A power plant in Luoyang City in central China is burning money as a cleaner alternative to coal.
China’s economic growth may be cooling down but the energy sector has plenty of money to burn.
A power plant in Luoyang City, in the country’s central Henan province, is using old banknotes rather than coal as fuel for its furnaces and to provide power for the region.
According to reports from the official Xinhua news agency, a tonne of blazing banknotes can help contribute 660 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy and generates far less pollution than the fossil fuel traditionally used –a bonus in a country notorious for smog in its cities.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, has approved incinerating the banknotes according to Xinhua, and this is the first time they have been used as fuel.
“With Henan’s current unused paper money counted, the company can help generate 1.32 million kWh of electricity annually, which is equal to burning 4,000 tonnes of coal,” a PBOC source told Xinhua.
Until 1990 all of the notes returned by members Bank’s Note Circulation Scheme – wholesale cash operators including G4S Cash Solutions, the Post Office, Royal bank of Scotland and Barclays-HSBC joint venture Vaultex – were incinerated and the energy produced was used to heat the Bank.
However, it was decided this was not cost effective or environmentally friendly and the notes are now run through “disintegrators” and the shredded notes they produce are compressed into briquettes which used to make compost.
The Bank of England has the capacity to destroy about a billion notes a year in this manner.
Taken from HERE.
Even though it is old and unused banknotes, it is fascinating that someone other than a South American druglord on a run with his daughter, actually has the idea to burn money for heat and in this case, it is not for survival in the woods, but instead, to provide power for the region. What comes up next may deviate a bit from the discussion, but I found it interesting that the decision is made out of the abundance of old banknotes. During the period that they were still in the circulation, passed on between transactions between billions of Chinese and in the economic growth that China has been experiencing, the demand for money will always be high and the Central Bank will have to issue enough amount of money to sustain the economy.
ReplyDeleteDuring the event of inflation where the money’s value plummets in response to the increasing prices of goods, will people burn money for heat out of the money being devaluated? In Zimbabwe, if you put a pile of money out in the open, no one would probably steal them, they might as well take them to heat up the food at home.
In a certain power plant in China, in the central Henan province, in Luoyang city, uses banknotes as an alternative for coal as a fuel for its furnace and to provide energy for the region. According to the official news agency, it could contribute by giving 660 kilowatt hours and rather than using fossil fuel as they used to, by using banknotes, it generates less pollution for the city. And to add that, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has also approved for using old banknotes as an alternative for coal. I think it’s a great idea for them to use old and unused banknotes as an alternative power source. It’s pretty impressive if you think about it, since most of the power plant in the world uses coal as its power energy. But by using old banknotes that should be an equivalent of a used paper, they actually reuse its property into a power station energy and reducing coals in the process. And if the people there have no problem whatsoever, well its good for them. Now the question remain is, when will Indonesia uses a safe alternate energy source for the power plant?
ReplyDeleteThis article is particularly interesting for me since they are actually burning real money to power homes. When I first read this article, I thought by burning money it means bad or even ridiculous investment to power the economy of certain region. Yet, the fact that they are actually burning old real paper money and bank notes intrigues me. I suppose I could say that it is a twisted form of recycling waste; by making power of what technically are waste. Yet, I would say that from environmental point of view this method is not exactly safe for our surroundings. The residual waste and gasses pollutes our planet. Yet all across the globe there are still plenty of coal powered power-plants which have identical effect. At the end of the day, I would say this is an ingenious solution for addressing such important issue. By burning bank notes and old paper money prevents misuse of the waste; and creating power at the same time is just fantastic.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the title of this article which is “A Chinese city is burning money for power instead of coal”, I thought that the city is investing some new technology by paying with money to replace coal, but I was surprised when the power plants are literally burning money or banknotes to replace coal. In my opinion, this is a good way to reuse things that we do not use anymore, rather than discarding or shredding the banknotes, they can use the banknotes as an alternative to coal, and it is also stated that burning the banknotes produced less pollutions than burning the coals. But sooner or later, the power plants are going to start burning coal again, because they are going to ran out of banknotes. Maybe learning from this case, a lot of other countries, not just China, can search for a more friendly alternative than coal, because soon the world is going to ran out from coal.
