China expects to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in its total energy mix to 18.3% in 2023, up from 17.5% in 2022, as part of its energy transition push, the country’s energy regulator said late-April 12.
China’s non-fossil based power generation capacity — which includes solar, wind, hydro and nuclear — was about 1,270 GW at end-2022, accounting for 49.6% of the total installed capacity of 2,560 GW, according to China Electricity Council.
The NEA also said the proportion of wind and solar power alone is expected to reach 15.3% of total power consumption this year, while wind and solar PV installed capacity is likely to rise by about 160 GW in 2023. This is expected to be one of the largest annual additions of renewable energy capacity in a single country and will outpace the coal power capacity growth in China. China should reach about 500 GW of solar and 430 GW of wind by the end of 2023.
The NEA expects China’s total installed power generation capacity to reach about 2,790 GW and total power generation volume to hit nearly 9,360 TWh in 2023, with the transmission capacity of the “West to East Power Transmission” reaching 310 GW, according to the guidance.
China’s total installed power generation capacity was about 2,564 GW as of end-2022, a year-on-year increase of 7.8%, but it is still lower than the target of 2,600 GW planned by the NEA early last year, the NBS data showed.
China plans to increase total energy supply to 4.75 billion mt of standard coal equivalent in 2023, up from 4.41 billion mt of standard coal equivalent planned by the NEA in 2022.
The guidance laid out specific targets for China’s energy sector for 2023 and serves as an important follow-up for the country’s “14th Five-Year Plan”, which aims to achieve an annual energy supply of 4.6 billion mt of standard coal equivalent by 2025, up from 4.08 billion mt of standard coal equivalent in 2020.
China produced 204 million mt of crude and 217.8 Bcm of natural gas in 2022, up 2.9% and 6.4% on the year.
China Coal Consumption Rate of Electricity Supply: Year to Date data was reported at 294.700 g/kWh in Apr 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 290.800 g/kWh for Mar 2023.
Total electrical generation increased by 128 billion kilowatt-hours (4.9%) between January and April compared with the same period in 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Increases from thermal power plants (+83 billion kWh), wind farms (+64 billion kWh), solar farms (+16 billion kWh) and nuclear units (+6 billion kWh) more than offset reduced hydro-electric output (-42 billion kWh).
thermal generation’s share of the total fell to 71% in the first four months of 2023 down from 79% in the same period in 2014.
Renewables wind and solar provided 14% of generation up from just 3% in 2014, while nuclear supplied 5% up from 2%.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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U.S. renewables power installation solar&wind&storage (~2 decades, starting ~2001)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States#/media/File:2000-_Clean_power_installation_-_wind,_solar,_storage_-_US.svg
“Growth in wind and solar generating capacity drove the increase in wind and solar generation. Utility-scale solar capacity in the U.S. electric power sector increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to data from our Electricity Power Monthly. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022.”
www .eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960
U.S. renewables power installation solar&wind&storage (~2 decades, starting ~2001)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States#/media/File:2000-_Clean_power_installation_-_wind,_solar,_storage_-_US.svg
“Growth in wind and solar generating capacity drove the increase in wind and solar generation. Utility-scale solar capacity in the U.S. electric power sector increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to data from our Electricity Power Monthly. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022.”
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960
I like the title “China increasing … fossil fuel energy.”
It appears historically that wealth (and thus power) is a function of energy consumption or availability at affordable scale. As China increases energy production and consumption it becomes wealthier and more powerful. As the west (cf Germany) impairs its energy availability (shutting reactors in the face of a war and natural gas vulnerability!) one should not be surprised or dismayed at the declining economic situation.
It would be helpful if Brian would provide graphs or pie charts of these incremental changes to the Chinese energy plans. The scale is hard to comprehend without previous reference.
Here in B.C. we are worried about cattle flatulence methane adding to the CO2 “burden”, and will try to counteract the effect using the Dutch plan, regulating farmers into oblivion and providing animals with “scrubbers” like the shipping industry. We are flooding a useful and productive agricultural valley to provide electricity to liquefy natural gas for export, despite opposition and incompetence in building a pipeline to deliver the abundant gas.
Tomorrow we get to 40 million with expedited immigration and a housing shortfall.
Sorry Robert, but the belief that energy use is directly tied to economic output is a fallacy. California proved that concept and the economists who came up with it wrong over the last few decades when it both reduced emissions (also a claimed economy killing move) and legislated extreme efficiency regulations. The sky never fell in either circumstance. Between everything from strict building codes to ultra energy efficient appliances, the average California household uses almost half the energy of other states, while achieving the same desired end results. And before you bring up California electrical rates, what matters more is what actually comes out of your wallet at the end of the month, not the published rate. Less energy use, smaller electrical bill. Another strike against that belief can simply be seen in the state’s constantly growing GDP. More productivity with less energy used.
