Use of green power may outstrip 5-year plan
Updated: 2011-12-06 10:48
By Zhou Yan (China Daily)
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BEIJING - The proportion of China's energy that comes from non-fossil fuels in the next four years and beyond will exceed the figure set in the country's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) and other plans, industry experts said.
Their forecast was based on the country's continued work to make itself more reliant on renewable sources of energy, they said.
The central government has set a goal of having China obtain 11.4 percent of its energy from non-fossil sources by the end of 2015, up from 8 percent now.
And by 2020, the country is to get 15 percent of its energy from non-fossil sources.
"We believe the real proportion will exceed the planned proportion during the period of the five-year plan and beyond, given the country's pace for the development of renewable energy sources," said Han Wenke, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's energy research institute, a government think tank.
Previously, Han had said China will obtain 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil sources by 2030 and 33 percent by 2050.
China, where 90 percent of the energy consumed comes from coal, crude oil and other substances with large carbon contents is trying to rely more on renewable sources of energy to cut its carbon emissions, which many scientists believe contribute to global warming.
Zhang Guobao, former head of the National Development and Reform Commission's National Energy Administration, had said previously that the country will consume no more than 4 billion tons of coal or its equivalent by 2015. This past year, China used the equivalent of 3.25 billion tons of coal to produce energy.
That ceiling for energy use is in keeping with the country's pledge for carbon intensity the amount of carbon it emits for each unit of its GDP. By 2020, the government wants that measure to be 45 percent below what it had been in 2005.
The 12th Five-Year Plan marks a "turning point" for the importance China places on economic growth, the international consulting firm KPMG said in a report.
"The current plan's emphasis on clean energy sources is an important step to ensure sustainable growth for the nation," it said.
China obtains more than 50 percent of its oil from foreign sources and is likely to find that exploring for new coal will become more difficult in the long run. It has therefore looked more closely at hydro power, solar power, wind power and other sources of renewable energy in recent times.
Shi Dinghuan, counselor for the State Council, said those sources are more likely to be able to supply the country's needs over the long run.
The central government has adopted a slew of measures to increase the use of renewable resources. The latest came when the National Development and Reform Commission announced on Nov 30 that the renewable energy surcharge on power sales would be doubled to 0.008 yuan a kilowatt hour on Dec 1. Analysts estimate that will benefit renewal energy projects, especially those pertaining to wind power.
In 2006, China established a renewable energy law that requires power distributors to purchase all of the power generated from sources of renewable energy.
The renewable-energy industry, aided by both that law and by foreign expertise, expanded greatly in the subsequent five years. The wind-power industry, for instance, has gone from being next to non-existent to being a burgeoning business, Han said.
To support the development of policies and technology for the industry, China, aided by the World Bank and Global Environment Facility, is planning to start a second phase of a project that will increase the size of the renewable-energy industry during the next five years. The first phase of the same project is to come to a close by the end of the year, said Shi Lishan, deputy director of the National Energy Administration's new energy division and one of the chief leaders of the project.
The project, named the China Renewable Energy Scale-up Program, saw the start of its first phase in 2005 and has since done much to improve the country's wind turbines quality.