China's Proposed Coal-Fired Power Plants and Baseline Water Stress

As of July 2012, China’s government planned 363 coal-fired power plants for construction across China. According to WRI analysis, more than half of these proposed coal-fired power plants are slated to be built in areas of high or extremely high water stress.

We also found that:

• 60 percent of the total proposed generating capacity is concentrated in six provinces. Those provinces, however, only account for 5 percent of China’s total water resources.

• In those six provinces, competition for water between domestic, agricultural, and industrial users is already high: 60 percent of the proposed generating capacity is in areas of high or extremely high water stress.