2010-07-28 16:53

China may make solar power as cheap as electricity produced from coal in about a decade as the country accelerates the development of cleaner energy to cut emissions.

The country's solar-power tariffs may fall to between 0.6 yuan (9 cents) and 0.8 yuan a kilowatt-hour by 2020 as China expands its capacity to generate electricity from sunlight by about fourfold to 20 gigawatts from 2015 levels, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing Liu Qi, a deputy director at the National Energy Administration.

China may spend about 5 trillion yuan in the next decade developing cleaner energy sources, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration's planning and development department, said on July 20. Solar projects in China are approaching "grid parity" where clean power costs are similar to those for fossil fuels, Anil Srivastava, executive president for renewable energy at Areva SA, said in June.

Shandong province has set an electricity purchase price of 1.7 yuan a kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic power plants for 2010, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report on July 5, citing the local government. Prices nationwide may average below 1 yuan by 2015, Liu was quoted as saying in the Xinhua report.