Some 80km from the Chinese border, the tiny Russian village of Yerkovtsy might provide the setting for a new Russo-Chinese megaproject. The 38 BCm/year Power of Siberia (and its potential follow-ups, currently under discussion) was the gas manifestation of the Moscow-Beijing energy axis, with Yamal LNG extending it to the sphere of liquefied gas, the 80 mtpa ESPO pipeline and Rosneft’s 25-year $270 billion supply contract were the facets of oil cooperation, and it seems that coal will finally have a similarly massive project. The $10 billion coal-fuelled 4 GW Yerkovetskaya power plant, a joint project of Inter RAO and the State Grid Corporation of China, is back on the agenda, with high-profile state-owned financial institutions ready to back the project. Yet will it be enough? The concept for the Yerkovetskaya power plant came up around 2010, when China’s electricity consumption was growing by some 300-400 TWh per year, […]