The conversion of coal to natural gas is in full swing. I don’t understand why it was delayed until winter. How many people do not have heating during the Spring Festival without coal.

The calorific value of one ton of coal is approximately equal to 700 cubic meters of natural gas. If 5 tons of coal is used for heating a year, 3,500 cubic meters of natural gas is needed. Langfang City has adopted a stepped gas price since 2015. The gas consumption is 3,500 cubic meters, which is 3.36 yuan per cubic meter. It will use 11,760 yuan for heating!

The calorific value of one ton of coal is approximately equal to 700 cubic meters of natural gas. If 5 tons of coal is used for heating a year, 3,500 cubic meters of natural gas is needed. Langfang City has adopted a stepped gas price since 2015. The gas consumption is 3,500 cubic meters, which is 3.36 yuan per cubic meter. Use 11,760 yuan for heating!

Since the State Council issued the “Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan”, various localities have put forward relevant countermeasures, and natural gas has been crowned with clean energy. In many places, “coal-to-gas” is being promoted on a large scale. In some places, companies are forced to “coal-to-gas” without considering the use of other clean combustion technologies or the supply of natural gas. A professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that if my country’s national conditions and objective conditions are ignored on a large-scale implementation of “coal to gas”, many problems may arise.

Natural gas boilers do not have any advantages in controlling nitrogen oxides. To describe natural gas as clean energy is inherently biased. Natural gas is also a fossil energy source, and it also has the problem of clean combustion, mainly due to the large amount of nitrogen oxides produced during the combustion process.

According to the information released by the environmental protection department on the operation of natural gas boilers, in the operation of gas-fired industrial boilers, only 35% of the nitrogen oxide emissions concentration is less than 200 mg/m³, and 94% of those less than 400 mg/m³. The concentration of nitrogen oxides produced by most natural gas boilers is around 300 mg/m³.The decoupling combustion boiler using semi-coke as fuel can control nitrogen oxide emissions below 200 mg/m³. In addition, gas producer boilers can even control nitrogen oxide below 100 mg/m³.

The main component of smog is PM2.5, and the culprit producing PM2.5 is nitrogen oxides. At present, the natural gas boilers used in large-scale “coal-to-gas” control have no advantage in controlling nitrogen oxides. What is puzzling is that from the publicly recorded data, it is difficult to find out the amount of nitrogen oxides and the changes in nitrogen oxides before and after the “coal to gas” work.

As we all know, our country is a country with poor oil and natural gas resources. According to estimates by the National Energy Administration, our country’s natural gas consumption will reach 231 billion cubic meters in 2015, while the domestic natural gas supply is only 131 billion cubic meters, and 100 billion cubic meters need to be imported.

Natural gas resources are controlled by foreign countries, gas turbine blade manufacturing and repairing technology is controlled by foreign countries, and we have no right to say in fuel prices. “Coal to gas” will cost a lot of money, the addition of reprocessing facilities will also cost a lot of money, and there will be long-term subsidies for natural gas fuel. We should have a clear understanding of this. From this point of view, the control of smog is not just an environmental issue, but a political issue.