That piece is by an employee of the fossil fuel and nuclear industry-linked Breakthrough Institute.
It completely downplays how the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act halted imports of Chinese panels into the US in 2022 until companies could demonstrate the supply chains for those panels were clean.
Don't fall for fossil fuel industry astroturfing / concern trolling.
I will not respond to your ad hom argument but will note that Biden specifically moved to allow continued importation of China-sourced solar panels into the US. Other Western countries have no limits whatsoever
I’ve actually been amazed at how well climate activists have maintained their silence on this issue (unless to brush it off) but the human beings at stake deserve more.
That's a separate tariff issue unrelated to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, related to Chinese companies trying to avoid tariffs by shipping panels via third-party countries. That Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is in effect and any panels imported must have a supply chain clean of Uyghur labor.
The EU is pursuing a similar law called "Prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market"
You're posting fossil fuel propaganda from a conservative think tank which exists to boost fossil fuel and nuclear interests and smear renewables. By doing so you're also concern trolling and spreading misinformation.
If the author would address two questions for context, it would be helpful:
With their residential electricity apparently covered and with the China GDP growing at a fairly low rate for them (4.5% forecast) why do they still need to commission such a large number of new coal plants? Where is the energy going?
What is the actual performance of the renewable energy projects they have put in place? Are they running at capacity or even running at all? If it is anything like the performance reported elsewhere in the world, and there is no obvious reason for it to be otherwise, the likelihood of their renewables operating at the stated install capacity is very low.
China's coal use looks like it is still increasing, but possibly not for electricity generation. (I've found graphs showing it both increasing - including from World in Data - and levelling off - from the IEA: make of that what you will). I suspect the increase in coal use is largely due to demand in the steel and cement industries, which have been expanding faster than the economy as a whole.
I don't know exactly why China is still building coal-fired power stations. But it could be due to the need to replace older facilities. There are several possible reasons why they are doing that, like the need for greater efficiency (China's coal fired power stations averaged 33% efficiency, while 47.5% can now apparently be achieved). From a capitalist point of view, if a coal mine is required in a new location, it might make sense to also build an new, more efficient coal-fired power station close by and close an old one near an exhausted mine. This would also help to maintain employment in the coal industry - possibly a political decision, or possibly an economic one. I suspect the unit cost of coal fired electricity in China is not much greater than that for wind and solar, if at all.
In 2021, China opened 33GW of new coal fired power stations. If they operate all day every year they would supply about 5% of their total coal fired electricity capacity. In the ten years 2012 to 2021, their coal fired generation of electricity grew by 43%, from 3,748 TWh to 5,339 TWh, an average of 17.6 GW increase in generating capacity per year. Maybe the 33GW in 2021 does show some replacement of old power stations, although it could also have been catching up, as no new capacity was installed in 2020 (COVID?).
Another 6actor could be that, despite the high rate of growth in solar and wind electricity generation they just cannot build these installations fast enough. There is also a growth in hydropower, which is worrying, as it has had dire ecological consequences there.
You can just run the numbers, even just 4.5% growth on 8,600 TWh consumption is demand growth of 387 TWh, solar / wind only increased by 269 TWh last year, the other +118 TWh has to come from somewhere.
China's power consumption works on a different scale than the rest of the world, it's easy to forget just how big 8,600 TWh is, for context that's more than double US total (4,027 TWh)
While these figures are impressive, it is slightly misleading to imply that China’s solar and wind generation could meet the electricity needs of entire countries. Solar and wind have never provided all the electricity for a country, and this not be technically possible at an affordable price.
Because of the problem of intermittency, while it is relatively easy to accommodate low levels of solar and wind into the grid, increasing this amount becomes very difficult above the capacity factors for solar and wind. These are at most 30% (combined) Adding more solar and wind above this level results in the added capacity being unusable on windy/sunny days. And this gets exponentially worse as penetration increases.
Ideally we would be able to store this extra electricity but we do not yet have the required technology at the required scale.
This is the lesson learnt in countries like Germany and Denmark, and regions like South Australia and California.
We need to keep reminding people that we need alternatives to solar and wind to get emissions close to zero in the next few decades.
The obvious way to do that is the expand nuclear power. Numerous studies (e.g. by the IPCC and IEA ) have shown that the cheapest way to get to net zero quickly includes nuclear energy. This could be even faster and cheaper if we set the same safety standards for nuclear power as for other forms of electricity generation. At the moment standards are vastly (>100 fold) higher for nuclear. This is making it unnecessarily expensive to reduce emissions. It is also killing people and endangering lives by accelerating climate change.
The only energy source that has ever provided "all the electricity for a country" was fossil fuel, and that hasn't been the case for a century. It was also an extremely bad state of affairs.