You are simply wrong. The electric bill for my folks house is nearly five times what I pay in Kansas for the same amount of energy.
The high cost of energy is crippling the economic well-being of the average Californian. That fact cannot be disputed. Couple that with staggering taxation and you end up with the poor and middle class facing economic extinction.
I gather you live on the coast and are a democrat. Life is not so great for those living inland in the hot interior. Most of those folks live from paycheck-to-paycheck. By the way, I am a 4th generation Californian, but I fled the insanity.
There’s absolutely nothing inaccurate about the assertion that economic growth can be independent of energy usage. The poster is correct, historically of course, that when California was initiating pollution regulations, a swarm of economists and business owners predicted just that, “a falling sky”. Nothing happened. The efficiency regulations in place, especially in construction, a field I am intimately familiar with, are the strongest in the nation, and are slowly being adopted by other states. The phrase, as California goes, so does the nation, and it will be for the good of all.
As noted by the previous poster, GDP has continuously grown, a metric directly attributable to the ridiculous amount of VC money that ends up in California, by way of both domestic or foreign investors. It’s almost guaranteed the next Tesla or Facebook or SpaceX will rise out of California. I reject any of the right wing doom and gloom constantly directed at the state. And yes, I too am a democrat.
The U.S adoption of non fossils is already more than 25%. Amazing how much more resource are needed to turn China around, and it is still behind the U.S in terms of adoption.
What the U.S. and Europe do to reduce CO2 is utterly irrelevant. Both China and India produce many orders of magnitude more CO2.
The West futilely spending trillions of dollars only serves to significantly strengthen our adversary (China).
Then there is the rather fundamental issue of whether or not atmospheric CO2 is an actual problem or just a manufactured hysterical overreaction to enrich a few at the expense of the many. Complicated models that cannot be field checked are more-or-less just nothing more than really expensive video games.
Bottom line, deploy technologies based on being reasonably cost effective and reasonably clean. Do not know-tow to those unable to rationally make their case.
“50–400 million The estimated time for Earth to naturally replenish its fossil fuel reserves.”
“100 million Maximal estimated lifespan of technological civilization, according to Frank Drake’s original formulation of the Drake equation.”
“500–600 million The Sun’s increasing luminosity begins […]”
The Kardashev scale
“Kardashev’s classification is based on the assumption of a growth rate of 1% per year. Kardashev believed that it will take humanity 3,200 years to reach Type II, and 5,800 years to reach Type III. These types are thus separated from each other by a growth rate of several billion.”
“At the current time, humanity has not yet reached Type I civilization status. Physicist and futurist Michio Kaku suggested that, if humans increase their energy consumption at an average rate of 3 percent each year, they may attain Type I status in 100–200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in 100,000 to a million years.”
“In 2021, the total world energy consumption was 595.15 exajoules (165,319 TWh), equivalent to an average power consumption of 18.87 TW or 0.73 (to 2 s.f.) on Sagan’s interpolated Kardashev scale.”
” Using this extrapolation, a “Type 0″ civilization, not defined by Kardashev, would control about 1 MW of power (e.g. the food consumption of about 10,000 persons), and humanity’s civilization type as of 1973 was about 0.7 (apparently using 10 terawatt (TW) as the value for 1970s humanity).”
“Large-scale application of fusion power. According to mass–energy equivalence, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kg of matter to energy per second. An equivalent energy release could theoretically be achieved by fusing approximately 280 kg of hydrogen into helium per second, a rate roughly equivalent to 8.9×109 kg/year. A cubic km of water contains about 1011 kg of hydrogen, and the Earth’s oceans contain about 1.3×109 cubic km of water, meaning that humans on Earth could sustain this rate of consumption over geological time-scales, in terms of available hydrogen.”
technically possible (within current science progress) and with most power production outside of Earth’s energy balance(?), climate gases are a ‘interim’ difficulty on that timescale(?)
What will be the milestones?
India 2021-22 (renewable ~21.5%, expected ~500GW 2030)
Hydro large/small 150/10TWh (2022/23 ~46/5GW)
Solar 73TWh (2022/23 ~66GW)
Wind 68TWh (2022/23 ~42GW)
Bio mass 16TWh (2022/23 ~10GW)
~320TWh (2022/23 ~169GW, nuclear ~7GW)
2022-23
Hydro large/small 162/11TWh
Solar 102TWh
Wind 71TWh
Bio mass 16TWh
~365TWh