China and renewables

Source

I did a post on India and renewables a week ago.

Now, something on China and its renewables revolution.

Energydesk:

Carbon emissions from China’s energy sector stalled last year for the third year running — as coal use fell again and solar deployment nearly doubled. 

The newly released government figures, analysed by Greenpeace, also suggest that emissions are on track to fall this year by around 1%. 

That would make it the longest stretch of stable or falling emissions on record — with 2014 the first year that China’s CO2 emissions failed to rise, and 2015 the year in which they fell by the largest amount.

[Read more here]

IEEFA:

With official word this week from the China National Bureau of Statistics that the world’s biggest user of coal reduced its consumption in 2016 by 4.7 percent comes another signal that the Chinese electricity transformation continues apace. 

China installed 17.3GW of wind generation in 2016, down from a record 29GW in 2015, but still an expansion of 19 percent,  to 211TWh. In offshore wind, China’s Shanghai Electric Wind Power Equipment (Sewind) was the largest developer globally in 2015, commissioning 489MW of new capacity. 

China installed a world record 33.2 gigawatts (GW) of solar in 2016, double its record 15GW in 2015, which itself was double the highest ever annual record, set when German installed 7.6GW in 2012. On-grid utility solar in China grew 34 percent year over year to 39TWh in 2016. 

“The amount of solar that they did last year was more than the U.S. had done in the entire history of U.S. solar deployment,” said Jake Schmidt, the international program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.  

China’s coal production declined an unexpected record 9 percent year over year to 3,410 million tonnes (Mt) in 2016. This brought the three-year average decline to 4.9 percent per annum, a decline of 564Mt in total. 

[Read more here and here]

There are still some who maintain that China and India aren't doing anything about reducing their CO2 emissions and their therefore impact on global warming,  That's false.  What is true is that reducing their emissions is hard for them, because their economies are still growing rapidly.  Which just shows up the failure of big developed countries even more!  If your electricity demand is stagnant, slashing CO2 emissions should be much easier than if your electricity demand is rising by 5% a year.