ReplyDeleteThe decision to burn old bank notes to create electrical power is really a weird one from the beginning. This isn’t the first time old money being burn in order saving cost. It is certainly cheaper than burning coal all the time and can create good amount of power, but the possibility that we can use all that paper is more valuable. Those old money can be reuse as a new cheap paper rather than just burn it away. This can also means that china has a problem with it’s energy management or it’s energy production. China need to create a way to produce electricity more efficiently or find a new way to create electricity from renewable resources that need less money. At this rate though China maybe consider this as a new alternative to cut cost at producing electricity for the time being, at least until they find more efficient and cost effective way to create electricity.
ReplyDeleteAs you all know, china’s vastly growing economics after their industrial revolution brings something good and bad to the society and the environment. Most people in china could now buy cars or even own multiple houses, which in the past they couldn’t. They also do more economic activities than they previously did. This also poses some problem to the environment, most importantly the growing economy leaves a lot of pollution and more vehicles on the road means that there will be more carbon monoxide and dioxide and this leads to a greenhouse effect. The economic growth also cause thirst for electricity in the society, a lot of power plant no longer suffice the need for electricity. Luckily, people innovate and so does the people of China. They created power plant that burns paper and bank notes instead of coal. I think that this is a very brilliant idea since not many people recycles paper and actually uses it again. Coal also produce a lot of waste and carbon monoxide and also it is not a clean and renewable energy. As for paper, it is made out of wood and wood itself can be reproduced within years. I strongly agree with this idea and I think that this should be applied in Indonesia too, since it can greatly reduce the amount of waste paper and it can act as a backup generator when power outage happen.
ReplyDeleteBeing able to find a substitute for charcoal as the main fuel of a power plant is amazing. Charcoals are substituted by banknotes which are able to generate 660 kilowatt hours (kWh) and could generate less pollution at the same time. I personally think that this method of substituting charcoal as the main fuel of power plant would not last long as banknotes are not forever available. Aside from that, it is better to find a substitute that does not contribute more towards pollution, as pollution had became worst these days with the continuous increase in the total number of vehicles used each day. These charcoals could be substituted by wind energy which is free and easy to find. If this system worked, I believe that Indonesia could copy and modify the system to adapt with the situations happening in Indonesia, thus, electricity could flow and be access by people from every part of Indonesia.
ReplyDeleteChina has a brilliant idea, rather they spent their money for investing coal which is one of the natural resources that will be extinct in the future, they better invest their money with technology in coal and get their unlimited resources from the sunlight, wind, and water. Now, every country should find alternatives in resources due to significant decreases in natural resources. Bad impacts to the environment also become one of the factors, one of the factors is global warming, then also polluted sea because of oil that sometime mix with the sea water and causes bad impact to the fish and animals in the sea environment. On the other side the unlimited resources for sure cost a lot cheaper rather than the natural resources due to not all countries have the same amount of resources. People in China also being support by the labor that cost a lot cheaper than other country.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw the title of the article, I was kind of shocked that they would burn actual money and thought it was also an attempt to cause deflation for decreasing prices of products but then the ones burned are actually unused bank notes so then I became, “Oh okay.” I would say that this tactic is kind of effective and more environmentally friendly as it causes less pollution than burning coal and can still generate energy for the region in China but when I look deeper into it, isn’t it the same as wasting resources because even if it causes less pollution, the papers are burned instead of being used for other bank purposes even if it is unused at the moment which wasted the cutting of trees just to make those papers? Then wouldn’t it be better of to just burn the trees right away to get energy from the power plant?
ReplyDeleteThis article reminds me of the situation in Germany after the first World War, where they experienced hyper inflation and their currency was rendered useless. The people of Germany found more use in burning their money for warmth rather than exchanging it for goods. So it surprises me to read and find out that other countries whom aren’t experiencing economic troubles conducting the act of burning money. This method is certainly a unique way to get rid of old and outdated currency, where not only does the extinction of the note provides the benefit of energy for the country, but it also decreases the consumption and demand of fossil fuel. Although they’ve stopped this process for environment concerns, I do believe that this was a very effective and cost saving method for producing electricity. Perhaps another safer way of ridding outdated currency is to reuse them into normal paper to write on, as large productions of money-recycled paper could greatly decrease the need of cutting down trees to produce paper.
