While China works towards some ambitious environmental goals, conventional wisdom touts flue gas desulfurisation (FGD), also called scrubbing - the technology that removes sulfur dioxide from the fossil fuel combustion process - as a stop-gap solution.
Already, Guangdong is China's leading province in FGD capacity. Heralded by mainland environmentalists, the provincial authorities have mandated the retrofit of FGD units at all power plants by 2007.
But most scrubbers in China were 'wastefully ineffective', said Liu Deyou , chief engineer at Beijing SPC Environment Protection Technology Engineering, a subsidiary of big-five power company China Guodian Corporation.
'The equipment is managed poorly,' Mr Liu said. 'Most scrubbers show low efficiency, high power consumption, and are prone to excessive accumulation of particulates, corrosion, congestion and wear-and-tear.'
Rosy statistics provided false comfort, Mr Liu said. From 2001 to 2005, the world's largest producer and consumer of coal had added 19,424 megawatts in desulfurisation capacity, with an annual growth of 22.6 per cent, according to official figures.
However, the majority of these scrubbers were copycats of foreign technology. Often, Chinese suppliers had little knowledge of how to maintain or improve the equipment, Mr Liu said.