Post - Articles
China announces its power plans
- 13 years ago (2011-01-07)
- Junior Isles
China has unveiled a raft of targets for its energy and power sectors, revealing a plan for a rapid increase in power generation.
World Hydrogen Forum 2024
China, already the world's top energy user, faces the challenge of keeping its growing economy fueled while cutting back on its main fuel, cheap but dirty coal.
Although energy use is certain to grow, the government wants energy consumption to rise much more slowly than the economy overall, and hopes to bolster supplies of cleaner energy sources.
China has already said it will spend 5 trillion yuan ($755 billion) on clean energy over the next decade to lift the non-fossil fuel component of its supply to 15 per cent of primary energy demand by 2020, up from 8 per cent in 2009.
Zhang Ping, the head of the top economic planning body, said the country had met its five-year target to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 per cent by the end of 2010.
Chinese officials are still deliberating energy intensity targets for the next five years, but media reports have said the figure for 2011-2015 could be 17.3 per cent, one of the many targets to be set under a five-year plan which will be launched by the country's parliament in March.
Power generating capacity is expected to hit 1440 GW by 2015 and 1760 GW by 2020, Liu Zhenhua, general manager of the State Grid Corp of China, was quoted as saying by state media.
Zhang Guobao, the head of the National Energy Administration, said generating capacity stood at 950 GW at the end of 2010, so Liu's forecasts imply growth of 52 per cent in the next five years and then a further 22 per cent rise in the following five years. Thermal power capacity, will rise by 80 GW in 2011 and 260-270 GW by 2015, Zhang Guobao confirmed.
He said by 2015 China should add 38 GW of nuclear capacity and 140 GW of hydro capacity. That compares to current capacities of about 10 GW and 200 GW respectively at the end of 2010 and signals a much faster roll-out of these power sources than many had expected. Some media reports had put the 2015 target for total nuclear capacity at 39 GW and for hydro at 250 GW.
Zhang did not give a target for wind power, the other big component of China's alternative energy plans, but his agency has previously said it should have 90 GW of capacity by 2015.
Although the targets show renewables taking a much bigger share of the overall energy mix, thermal power will continue to be a bigger absolute source of new power generating capacity.
But Zhang also said China had made cuts in coal use over the last five years by replacing outdated thermal power plants with environmentally-friendly ones, which saved more than 300 million tonnes of coal, and by pushing clean energy, which saved a further 1.5 billion tonnes of coal.
The government is also trying to use coal work more effectively by building new power plants in the coal-rich western regions of China and by investing heavily in ultra-high voltage power lines, a new technology which allows the power from coal to be sent over long distances.