According to government authorities, Beijing will close its four remaining coal-fired power plants before the start of 2015, replacing them with four new natural gas-fired power plants at a total investment cost of $7.8 billion. When completed, these four power plants using natural gas from Shaanxi province will have a total generating capacity of 2.7 gigawatts. In the near term, efforts to reduce coal usage will probably be limited to Beijing and a few other top-tier cities, such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou, where the Party is most keen to quell social discontent by improving the quality of life, in part by decreasing pollution. The rest of China's economy will almost certainly continue to rely on coal for two-thirds or more of its energy and electricity needs throughout the next decade; national coal consumption is set to rise from 3.66 billion metric tons in 2012 to well over 4 billion metric tons in the next few years, despite the government's intent to cap consu
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