China coal power seen slowing from 2011

Reuters | Fri, 22 May 2009 11:55
[miningmx.com] -- China's boom of coal-fired power plants is likely to slow after next year as excess capacity and then expanding renewable and nuclear energy sources kick in, a senior energy policy analyst said in an interview.

Jiang Kejun, of China's state-run Energy Research Institute, told Reuters the forecast slowing also reflected longer-term shifts in the country's energy use, as industrial growth slows while transport and household energy consumption expand.

"After 2010, the coal [power] industry will have a very slow growth rate," said Jiang, whose research focuses on how his fast-growing nation can squeeze greenhouse gas emissions while keeping up economic development in coming decades.

"The increase in power generation will mainly come from nuclear and renewable energy and natural gas-fired power plants, so newly installed coal-fired power plants will be very limited after 2010."

Slowing expansion of coal power would mark a big shift for China, which has used the cheap but heavy polluting fuel to stoke its double-digit growth.

The coal boom is not over yet. This year and next, China is likely to install more than 50 gigawatts of new coal power generation each year, Jiang said.

But a power generation capacity overhang, new energy sources and decelerating heavy industry growth are likely to reshape the sector from 2011 onwards, Jiang added.

"Very soon, we'll have an oversupply of power generation," he said. "We cannot see much increase for energy-intensive industries," he said, citing steel output as an example.

Jiang's institute comes under the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful industry policy body with a major say in energy and climate change issues. But he stressed his forecast was an analytical exercise, not a policy.

China is likely to increase power generating capacity by 80 gigawatts this year, an official from the China Electricity Council said last month. Such growth would be similar to last year, when its capacity grew 10.3 percent to 792.5 GW.

Most of that power is generated by coal. Chinese coal output has also been rising rapidly, doubling from 1.3 billion tonnes in 2000 to 2.72 billion tonnes last year.

But burning coal also releases much carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas behind global warming, and China is under pressure to curtail its Co2 emissions, which scientists say now outpace those of the United States, long the world's biggest emitter.

A conference in Copenhagen in December is aiming to agree on a new global pact spelling out nations' responsibilities to contain greenhouse gases.

Jiang said China can grow its economy and eventually cut carbon dioxide emissions if it implements stringent rules to encourage clean development.

If it does, China's Co2 emissions could "peak by 2030 after virtually reaching a plateau in 2020," Jiang said. That peak would be about 8 billion tonnes of Co2 in a year, he said.

The U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has estimated China emitted 6.6 billion tonnes of Co2 from fossil fuels in 2007.