ReplyDeleteChina is one of the highly-industrialized country in Asia. The industry has ejected China into one of superpower country in the world. But, China is also one of the most polluted country in the world. The carbon emission from automobiles and industry have reached dangerous level in some industrial cities in China.
ReplyDeleteIn order to reduce pollution, China has developed cleaner alternative to fossil fuel. One of the most unusual alternative is the old and unused banknote. Rather than having it unused and stockpiled in bank, why don’t use it as fuel? One thing that make me curious about this article is how much unused money that China has right now to be able to power up a city. Also, for the old money collector known as numismatics, if the amount of old money are decreasing, this means that someday the old money will become rare and its price will raises up. Many people would like to add old Chinese money to their collection.
It is a common sense that when we start to burn number of coal it will also reduce the number of our natural resources; but not for China. Instead of decreasing number of their natural resources, China is more prefer to loose their money in order to burn the coal. This should be a little bit uncommon but that’s how China is survive.
ReplyDeleteWe all know that China is the second biggest and strongest country in terms of economic condition after U.S.. That is no wonder why they have that plenty of money to burn out those coals. From my point of view, I think God is being fair. Why? Because even though God is giving them advantage in terms of money that doesn’t meant that they can have everything; meaning they don’t really have sufficient natural resources compare to other country like Indonesia. That is why they need to sacrifice their money in order to get what they need; in economy sometimes we call it as opportunity cost.
Burning money for power instead of coal is a creative thing to do and it is unique for Luoyang City, since they are the only one who would use old banknotes to create power unlike other power plants in other cities who uses coals. This is a good idea because instead of using coal, which is one of the unrenewable or limited natural resources, China use old and unused banknotes which can be categorised as a waste. Therefore, we can reduce the waste of old banknotes available in China while creating power for the region at the same time. In addition, it is stated in the article that according to the reports from the official Xinhua news agency, using old banknotes can generate far less pollution than by using fossil fuel traditionally used. Therefore, using money for gaining power for the region is more environmentally friendly than using limited coal.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought that this article is about china wasting valuable resources that cost them a lot of money, and because of that it led to air pollution that was shown in the picture, but it turns out I was all wrong. Thank God that I did not just wrote a whole comment without fully red the whole article. Personally burning old money or bank notes are quite weird way of gaining power. But the more I think about it the more I realize that it is such a smart idea. I believed that any way of recycling is good thing and not using any new natural resources such as coal will definitely help to fix the environmental problems. What I mean by this is that, Yes, this may cause air pollution similar to burning coal, but through burning old money or bank notes we can actually reserve the coal supply for the future.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, I thought this was some sort of joke that will be expanded in the article; I mean, its just ridiculous to burn money, it’s like something you would expect to see in cartoons or a comedy sketch. But then again, for a superpower country like china, it is impossible to pull of things like this only for “jokes”. As I read the article thoroughly, I realized that I had make an assumption that is incorrect, china is seriously burning money!
ReplyDeleteIt’s just amazing to see the creativity china took to utilize those old and unused bank notes to generate power. I always knew that coals are tremendously bad for the environment and people surrounding the power plant, for china to be able to come up with this solution is amazing and inspiring. I wonder what other sorts of things China can utilize to generate power and energy.
Actually this is a brilliant idea to burn papers, in this case money, instead of burning coals to generate electricity. Coals are very expensive to mine, yet the quantity of the coals are limited. The resources needed to mine the coals are also so many and varies. Burned coal pollution is also more dangerous than paper pollution. Rather than burning coals that are expensive to mine and get, China’s decision to burn the old banknotes are way cheaper. The money that being burned are the old banknotes that probably can’t be used anymore as it’s worthless and already being replaced by the new banknotes. China back then probably stored a lot of banknotes that are eventually useless, and then when they encountered this coal problem, they remembered about the useless old banknotes, and decided to burn them to reduce the expense on electricity, and reducing the polution created by the coals.
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