Resilient energy systems have a diversity of sources.
Yes it is. All that is required is a sensible regulatory system that does not value a life lost to radioactivity up to 10,000 time more than a life lost to air pollution. That disparity is why it became too expensive to build nuclear power plants. So we built coal fired plants instead which accelerated climate change and killed millions of people. We could change this very easily. The question is do we care enough about preventing catastrophic climate change to actually think about it and overcome what are irrational fears.
I am a medical doctor who studies the causes of disease and it amazes me that we persist in what is insane behaviour.
We know that nuclear power is the safest form of reliable energy and yet we continue to impose ridiculous regulation on it. Why?
So your proposal is to distort the market to support a technology that is currently losing to a cheaper and cleaner source of energy on the off-chance that it might actually work. Even though it, by your own metric, has never proven itself capable of running a country.
Nobody is debating that coal is worse for health than nuclear, but I notice you are quiet on whether solar and wind are worse for health, and whether the increased cost of nuclear leads to an opportunity cost when we could instead build more renewables and fund better health with the money saved.
Interesting article, thanks for putting that into perspective. I understand it is not exactly the same topic, but your mention to use China as a model brought this up in my mind: Why did you choose to make no mention of China’s human rights record, particularly when forced labor is being used to build much of this infrastructure? Thought it would be at least worth a mention. Thanks!
China is also adding long distance very high voltage DC transmission to move the power. Our failing system with veto power to everyone claiming to be a "stakeholder" is preventing necessary transmission.
Your naivety makes this seem like mindless Chinese propaganda.
"what’s promising – and should get more attention – is how rapidly China is scaling solar and wind power"
Promising at a first glance, but I can't help but notice how you compare a country with more than 70 times the population of Australia. It is not notable to any degree for a country to increase their production by less than 3% in wind and solar. Their power consumption increased by 14%, or 1,000 TWh, over two years from 2019 to 2021 alone, totalling at 8 thousand TWh.¹
China's total wind and solar electricity production account for less than just their increase in consumption over as little as 3 years from 2019. And only 25% of that increase was accounted for by an increase in wind and solar. You can't make bar charts comparing basketballs to golf balls in an attempt to impress people over the basketball's bouncing and size.
The chinese government is listening to the chinese people and so it improved environment in no time, check chinese media. No other power ever planted so many trees in so short a time as china in the northeast. The german company MANZ built Solar panel factories of the latest tecnic in China, but in the EU there is still a high punitive duty on chinese solar panels. Very good for China, Asia, Africa.
Really interesting article! I was aware that China is adding a lot of wind and solar, but did not expect the scale to be anything like this compared to rest of world. It would be nice to have context of the rate of growth of overall electricity demand in China though; is this helping them to decarbonise, or are they needing to add large amounts of dirty electricity generation as well?
Interesting analysis. China's population is due to peak pretty soon, so that should help. Given the size of the sector, industrial process heat is another challenge. China is definitely a double-edged sword situation. They can get things done fast, but that also means corruption moves quickly and unneeded infrastructure gets built. I don't know the answer to this, but of the new coal plants, are any getting set up for carbon capture and storage--i.e. with gasifiers?
Great article. The Chinese economy is opaque and full of distortions. Since the provinces lack taxing authority they generate revenue by seizing property and selling it for development. They have no choice as they need to provide local services!!! Coal capacity is a wonderful example. Powerful interests in rural areas mine lots of coal. China is ~16% of the world population and now operates more coal plants than the WHOLE PLANET COMBINED. The statistics for solar and wind growth inform a RATIONAL observer that if ROI governed investment, adding coal infrastructure with 50 year useful life boilers is idiotic. If battery storage blossoms, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 50 year boilers becomes a millstone. No rational banker would or could underwrite such a venture but in the PRC these decisions are made for stability. People in America who are pro-nuclear always seem to ignore the REALITY that the reason none are built is no one is FOOLISH enough to underwrite a 60 year folly. They need to hang their tin cup out and get the government to insulate them from a bad investment that otherwise should not be made. China is loaded with absurd infrastructure investment that likely was reported as "growth" and its decommission will do the same. Who would buy a car built to last 50 years with the forethought it will be crushed and recyled in 5-10 years. No one unless someone else sits ready to bail you out.
Little doubt the future of energy is solar. So much better to confront the ethical issues now…
https://twitter.com/wang_seaver/status/1626294554453483520
That piece is by an employee of the fossil fuel and nuclear industry-linked Breakthrough Institute.
It completely downplays how the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act halted imports of Chinese panels into the US in 2022 until companies could demonstrate the supply chains for those panels were clean.
Don't fall for fossil fuel industry astroturfing / concern trolling.
