China May Boost Coal Power Plant Building Amid Energy Crunch
By Paul Homewood
China may add more new coal-fired power plants in the next few years than previously expected after a spate of economy-pinching power crunches.
The world’s biggest energy user is expected to add 270 gigawatts of thermal capacity in the five years through 2025, China Energy Engineering Corp., the country’s top energy engineering conglomerate, said in an online briefing on Thursday. That would be more than the 100 to 200 gigawatts estimated in 2020 by a senior researcher at State Grid of China Corp. Energy Research Institute.
China has vowed to start reducing coal use from 2026 and said any new coal power plants will only be used to support intermittent renewable energy. Still, the country is seeking increased energy security after recent supply crunches have forced power cuts to factories. Most recently, a blistering heatwave and drought forced factories to halt in some regions last month, crimping output of materials such as lithium and aluminum.
“The plan if materialized will reverse the declining trend of coal additions,” said Lara Dong, an analyst with S&P Global Commodity Insights. “It will mitigate the power crunch risk, especially in the load centers located in central and eastern China.”
To be sure, no official announcements have been made on capacity additions, and it’s in the engineering firm’s interest to jockey for a larger amount of potential coal power plants to work on.
About 320 gigawatts of thermal power plants were added between 2006-2010, but the pace has slowed ever since then. In recent years, utilities have shifted their focus to cheaper and cleaner renewables. China has about 320 gigawatts of wind and solar projects in the pipeline right now, compared to 144 gigawatts in July 2021, according to S&P.
China may remain the world’s largest coal consumer and the expansion of coal plants might thwart its climate goals, Bloomberg Intelligent analyst Michelle Leung said in a note this month. The country put more new coal plants into operation last year than the rest of the world combined, and its proposed new coal mines account for almost a third of the global total, she said.
The growth of China’s coal fleet is mainly focused on firming capacity in the power system and “will neither change China’s climate commitment nor challenge the achievement of peaking carbon emissions before 2030,” according to S&P’s Dong.
While the energy transition helped China’s clean-power capacity to overtake coal for the first time in 2021, coal remained the main fuel for generation, accounting for 60% of total power output, China Electricity Council data show. China may install as much as 100 gigawatts of solar power and 56 gigawatts of wind power this year, and the country aims to have 1,200 gigawatts of renewable power by 2030.
If this target goes ahead, it will be highly significant, because it reverses the declining trend in construction seen over the last decade.
Bloomberg, being Bloomberg, are still trying to promote their renewable energy agenda, claiming that any new coal power plants will only be used to support intermittent renewable energy. This is laughable – you cannot turn coal plants on and off, just to natch the vagaries of the wind. All of these new coal plants will be used for baseload, with wind and solar power topping up.
Two thirds of electricity demand growth is supplied by thermal (nearly all coal) power, which still generates 67% of total supply, against the 11% coming from wind/solar. China’s economic growth will continue to rely copious amounts of coal-fired power for decades to come.
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2021-electricity-other-energy-statistics-preliminary/
Bloomberg also say that China may have 1200 GW of renewable power by 2030, a figure which presumably does not include hydro. But it already has 634 GW of wind and solar capacity, so the target is not very challenging.
Even if total demand does not increase, 1200 GW would only supply about an extra 500 TWh a year, increasing wind/solar share from 11% to 17%.
But as already noted, economic growth will continue to drive electricity demand ever higher.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yep, no one rational believes their “China has vowed to start reducing coal use from 2026 [in favour of renewables]”. Just wait for the renewables fanatics (from Deben downwards) to proclaim “China are abandoning coal”, as surely they will.
‘China abandoning coal’, only when they’ve excavated every last seam!
And nicked every bu99er else’s!
And they’ll most likely build them in record time, below budget. Not for them long drawn-out planning inquiries or XR demos!
BTW…did anyone else see what happened to the Scot who heckled the funeral procession up the Royal Mile? I saw a long arm reach over from behind, grab his collar and just bodily hoick him backwards out of the crowd…. where I guess he got his come-uppance. 😉
I saw that. He has an absolute right to protest of course, but not to cause a ‘breech of the peace’! Someone should ask him how he’d like a loud & rude heckler at his mother’s funeral.
Freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences!
Not a lot of people know that.
Just goes to show how pointess it is crucifying ourselves with Net Zero in order to save 1% of the world’s Co2 emissions-which no-one has proved causes global warming-if it exists and is not from natural climactic causes anyway.
I am surprised that China is not moving more aggressively to Russian natural gas. They are currently reselling discounted Russian LNG at a tidy profit on the world market. It seems that as Europe tries to wean itself from Russian gas, China could be a huge beneficiary which would also give it the energy it needs to produce more of the raw materials that Europe can no longer afford to produce domestically like steel, aluminum and fertilizer.
Do the Chinese think the natural gas disruptions to Europe are temporary so don’t want to commit a strategic change in their energy mix or do they think Europe will do so much damage to its basic materials production industry that expanding coal and NG will be necessary to meet the demand?
Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a $400 billion 30-year agreement deal in 2014 to build the Power of Siberia, a pipeline with a 3,000-kilometer (1,865-mile) section in Russia and 5,000 kilometers in China.
https://www.dw.com/en/russian-gas-boost-fuels-moscows-china-pivot/a-60393843
Following the Sri Lanka experiment, for how long will countries in Europe be able to afford to import what it can no longer afford to make? Killing off their tea exports left them broke.
The Chinese have common sense unlike Boris and Lord Deben.
China is profiting enormously from reselling its gas availabilities to desperate Europeans who are now completely unable to compete with Chinese coal fired power.
It’s important to Chinese foreign policy that the ‘West’ should continue to believe in Chins’s support for mad self destructive energy policies. If China was to withdraw then golly people might say what’s the point.
So it’s up to us to tell our politicians (repeatedly, as is necessary) that that’s what China are actually doing.
Where are the Extinction Rebellion martyrs when yuou need them?
I never have felt the need for ER martyrs ever! And I don’t think I would wish them even on the Chinese.
Not that any of them would have the guts to try protesting in China, or indeed in any country that takes a more robust view than we do about having their roads blocked by middle class hypocrites.
(I should explain: as people they are middle class; as hypocrites they are first class plus!)
The great advantage of coal is that it can be stored easily, highly significant in the defeat of the miners strike in the UK in 1984/85. Ideal now for energy security, the forgotten leg of the so-called trilemma.
A lesson Texas failed to heed when the failure of the grid due to the windmills freezing up also cut the power to the gas supply so that gas generation failed as well. Coal is unaffected by cold weather.
” The great advantage of coal is that it can be stored easily ”
Also relatively low construction cost and generally reliable operation.
One of God’s brilliantly simple designs 😁.
And simple and safe to transport.
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .
Meanwhile, in other news I was mortified to read on Bloomberg of this misadventure that has befallen one of our French friends(?) /foes(?).
“French Power Operator Makes $60 Million Trading Error”
Foes given the massive hike in my monthly gas direct debit by EDF who are being challenged to provide the justification or the DD will be cancelled. Dr North has written about his issues with EDF where their muppets ignore the point you are making and give you useless information. I have been told that the monthly DD is the result of the annual cost being divided by 12.
China and India will each add 500 MMT of Coal burn by 2030. That’s one billion additional annually when combined. Then there is India’s current 980 MMT and China’s 4,000 MMT annual burn.
Compare that with the US’s 477 MMT annual coal burn.
Don’t try to make sense of any of this CO2 reduction effort.
Just read a report on the Australian ABC I would Like to get your thoughts on this grand plan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-09-13/climate-council-renewables-steps-beat-2030-emissions-targets/101423872?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=abc_news_newsmail_am_sfmc&utm_term=&utm_id=1941238&sfmc_id=219408694
The article says “When the Sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, we can still get our electricity from renewables, provided we have enough storage.”, but where that storage is going to come from, heaven knows! Even the largest battery in the world only lasts a few minutes. It’s all very pie-in-the-sky stuff, from never-never land.
The great Australian plan to become a Third World country admits that for the plan to work, technology that does not exist must be invented. Well, shit is that all they have to do? And in 8 years too!
What is an MMT PLEASE?