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The two sessions of the country will be held soon, and the work reports released by the provinces show that in the next year, the provincial administrative regions will pay attention to the development of the coal industry and renewable energy at the same time. The two sessions, China’s most important annual political and legislative meeting, will be held in Beijing on March 4.
More than two-thirds of mainland China’s 31 provincial-level administrative regions have pledged to promote “clean” coal, build “advanced” coal power capacity, or guarantee coal supply. Seventeen of them plan to speed up the construction of wind and solar power plants or industrial parks, while focusing more on offshore wind.
Twenty-one provincial administrative regions want to develop “new” energy storage, while another 15 plan to develop more traditional pumped-storage hydropower plants.
chinadialogue came up with the above figures after analyzing government work reports released at the provincial-level two sessions held in January this year.
As a prelude to the two sessions, provincial meetings usually focus on the central government’s directives in recent months. Therefore, the tasks in the provincial planning can predict some key points that may be discussed in the National People’s Congress.
Experts told chinadialogue that these plans also show that provincial-level administrative regions are taking action to implement the “1+N” policy system, which is the top-level plan for China to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
Promote the development of the coal industry
At least 24 provincial-level administrative regions have highlighted the importance of coal-related work in 2023.
Traditional energy-producing provinces plan to strengthen “clean and efficient use of coal”, build more “advanced” or “smart” coal-fired power plants or coal mines, and hope to strengthen the coal chemical industry.
For example, Shaanxi Province, which ranks third in coal production in the country in 2022, plans to ensure stable coal production and supply and high-quality production capacity construction this year, and strive to start construction of four coal mines including Haizetan to ensure coal production reaches 750 million tons, exceeding last year’s production. And newly started coal power projects of more than 10 million kilowatts.
At the same time, Inner Mongolia, which produced the second largest coal in the country last year, intends to expand its coal industry, “aiming at the ‘coal head and tail’, and speeding up the deployment of a number of new coal chemical projects”, including supporting the construction of modern coal in Ordos, known as the “coal capital”. Chemical Industry Demonstration Zone.
Elsewhere, manufacturing and industrial centers such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong are also looking to expand coal power capacity.
Shandong province, one of the leaders in driving gross domestic product growth, plans to start construction on six large ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants, or more modern and more efficient plants. The province is the province with the largest coal-fired power installed capacity in China.
The central province of Hubei plans to strengthen energy security and accelerate the construction of the fourth phase of the Ezhou Power Plant and the Suizhou Power Plant. The two power plants have one 1 million kilowatt and two 660 thousand kilowatt ultra-supercritical units respectively.
These provincial actions are in line with the central government’s directive to ensure economic stability and energy security, and are in response to domestic power shortages in 2021 and 2022 and changes in the global energy supply landscape, experts said.
In December last year, an important economic planning meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping asked governments at all levels to insist on stability and make progress in the next year, and urged to strengthen domestic exploration and development of important energy and mineral resources and increase reserves and production.
Yang Muyi, senior power policy analyst at global energy think tank Ember, told chinadialogue that the central government “certainly will not change” its overall goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. But he said the energy transition was a “long and complex process”.
“The government still needs to meet growing electricity demand in the short term. This is a very real problem,” Yang Muyi said. “Renewables can’t meet the annual demand growth, so we’re still going to use coal.”
In terms of coal chemical facilities, Wu Wei, an assistant professor at the China Energy Policy Research Institute at Xiamen University, told chinadialogue that in the context of high crude oil prices, coal chemical industries are already more competitive than petrochemicals.
“New coal chemical industry (such as coal-to-olefins, coal-to-methanol, etc.) has greatly reduced the consumption of water resources, and the production process is cleaner, so traditional energy-producing provinces have also begun to extend downstream of the industrial chain.” He explained explain.
Power shortages still looming
Last year, extreme heat waves and drought caused Sichuan and Yunnan, the country’s two largest hydropower hubs, to face a series of power shortages. According to the “Energy” magazine, this situation may happen again in Yunnan this year, and it will be “more serious”.
The drought led to a new round of power cuts in Yunnan in February, the third round of large-scale blackouts since last September, the magazine said. Electrolytic aluminum companies that use a lot of electricity have to reduce electricity consumption by 40% on the basis of the reduced electricity consumption in September last year.
When explaining the reason for the power shortage in Yunnan, the magazine pointed out the deficiencies in planning in recent years: “On the one hand, the scale of hydropower development in Yunnan continues to expand; support.”
Yunnan is the main force in delivering hydropower to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which is not only densely populated but also the manufacturing center of China.
In this year’s work report, the Yunnan provincial government stated that it will “speed up” the construction of 4.8 million kilowatts of thermal power projects, and strive to start new renewable energy projects of 15 million kilowatts. , an increase of 6.6% over last year.
Complicating climate commitments?
The example of Yunnan reflects the prevailing thinking in China. That is, building more modern coal power capacity can create a safety net for China’s energy transition, allowing the national grid to gradually absorb unstable and unpredictable renewable energy.