I will not respond to your ad hom argument but will note that Biden specifically moved to allow continued importation of China-sourced solar panels into the US. Other Western countries have no limits whatsoever
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-01-30-biden-chinese-solar-tariffs/
I’ve actually been amazed at how well climate activists have maintained their silence on this issue (unless to brush it off) but the human beings at stake deserve more.
That's a separate tariff issue unrelated to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, related to Chinese companies trying to avoid tariffs by shipping panels via third-party countries. That Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is in effect and any panels imported must have a supply chain clean of Uyghur labor.
The EU is pursuing a similar law called "Prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market"
You're posting fossil fuel propaganda from a conservative think tank which exists to boost fossil fuel and nuclear interests and smear renewables. By doing so you're also concern trolling and spreading misinformation.
At that Rate, what year will China find self sufficiency?
If the author would address two questions for context, it would be helpful:
With their residential electricity apparently covered and with the China GDP growing at a fairly low rate for them (4.5% forecast) why do they still need to commission such a large number of new coal plants? Where is the energy going?
What is the actual performance of the renewable energy projects they have put in place? Are they running at capacity or even running at all? If it is anything like the performance reported elsewhere in the world, and there is no obvious reason for it to be otherwise, the likelihood of their renewables operating at the stated install capacity is very low.
China's coal use looks like it is still increasing, but possibly not for electricity generation. (I've found graphs showing it both increasing - including from World in Data - and levelling off - from the IEA: make of that what you will). I suspect the increase in coal use is largely due to demand in the steel and cement industries, which have been expanding faster than the economy as a whole.
I don't know exactly why China is still building coal-fired power stations. But it could be due to the need to replace older facilities. There are several possible reasons why they are doing that, like the need for greater efficiency (China's coal fired power stations averaged 33% efficiency, while 47.5% can now apparently be achieved). From a capitalist point of view, if a coal mine is required in a new location, it might make sense to also build an new, more efficient coal-fired power station close by and close an old one near an exhausted mine. This would also help to maintain employment in the coal industry - possibly a political decision, or possibly an economic one. I suspect the unit cost of coal fired electricity in China is not much greater than that for wind and solar, if at all.
In 2021, China opened 33GW of new coal fired power stations. If they operate all day every year they would supply about 5% of their total coal fired electricity capacity. In the ten years 2012 to 2021, their coal fired generation of electricity grew by 43%, from 3,748 TWh to 5,339 TWh, an average of 17.6 GW increase in generating capacity per year. Maybe the 33GW in 2021 does show some replacement of old power stations, although it could also have been catching up, as no new capacity was installed in 2020 (COVID?).
Another 6actor could be that, despite the high rate of growth in solar and wind electricity generation they just cannot build these installations fast enough. There is also a growth in hydropower, which is worrying, as it has had dire ecological consequences there.
heres a thread on why China keeps opening more coal plants in case you are interested
https://twitter.com/wang_seaver/status/1626742039051370496
You can just run the numbers, even just 4.5% growth on 8,600 TWh consumption is demand growth of 387 TWh, solar / wind only increased by 269 TWh last year, the other +118 TWh has to come from somewhere.
China's power consumption works on a different scale than the rest of the world, it's easy to forget just how big 8,600 TWh is, for context that's more than double US total (4,027 TWh)
While these figures are impressive, it is slightly misleading to imply that China’s solar and wind generation could meet the electricity needs of entire countries. Solar and wind have never provided all the electricity for a country, and this not be technically possible at an affordable price.
Because of the problem of intermittency, while it is relatively easy to accommodate low levels of solar and wind into the grid, increasing this amount becomes very difficult above the capacity factors for solar and wind. These are at most 30% (combined) Adding more solar and wind above this level results in the added capacity being unusable on windy/sunny days. And this gets exponentially worse as penetration increases.
Ideally we would be able to store this extra electricity but we do not yet have the required technology at the required scale.
This is the lesson learnt in countries like Germany and Denmark, and regions like South Australia and California.
We need to keep reminding people that we need alternatives to solar and wind to get emissions close to zero in the next few decades.
The obvious way to do that is the expand nuclear power. Numerous studies (e.g. by the IPCC and IEA ) have shown that the cheapest way to get to net zero quickly includes nuclear energy. This could be even faster and cheaper if we set the same safety standards for nuclear power as for other forms of electricity generation. At the moment standards are vastly (>100 fold) higher for nuclear. This is making it unnecessarily expensive to reduce emissions. It is also killing people and endangering lives by accelerating climate change.
The only energy source that has ever provided "all the electricity for a country" was fossil fuel, and that hasn't been the case for a century. It was also an extremely bad state of affairs.
Resilient energy systems have a diversity of sources.
Nuclear has never provided all the electricity for a country, and this not be technically possible at an affordable price.
