CHINA’S NEW GRID MAY ONLY MEET OLD NEEDS

China Is Developing a Grid Better for Coal Than Renewables; The new electricity grid will make it hard for China to meet its greenhouse gas and energy-intensity goals

Lisa Friedman/ClimateWire, May 16, 2012 (Scientific American)

“China will fail to meet its carbon and energy intensity targets unless it makes dramatic changes to its electricity grid, China Power: Benefits and Costs of the 'Strong, Smart Grid finds…While newer and in many ways more technologically advanced than the U.S. grid, China's system is nevertheless being built to perpetuate the use of coal and large hydropower projects…One key finding: China's engineers are developing a grid that is more likely to connect to coal than to renewables…

“…China pledged to lower its carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, while moving to non-fossil fuels for about 15 percent of its energy. It has since spelled out specific short-term targets, like providing 9.5 percent of the country's energy through renewables by 2015…But unless those mandates are coupled with better planning and a more transparent system, the end result will be expensive and continue to have a big carbon footprint…[R]esearchers found that China is on a path to ‘squander’ 400 billion yuan ($63.2 billion) annually by 2020, even as its coal-fired power plants emit ‘more carbon than the entire U.S. economy.’”

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“The Chinese government recently announced that it is building an 800-kilovolt power line to deliver wind and solar energy thousands of miles and that could eventually be the world's largest-capacity transmission line. According to the Transition Energy report, though, the near-exclusive focus on an ultra-high-voltage transmission network as the system's backbone fails to take the electricity consumer's role into account…[and therefore] the cost and emissions from China's electric power generation could more than triple by 2030…

“…[T]wo-thirds of the power is owned by industry, so the State Electricity Regulatory Commission is toothless. The state grid lacks control over pricing but retains strong influence over how rates are structured -- a system resulting in a disproportionate amount of money going to the state grid itself…[T]here is little incentive to invest in best-generation technologies…Price reform, the report authors say, is critical for rapid deployment of efficiency technologies…China will [also] need the establishment of a power planning agency charged with overseeing environmental and economic goals as well as power-generating targets…”

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