Sustainable Future: Improved Environment and Enhanced Security 75
yr of gas from Turkmenistan to China. Other pipelines from Russia are under consideration, such as from Sakhalin to South Korea. If more pipeline supplies into East Asia are able to be developed, the construction of more links of the Trans-Asian Gas Pipeline project would bring benefits to other countries in the region. Rising dependency on gas imports in East Asia will increase the risks to the security of supply, via both possible supply interruption and exposure to price volatility. The costs of natural-gas-fired power depends on gas prices, which in recent years have been highly volatile. Long-term contracting of gas imports has been the traditional route taken to manage these risks. Despite the recent interest and growth in short-term gas trades, the long-term contracting approach should continue. Another growing trend is for the larger national oil companies (NOCs) to buy into overseas oil and gas-producing assets. The large Chinese NOCs are by far the most active in this area and are likely to continue to acquire ownership in foreign reserves, with some of other East Asian NOCs aiming to follow suit. Although buying into overseas assets is an understandable response to growing imports requirements and recent high prices, it remains to be seen whether this strategy will actually mitigate the risks of physical shortages, or provide only a limited financial hedge against high future prices. Efficient Coal-Fired Power Plants and Carbon Capture and Storage East Asian countries have large potentials to improve the efficiency of their coal-fired power plants, as most of these power plants remain below the international benchmarks (figure 4.18). A majority of the new coal-fired plants in China are equipped with the most efficient supercritical and ultra-supercritical technologies in the world, at no additional costs compared to the subcritical plants.41 Over the last decade, China also increased the average efficiency of coal-fired power plants by 15 percent to an average of 34 percent (Zhang 2008). Over the last two years, a policy that requires closing small-scale coal-fired power plants and replacing them with large-scale efficient plants reduced annual CO2 emissions by 60 million tons. Most EAP5 countries still plan to adopt subcritical technologies for their coal expansion under the REF scenario, and should use the most efficient technologies in their new plants, whenever possible. However, the likely continued use of small coal plants in some East Asian countries—for island systems in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines—makes using the most efficient technologies difficult. Supercritical and ultra-supercritical technologies currently are 41. Supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants use higher steam temperatures and pressures to achieve higher efficiency of 38%–40% and 40%–42% respectively, compared to large-scale subcritical power plants with an average efficiency of 35%–38%.