Cities not ready for harsh winter

• Source: Global Times
• [04:32 January 07 2010]
• Comments

Legoland employee Graeme Williams clears snow Wednesday from a model building representing the London landmark Big Ben in Windsor, England. Britain braced for more transport chaos Wednesday as heavy snow swept south, one day after gripping northern England and Scotland. Photo: AFP

According to Liu, rationing was based on production capabilities, profits or scale.

A Jiangsu resident surnamed Zhou, who uses air conditioning to heat her apartment, told the Global Times that she hoped the local government could better learn about the public's needs before rationing power.

Her province is mulling the rationing of power, she said, the basic threshold is 80 kilowatt-hours per month.

"That figure is far from enough, especially for those who are living with elderly people," she said.

In Beijing, the heavy snowfall drove the temperature to minus 16 C, a record low in 40 years, straining the gas supply.

Heat-supply authorities decided to limit the supply to public buildings, shopping malls, office buildings and industry and urged residents to restrain gas use.

From Tuesday, hotels and shopping malls that use gas for heating were required to maintain 13 C indoors and other public buildings 5 C at weekends. Some malls, where a reduced temperature is required, have begun using thermal door curtains to keep the cold out.

"Apparently, local governments have not been well prepared to cope with the extreme weather, which put huge pressure on the power supply and gas shortage in urban and rural areas," Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, said.

Ding Yifan, a senior researcher at the Institute of National Development of the State Council, said that the recent crackdown on illegal coalmines in Shanxi Province, a curb on the national output and the flawed allocation of coal resources resulted in the strain on power generation during cold weather.

"The government advocated cutting down the use of coal in order to reduce the emission of CO2, but the replacement energy, such as nuclear power, has not been put in place," he said.

He stressed that a sufficient reserve of coal and gas is the key to addressing sudden soaring demand for energy and it is urgent to develop alternative energy and diversify the supply channel.

The coal-rich country has been trying to diversify its energy sources in recent years, including building pipelines from central Asia, buying oil from the Middle East and Africa, encouraging the development of wind and solar power plants, and increasing the number of nuclear power plants.

Guo Qiang and Liang Chen contributed to this story