Yes it is. All that is required is a sensible regulatory system that does not value a life lost to radioactivity up to 10,000 time more than a life lost to air pollution. That disparity is why it became too expensive to build nuclear power plants. So we built coal fired plants instead which accelerated climate change and killed millions of people. We could change this very easily. The question is do we care enough about preventing catastrophic climate change to actually think about it and overcome what are irrational fears.
I am a medical doctor who studies the causes of disease and it amazes me that we persist in what is insane behaviour.
We know that nuclear power is the safest form of reliable energy and yet we continue to impose ridiculous regulation on it. Why?
So your proposal is to distort the market to support a technology that is currently losing to a cheaper and cleaner source of energy on the off-chance that it might actually work. Even though it, by your own metric, has never proven itself capable of running a country.
Nobody is debating that coal is worse for health than nuclear, but I notice you are quiet on whether solar and wind are worse for health, and whether the increased cost of nuclear leads to an opportunity cost when we could instead build more renewables and fund better health with the money saved.
Interesting article, thanks for putting that into perspective. I understand it is not exactly the same topic, but your mention to use China as a model brought this up in my mind: Why did you choose to make no mention of China’s human rights record, particularly when forced labor is being used to build much of this infrastructure? Thought it would be at least worth a mention. Thanks!
China is also adding long distance very high voltage DC transmission to move the power. Our failing system with veto power to everyone claiming to be a "stakeholder" is preventing necessary transmission.
Your naivety makes this seem like mindless Chinese propaganda.
"what’s promising – and should get more attention – is how rapidly China is scaling solar and wind power"
Promising at a first glance, but I can't help but notice how you compare a country with more than 70 times the population of Australia. It is not notable to any degree for a country to increase their production by less than 3% in wind and solar. Their power consumption increased by 14%, or 1,000 TWh, over two years from 2019 to 2021 alone, totalling at 8 thousand TWh.¹
China's total wind and solar electricity production account for less than just their increase in consumption over as little as 3 years from 2019. And only 25% of that increase was accounted for by an increase in wind and solar. You can't make bar charts comparing basketballs to golf balls in an attempt to impress people over the basketball's bouncing and size.
1. https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202201/18/content_WS61e673dcc6d09c94e48a3dd0.html
Thanks for this, Hannah! Really compelling and encouraging.
With average annual output around 30%, are the numbers nameplate or actual?
These are actual output numbers, not nameplate capacity.
In the 2022 and 2023 estimates/projections I assumed a capacity factor of 20% for wind and 35% for wind (detailed in the notes at the bottom).
Thanks for clarifying my second question in my other comment.
The chinese government is listening to the chinese people and so it improved environment in no time, check chinese media. No other power ever planted so many trees in so short a time as china in the northeast. The german company MANZ built Solar panel factories of the latest tecnic in China, but in the EU there is still a high punitive duty on chinese solar panels. Very good for China, Asia, Africa.
Really interesting article! I was aware that China is adding a lot of wind and solar, but did not expect the scale to be anything like this compared to rest of world. It would be nice to have context of the rate of growth of overall electricity demand in China though; is this helping them to decarbonise, or are they needing to add large amounts of dirty electricity generation as well?
Very true, but needs to be paired with the similar graphs about coal consumption/installation and the power of the coal "lobby" in CCP politics.
Interesting analysis. China's population is due to peak pretty soon, so that should help. Given the size of the sector, industrial process heat is another challenge. China is definitely a double-edged sword situation. They can get things done fast, but that also means corruption moves quickly and unneeded infrastructure gets built. I don't know the answer to this, but of the new coal plants, are any getting set up for carbon capture and storage--i.e. with gasifiers?
Great article. The Chinese economy is opaque and full of distortions. Since the provinces lack taxing authority they generate revenue by seizing property and selling it for development. They have no choice as they need to provide local services!!! Coal capacity is a wonderful example. Powerful interests in rural areas mine lots of coal. China is ~16% of the world population and now operates more coal plants than the WHOLE PLANET COMBINED. The statistics for solar and wind growth inform a RATIONAL observer that if ROI governed investment, adding coal infrastructure with 50 year useful life boilers is idiotic. If battery storage blossoms, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 50 year boilers becomes a millstone. No rational banker would or could underwrite such a venture but in the PRC these decisions are made for stability. People in America who are pro-nuclear always seem to ignore the REALITY that the reason none are built is no one is FOOLISH enough to underwrite a 60 year folly. They need to hang their tin cup out and get the government to insulate them from a bad investment that otherwise should not be made. China is loaded with absurd infrastructure investment that likely was reported as "growth" and its decommission will do the same. Who would buy a car built to last 50 years with the forethought it will be crushed and recyled in 5-10 years. No one unless someone else sits ready to bail you out.