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China's Continuing Green Shift in the Electric Power Sector: Evidence from 2016 data
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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Over the past decade, China has been greening its electric power system faster and more thoroughly than any other industrial power. In the course of the years 2007 to 2016, China's dependence on thermal power capacity declined from 77% to 64%, and can be expected to tip below 50% within another decade if the trend continues. In terms of electricity generated, the contribution of thermal power has dipped from 82% to 72% over the last decade. But it is also true that China's growth model continues to pump out greenhouse gases. The issue: is the green transformation happening fast enough?
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References
Notes
1 For recent articles by us, see postings here; and here.
2 For the NEA see press release issued on 16 Jan here; for the CEC see here. The 13th Five Year Plan for electric power sector was issued in Nov 2016, here.
3 The latest figures for total electricity generation in the three EU countries are: Germany 648 TWh; France 569 TWh and the UK 338 TWh, or 1555 TWh in total – compared with 1488 TWh just for electricity generated from WWS sources in China. It is worth noting that the total electricity generation of OECD countries has barely increased since the late 2000s.
4 One explanation for the divergence may be that the GWEC estimate may include non grid-connected wind capacity. See the GWEC report for 2016 here.
5 See ‘Global installed solar PV capacity will surpass 756 GW by 2025, GlobalData’, by Joshua Hill, CleanTechnica, June 28 2016.
6 See GlobalData report issued 14 Feb 2017, here.
7 See ‘Siemens-Gamesa merger to create a ‘Big Four’ of OEMs’, Wind Power Monthly, 22 Feb 2017.
8 A very recent example concerns China's Gezhouba Group which has been contracted to build a big hydropower project on the Indus River in Pakistan (as part of China's One Belt One Road strategy), as reported in the Hindustan Times, here.
9 See Chapter 2 in our 2015 book on China's Renewable Energy Revolution.
10 Curtailment refers to the situation where power could be potentially generated and supplied to the grid based on existing capacity but in reality has to stay idle, because grid companies determine the priorities among various power generation facilities and technologies when the total demand for electric power at a given time is less than the supply.
11 Those measures are indicated in the Power Sector 13th FYP, as articulated by the spokesperson of the National Energy Administration, here.
12 See our previous article on this issue in this Journal here.
13 See the Greenpeace statement, here.
14 See the BNEF data here.
15 See the Plan here (in Chinese)
16 See e.g. the reports by Greenpeace on those development here. On the validity or otherwise of China's coal consumption statistics, see our earlier article in APJ, posted in November 2015, here.
17 See BP Statistics Review of World Energy 2016
18 See the CTI report ‘Chasing the Dragon? China's coal overcapacity crisis and what it means for investors’ (2016). London: Carbon Tracker Initiative.
19 The chart for China is based on the 2016 data released by the CEC and NEA; the charts for other countries are based on the 2015 data, available from REN21 (2016)'s report.
20 The E3G chart on clean energy investment, China vs the EU, can be found here.
21 See the article by Beth Walker here.
22 We elaborate on this point in our companion article on China's globalization of its energy system as part of its One Belt One Road strategy, here.
23 See ‘No new coal fired power plants for India’ by Tim Buckley, 20 December 2016, RenewEconomy.
24 See ‘Indian solar tariffs on cusp of smashing record lows’, by Tom Kenning, 8 Feb 2017, PVTech.
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