China’s Coal, Renewable and Nuclear Power: Present and Future

China has large, public plans for an ideal world of power in China.  They are moving toward most of these.  Since power is partly a national project, they may well succeed in some of them.  Clearly they have the motivation of dangerous air pollution to motivate them.  Some comments on China are appropriate to understand them with an international outlook.  While they have matched and are passing the US on CO2 emission, they have four times the population of the US, so their per capita emission is a fourth that of the US.  They have taken the German steel making plants, and are also supplanting US steel and concrete plants.  So 1/3 of the pollution from China is actually being used to manufacture such products for export.  Should this share really be charged to China?  If we had still kept such plants, we could have replaced the power sources with cleaner power.  They have a plan to shut down their 1,000 dirtiest coal plants.

After first posting this, I came across the comprehensive article on China’s five year plan presented by the Rhenium group.  I am including some of their graphs here.

China vs US emissions

Lets look at their renewables.  The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River opened in 2008 is built for flood control, power, and river navigation.  It has an installed capacity of 22.5 GigaWatts (GW), but with a capacity factor of 0.45 will generate on average 10.1 GigaWatts, which is equivalent to 9.2 US nuclear reactors.  China has just passed us in wind power output.  They have also just passed us in solar photovoltaic power at 8 GW at peak power.   They make 23% of the world’s solar photovoltaic panels.  They have many other rivers back into the mountainous interior and are considering more dams on them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, China is aiming for 21 GW solar by 2015, and some are talking about 40 GW by then to support the solar cell industry.  There is a dispute between China and the US and Europe as to whether they are subsidizing their exports of solar cells.

For China’s nuclear power, they have 16 nuclear power plants at four sites, for 11.3 GigaWatts of power.  This is equivalent to 10 US reactors (we have 104).  They have 26 under construction, generally of the French 900 MegaWatt reactors.  Their nuclear power produces 1% of their power, and they plan to increase this to about 70-75
GigaWatts to supply 6% of their power.  (Nuclear is now 20% of US power).  The plans are for 40 GigaWatts by 2020.  Their long term idealized plans are for 200 GW by 2030, and 400 GW by 2050, and 1400 GW by 2100.  (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

China non-fossil power

In polluting coal, in 2009, China used 48% of the world’s coal usage.  In 2010, they produced 3 times the coal that the US produced.  In contrast, they only used 3% of the world’s natural gas.  Two-thirds of their electricity comes from coal.  Hydro was 17% of electricity in 2009, and nuclear was 2%.  For primary energy, only 11% was from non-fossil fuel sources.

On the other side, they plan to lower their carbon intensity by 17% by 2015 from that  in 2011, and their carbon consumption intensity by 16%, and more in heavy industry regions.  Their goal for 2020 is a lowering by 40-45%.

China carbon intensity

Currently, 1 US dollar is equal to 6.22 Chinese Yuan or Renminbi which is the RMB in the units.  So the base of the y-axis at 100 tons of CO2 / million RMB x (6.22 RMB / 1 $) = 622 tons of CO2 / million US $ or 0.622 tons of CO2 per $1000 US.  Their 2012 value is 180 on the scale, or 1.8 times the base, or 1.12 tons CO2 per $1000 US.  Here is another graph though, comparing China and US carbon intensities through 2009:

China vs US carbon intensities

 

From this graph, the carbon intensity you get for 2009 is about 2.5, not the 1.12 that I calculated from the first graph.  The difference between US tons and metric tons is only 10%.  So I am puzzled.  However, the first graph measured in “real RMB” and that has grown by 50% since 2005.  MMT on the bottom graph stands for million metric tons, so the CO2 emissions agree.

In any case, the carbon intensity of China is five times that of the US.  One factor is that a few years ago, the US was using coal for only 50% of its power, whereas China is using coal for almost all of its power.  But that is only a factor of two, not five.  Oh wait, the US is making money selling software and iPads and clothes.  China is a main source of steel and cement, which is very energy intensive.  A real comparison would be how efficient are their coal plants compared to ours, since China is making great progress in non-fossil fuel power.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
This entry was posted in Climate Change, Electric Power, Energy Efficiency, Fossil Fuel Energy, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy, Solar Energy, Wind Energy. Bookmark the permalink.

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