As an energy enthusiast who has been following the deployment of solar and wind energy over the past 7 years, there was always a big question – when will China ramp up installation?
Climate is influenced by global emissions. And there’s a limit to how much we’d be able to achieve if China didn’t take massive steps toward decarbonization.
The answer to that question, it seems, was over the past couple of years. Yale’s School of Environment had a fascinating in-depth article. A few salient notes:
In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, then doubled additional solar in 2023.
Massive wind farms were already operating in northern China, and now a series of utility-scale clean energy bases involving many of China’s massive state-owned utility companies were planned for the relatively empty western desert regions. These bases, a combination of vast solar arrays and wind farms, are to be connected to markets in eastern China through high-speed transmission lines. The projects take advantage both of high solar radiation in the desert and large amounts of cheap, available land. China aims to build more than 200 such bases to help to raise its renewables capacity to about 3.9 terawatts by 2030, more than three times its 2022 total.
This chart tells the story.
Installation is one half of the battle. The next part is deployment and there are still challenges to be overcome.
Renewables now account for half of China’s installed capacity, but there has also been a surge in permits for new coal-fired power plants, and China still generates about 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. This means actual renewable energy use is lagging behind installed capacity.
This is largely due to problems with China’s giant grid, which prefers high-speed transmission from reliable sources to the challenge of integrating variable renewable power and the associated challenge of matching intermittent supply to demand. For the grid companies, China’s coal-fired power plants are steady and predictable, and they are allowed many more hours of grid access than renewables. In addition, anxieties about energy security are now high on the policy agenda, reinforced by geopolitical tensions and recent droughts that affected hydropower output and resulted in power cuts. In China, energy security still means coal.
They’ve identified grid unification as the key lever here.
To use its renewables capacity efficiently however, China has recognized that power system reforms are long overdue. The National Development and Reform Commission recently announced plans to create a unified national power market by 2030, merging its six regional grids into one nationwide electricity market to better manage fluctuations in supply and demand. If that can be achieved, China could not only enhance its position as the global leader in installed capacity for renewable but might also make better use of the clean energy it produces.
The end outcome is inevitable – cheap renewable energy is going to win. The journey will be fascinating to watch.
