The Chinese obviously don't do things by half once they make up their minds. 160,000 bpd would be more than all existing CTL and GTL plants in the world combined. For reference, the Shell GTL plant in Bintulu, Malaysia has a scale of about 12,000 bpd.

http://www.chemlink.com.au/gtl.htm

Note the "opportunities for CO2 management" as opposed to "actual CO2 sequestration" in the above article. In other words, the CO2 is going to go straight into the atmosphere unless domestic or outside pressures force China to take global warming seriously.

Domestic pressures are suppressed. However, CO2 is anyhow unlikely to feature among the top 10 environmental and social concerns in that country.

The Bush adminstration doesn't care one whit about global warming. Other investors don't want to jeopardize their opportunities in China. Therefore don't count on Western governments to challenge China's decision to invest in CTL.

Therefore, we can only hope that the Chinese government is far-sighted enough to realize that economic growth will be severely curtailed if and when global warming comes home to roost. So far, this has taken the form of substantial investments in hydro and solar power. Note that China has also expressed strong interest in BTL, which is similar to CTL except that it uses biomass as a feedstock (making it far more expensive).

http://www.choren.com/en/choren/latest_news/?nid=51
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=22&art_id=19225&sid=8082826&con_type=1

Attempts to produce biofuels more cheaply from food crops are constrained by the need to feed 1.2 billion hungry mouths. Cellulose to sugar processes are not yet proven beyond the pilot stage.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/44

It is encouraging that China is looking to achieve this growth while avoiding conflict with the US over global energy resources as much as possible (cp. Sudan, Iran). However, the country needs to do more in terms of curbing its overall energy demand growth, especially by accelerating the shift to more fuel-efficient modes of transport and production.

We might just have shorten their projected coal supply from 60 yrs (2 billion tons/yr, ~120 billion tons reserves), to 20 yrs. Even if they implement 80mpg requirements, and double power plant efficiency, the massive wave of the Chinese middle class striving for western consumption will deplete their fossil reserves. They may reach a screeching halt from their domestic coal in 2030, forcing them to either go green, or consume ever more energy from elsewhere. The specter of 55 ultra large bulk carriers a day, 20,100 a year is not a pleasant thought.
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____Then we have air pollution, GHGs, acid rain, heavy metals, global dimming aerosols, not to mention India and her billion plus citizens.
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____Nuke look nice, and 4th gen nuke plants are more efficient with hydrogen production possibilities. However, fuel rod reprocessing for plutonium, or usage of unenriched uranium are the long term solutions to uranium supply problems. Both are proliferation and pollution (chemical and radiological) threats since both produce plutonium. There might be a possibility for IFR /ALMR to be revived.
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____Use solar for peak power, augment with wind. Supply base loads with efficient multi-gigawatt biofuel fired plants, hydro, and cogeneration.

China is actually looking at every energy resource out there and investing in most of them. It's easy to forget that China alone has a greater population that the entire "developed" world put together.

What is also often forgotten is that China's one-child policy will come home to roost in the 2020s. The country's population will then age far more rapidly than Japan or Europe are doing today, with all the associated strains on a system of social security and health care.

Btw: last I heard, China is planning to build about 30 nuclear plants to produce hydrogen. Avaya, a French nuclear contractor, is reportedly involved. Not my favorite energy source/carrier combo, but there it is.

I am constantly amazed by those who think that Solar or Wind is somehow pollution free.

Solar alters the Albedo (the ratio of incident to reflected Energy impinging on the Earth) and gets its energy from a very inefficient conversion of the solar flux frequencies to other energy; in the case of P.V. only about 10% is even theoretically possible, but 90% or so, is rejected as "heat" and once absorbed and frequency shifted, is re-radiated to space at a much reduced rate in the thermal bands. It just hangs around and warms things up. As a matter of fact that is exactly what "Green House Gases" do.

In other words its as if you picked up the Earth and moved it closer to the Sun.

Don't you think that would increase "global warming" a smidgen?

But of course you've never heard of this problem because most of the environmental community is scientifically illiterate, but nevertheless its a fact that large scale adoption will have to address because its there as a problem.

The process of Wind interruption is likewise an Albedo altering process, with another step or two added...

Stan -

renewables do have environmental costs, in terms of land use, visual clutter on the horizon and/or impact on wildlife.

In the specific case of solar, we need to distinguish between biofuel crop (plants are collectors of solar energy), photovoltaics and solar-powered heat engines. These technologies can all impact the local, regional and global climate if deployed on a sufficiently large scale. In practice, only agriculture has done so. For reference, photosynthesis is only about 2% efficient (a little more in single-cell algae).

Wrt photovoltaics, the very expensive panels used for satellites actually manage about 30% efficiency. Even on the surface, with the blocking effects of the atmosphere, conversion rates well over 10% have been demonstrated using expensive materials. New developmentes in quantum dots and low-dimensional structures promise to raise that to over 60%. My point is simply that the upper limit on conversion efficiency is defined by available technology and economics more so than physics.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/gen/fy04/36831l.pdf
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/11/4/342
http://www.evidenttech.com/applications/quantum-dot-solar-cells.php

Quantum physics suggests that atoms and molecules tend to simply re-emit photons with wavelengths they cannot absorb at all. High-frequency photons that coincide with upper band-gap frequencies are also often emitted at the same frequencies, though sometimes a multi-step emission at lower frequencies does occur. This is true for all materials, not just photovoltaic ones, e.g. traditional roofing materials and soils that cannot be used for agriculture. Semiconductors do have a larger number of absorption lines than isolators, but the absorption of energy compensates to some extent for the multi-step emission.

Also not that solar panels are excellent specular reflectors, so most emitted photons are reflected along short paths in the direction of outer space. Simple geometry suggests that reduces the likelihood that they interact with GHG in the atmosphere. All in all, I suspect your assertion that the large scale application of photovoltaics would produce massive shifts in net albedo may require further study.