Well folks, either it's it's been a slow news week with regards to China and energy, or the global market "panic" associated with the American subprime mortgage credit "crisis" and terror incidents all over the world have pushed the relevant stories far off the front page.  But here are some tidbits just to keep the gears lubricated.

1. China Daily did a sum-up of the July coal numbers.

2. Forbes reports that the Chinese government favors a gradual freeing of prices for coal and coal-based power to market determination (which would raise the price) but is not ready to make any major moves just yet because it would "It would lead to more coal power generation projects"  That might cause you to scratch your head "Wait, a higher coal price would encourage more generation projects instead of suppress demand?" But in fact it would because the coal price would increase less than the (presently more heavily subsidized) power price - so profits would increase and marginally unfavorable projects would suddenly become viable.  In the end, it's part of a strange Chinese market manipulation tactic to encourage more alternative energy projects such as wind turbines.

3. The WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, and formerly often confused for the other WWF, the World Wrestling Federation (now, because of a nasty lawsuit, the WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment), released a report, "Coming Clean: The future of coal in the Asia Pacific Region" on the eve of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney.  The report is mostly predictable - coal usage harms the environment and will exacerbate global warming, Asia uses far too much and is set to use much more, rich countries must "develop and transfer technology" to these nations to mitigate the impact, etc...  Still, it's worth a read, if only to see exactly how profound and rapid change would have to be to satisfy the demands of groups like WWF.