China hit its wind and solar goal six years early
Now, it has to figure out how to use all that power.
BY: XIAOYING YOU
You is an award-winning freelance journalist based in London. She writes and reports about climate change and the energy transition. You can reach her at tracyyou.sh@gmail.com.
One morning in August, residents of the southern coastal Chinese city of Guangzhou woke up to an extraordinary sight: two enormous wind turbines atop one floating platform, like twin heads on the same neck, being towed out to sea.
The turbines, dubbed OceanX by their manufacturer Ming Yang Smart Energy Group Limited, is the latest example of China’s determination to deploy massive amounts of renewable energy thanks to ambitious government support. Despite that backing, China is facing a challenge familiar to many other countries — how to upgrade the country’s infrastructure so it can actually use all that renewable capacity.
“The situation has led to more and more wind and solar power being curtailed in areas that have many mega wind and solar bases,” Yu Aiqun, a research analyst at Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, told Cipher.
Read the full article here on Cipher’s website.
Highlights:
China’s wind and solar capacity ballooned after 2009, when the country started building its first solar farms. Thanks to consistent and ambitious government policies for more than a decade, the country hit its 2030 target of installing 1,200 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power in July, more than six years ahead of schedule.
Exploding energy demand over the last 20 years led the Chinese central government to enact sweeping policies to promote renewable energy. Beijing also regarded the renewable industry as an opportunity to leapfrog its economy, launching a series of industrial policies to support wind and solar equipment manufacturing.
Regional governments have expedited approval times for renewables projects and private money has flowed into the industry as well.
Despite these successes, China’s energy transition is facing headwinds, especially when it comes to putting all its installed wind and solar fleets to work generating electricity for homes, businesses and factories.
While wind and solar farms accounted for 36% of China’s total power capacity at the end of 2023, their generation only accounted for 15.5% of the country’s total power last year, per the China Electricity Council. Around 60% of China’s power still comes from coal plants.
The gap is caused by a mix of factors. For one, wind and solar energy is often most abundant when demand for electricity is low, such as in the afternoon. Wind and solar farms must find ways to store or transmit their extra electricity or curtail their output by letting turbines and panels stay idle.
One solution is to use batteries — something the Chinese government has been pushing, said Yang Muyi, a senior electricity policy analyst with London-based think tank Ember.
China has also been planning and building ultra-high-voltage power lines to send wind and solar power from the north and the northwest to its major cities hundreds of miles away. But the government hasn’t planned enough lines and is building them too slowly, according to a recent report by Global Energy Monitor.
Even for China, there is no quick fix to solve the curtailment issue, said Yang. “A variety of measures are needed, from upgrading the grid to improving the power-trading market.”
Read the full article on Cipher’s website.