China’s energy plan to reduce coal to 60% and use more Russian natural gas

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is talking about prospective national carbon market formation by 2016, with potential coverage upwards of 4 billion MTCO2. According to official NDRC estimates, a national carbon market in China could reach an aggregate value of $65 billion by 2020.

In March 2016, China is expected to announce its next five year energy plan. The fundamental levels of China’s coal consumption will continue along absolute increases, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) Planning Board Division nonetheless recommended that the 13th Five Year Plan contain a 60% coal consumption target by 2020—a sizable decrease from 67% in 2013.

China has outlined the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) on energy, which will increase offshore oil and gas exploration and raise output targets of renewables, especially wind and solar power, according to a senior official with the National Energy Administration.

The country’s total wind power installed capacity will reach 200 million kilowatts by 2020, doubling the 12th Five-Year plan period’s level, and solar power will be quintupled to more than 100 million kilowatts compared with the target during the 12th Five-Year plan period.

China’s shale gas production in 2014 will surpass 1.5 billion cubic meters, 7.5 times that of 2013, an energy expert predicted on Tuesday.

Jiang Xinmin, a researcher with the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, also predicted that China’s shale gas production would top 6.5 billion cubic meters in 2015.

Based on the current pace of development, overall shale gas output will rise to 15 Bcm/year by 2017, before hitting 30 Bcm/year by 2020. China has slashed its official target for shale gas production in the medium term by up to a third and now expects to achieve 30 billion cubic meters of output by 2020.

US gas production gained 25% over from 2007 to 2012 to reach 681 bcm.

Worldwide proven gas reserves are estimated at around 190 trillion cubic metres (tcm) or about 56 times current annual global gas production. However, recoverable gas resources, i.e. volumes that analysts are confident will be discovered or technology developed to produce them, are much larger, with recoverable conventional resources estimated at around 400 tcm. Recoverable unconventional resources are slightly lower. Altogether, this would last around 220 years, based on current rates of gas consumption.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said that Russia’s gas deliveries to China may shortly rise to 60 and even 100 billion cubic meters a year.

The $400 billion contract signed between Gazprom and China’s CNPC in May 2014 envisages the delivery of 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China annually for a period of 30 years.

The Power of Siberia gas pipeline estimated at $21.3 billion is intended to pump 61 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually and will stretch over a distance of 3,968 km (2,465 miles).

The first stage envisages the construction of the Yakutia-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok trunk gas pipeline. During the second stage, the Irkutsk gas production center based on the Kovykta deposit will be connected with the Yakutia center based on the Chayanda field.
The gas pipeline’s first stage is scheduled to be commissioned in 2017.

The Chayanda oil and gas condensate field in the Lensky district of Yakutia was discovered in 1989. The field, one of Russia’s largest undeveloped deposits, holds about 1.45 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 93 million tons of liquid hydrocarbons. The field is expected to produce up to 25 billion cubic meters of natural gas and at least 1.5 million tons of oil annually.

The Kovykta gas condensate deposit discovered in 1987 is located in the north of the Irkutsk Region. The deposit’s reserves are estimated at 1.9 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, 2.3 billion cubic meters of helium and 115 million tons of liquid gas condensate.