Next March, the Waigaoqiao Power Plant will become Shanghai's first power plant to have desulfurization equipment installed on all of its generators, the plant managers said yesterday.

 

Most of the city's power plants will install similar equipment to reduce their emissions by 2010, as required by the government.

 

"Adopting good environmental policy is consistent with the company's sustainable development," Zou Jun, deputy general manager of Shanghai Waigaoqiao Power Generation Company Ltd, said yesterday.

 

He said the capacity of Waigaoqiao Power Plant was 1.2 million kilowatts and it generated nearly a 10th of the city's total electricity.

 

The Pudong-based power plant has four generators, two of which have already been fitted with desulfurization equipment - a cooperative venture with a Japanese environmental technology company that began in late 2005.

 

The equipment uses limestone as raw material and it manages a 95 percent efficiency for desulphurizing.

 

The desulfurizing equipment for the other two units is being supplied by CPI Yuanda Environmental-Protection Engineering Company Ltd - a Chongqing-based company of environmental technology.

 

Zou of Waigaoqiao said the third unit will be introduced by the year's end and the fourth by the end of March next year.

 

While it is not known exactly how much in total the company invests in desulfurization annually, it does spend about 50 million yuan (US$6.67 million) on upgrading technology to help protect the environment, company officials said.

 

According to a municipal plan, by 2010 the city's energy consumption and major power plant pollutants will be reduced by 20 percent from 2005 - the city will cut 80,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions every year.

 

Shanghai plans to monitor the exhaust fumes from key factories and power plants by the year's end.

 

(Shanghai Daily September 11, 2007)