of coal a year and eliminating 230,000 metric tons of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide emissions, it added. National leaders, worried about pollution and a growing dependence on imported fuels, have pledged to cut the energy used to generate each dollar of national income by 20 percent by 2010. But last year the country fell well short of the target, despite a slew of new measures.

China had said in January that it would require firms wanting to build new coal-fired power plants to shut down smaller, older generators at the same time. It also aims to eliminate small coal and fuel oil-burning stations with overall capacity of 50 GW -- or around 8 percent of the national total -- by the end of the decade.

Nationwide generating capacity hit 622 GW in 2006 and another 90 to 95 GW are expected to come online this year -- well above Britain's entire installed capacity -- making greater efficiency vital to controlling fossil fuel consumption. Coal plants, which provide around 80 percent of the country's power, also emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. The closures this year will avoid 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the commission said.

(Reuters, 09/10/2007)