According to a report jointly released by Energy Foundation China and Sino Carbon Investment, the ideal path for China to phase out coal power is:
• Capacity increase control from 2021 to 2025;
• Capacity control and reduction from 2025 to 2030;
• Accelerated decommissioning of coal-fired power plants between 2030 and 2050;
• 2050-2060 Coal Power Plants as a “Strategic Contingency”.
However, some experts have expressed concern about China’s expanding coal industry.
“Hundreds of new coal-fired power plants will put China on track to meet its climate commitments,” says a new analysis by Global Energy Monitor and the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The process is more complex and expensive, and the owners of these plants have political leverage and want to protect their assets from a rapid build-out of clean energy and a coal phase-out.”
But as long as China continues to accelerate the development of non-fossil-fueled power generation and stabilizes or slows electricity demand growth, “massive additions” of coal power capacity will not necessarily mean increased coal consumption or carbon dioxide emissions in the power sector, the report said.
The analysis found that in 2022, the governments of China’s provincial administrative regions approved new coal-fired power installations of 106 million kilowatts, the highest since 2015, while the decommissioned installed capacity was only 4.1 million kilowatts, lower than the 5.2 million kilowatts in 2021.
Seb Kennedy, head of data insights at London-based climate analytics firm TransitionZero, told chinadialogue that it was “not surprising” that Chinese provinces were pushing for “advanced” and “clean” coal technology because such expressions It has already appeared in the official documents of the “14th Five-Year Plan”.
While China’s “impressive performance” in the production and deployment of renewable energy is “unfortunately no sign of phasing out coal,” he said. He pointed out that if decommissioned installed capacity is subtracted, China actually added 24.6 million kilowatts of coal power installed capacity last year, while the rest of the world saw a net decrease of 9.4 million kilowatts last year.
“China’s clean coal strategy is at great risk because these technologies are a very expensive way to achieve only small reductions in emissions,” Kennedy warned. “There are better ways.”
“For example, our analysis shows that mature renewables in 2020 are already cost-competitive with state-of-the-art coal technologies, including the cost of battery storage.”
Another analysis by Transformation Zero shows that China’s coal power has “overcapacity” and may have stranded assets, that is, lose value or liabilities before reaching the design life.
“Conversely, replacing the coal industry with clean energy could help it save $1.6 trillion, highlighting the economic case for phasing out all coal as well as advanced, clean coal technologies,” Kennedy added.
Continue to promote the development of clean energy
While Chinese provinces are pushing the coal industry, they are also putting wind and solar development front and center in their 2023 plans. This trend can be seen everywhere from the traditional renewable energy powerhouses of the Northeast and Northwest, to the interior and coast.
China is a major global leader in wind and solar energy. According to the latest statistics from the National Energy Administration, by the end of 2022, the country’s cumulative installed wind power capacity has reached 365 million kilowatts, accounting for more than one-third of the global total of 837 million kilowatts. The installed capacity of solar energy is 393 million kilowatts, accounting for more than 30% of the global total.
In fact, Shanghai-based Jiemian News, citing official data, said China’s installed capacity of renewable energy (including nuclear power and hydropower) will reach 1.213 billion in 2022, surpassing coal power for the first time.
At the policy level, the “14th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development” issued in June last year issued a clear signal to guide provinces to “vigorously promote” the development of land, desert and offshore wind and solar energy bases.
The renewable energy plans of some provincial administrative regions stand out this year, one of which is Ningxia, which will rank first in the country in terms of solar power generation in 2022, according to the calculations of the Polaris thermal power grid. The local government stated that it will focus on the construction of 10 large-scale wind power and hydropower bases and 11 photovoltaic parks, and add 3 million kilowatts of new energy installed capacity.
The eastern province of Zhejiang plans to add 2 million kilowatts of grid-connected clean coal power installed capacity and 4 million kilowatts of wind power installed capacity. Shandong Province said that it will spend 14 billion to build a huge wind and solar energy base on the salt-alkali flat in northern Shandong. After completion, it will have 2.9 million kilowatts of solar power and 100,000 kilowatts of wind power.
“China’s electricity demand center is mainly in the eastern region, while the energy center is in the central and northwest regions,” said Wu Wei, an assistant professor at Xiamen University. “However, the pattern of this deviation is changing. All provinces want to seize the opportunity of energy transformation in the future, so they are laying out the construction of large new energy bases.”
In particular, the six eastern and southern coastal provinces, as well as the coastal municipality of Shanghai, have included offshore wind farms in this year’s plan, continuing the rapid expansion of the technology over the years. Last year, China overtook the UK to become the world‘s number one country in terms of offshore wind power installations.
Meanwhile, the inland province of Hunan hopes to become a leader in the manufacture of ultra-high-power direct-drive permanent-magnet offshore wind turbines for deep seas.
“Offshore wind power has been developing at an accelerated pace in recent years. For example, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong are developing very fast,” Ran Ze, senior manager of the Beijing representative office of the Environmental Protection Agency, told chinadialogue. “This is because there are a lot of land for resource development, especially in the Three North region where too many wind power bases have been built, and there was a surplus at one time.”
Overall, China could add “at least” 570 million wind and solar capacity between 2021 and 2025, if all provincial and national targets are met, analysis published by Carbon Brief last May showed. The analysis also pointed out that these increments will more than double the installed capacity of solar and wind energy during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period.