By Li Panpan
(JW Insights) Jul 26 -- China's renewable energy development is in the fast lane, and there is hope that the country will achieve its ambitious climate targets in advance, reported German news outlet Junge Welt on July 24.
The Chinese government is in the process of making the country's climate protection policy more ambitious. Chinese President Xi Jinping had already promised at the UN General Assembly last September to tighten its commitments; now, on July 11, he called for energy policy to focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
In China, greenhouse gas is mainly released through coal burning, but in recent years natural gas used in heating systems and power plants also increased greenhouse gas emission. China’s natural gas comes from Russia on the one hand, but is now also being promoted in the country, said the Junge Welt report.
On the other hand, the transport sector is currently being electrified faster than anywhere else in the world. The government introduced quotas years ago. With these, manufacturers are obliged to equip a growing proportion of the vehicles they sell with electric drives. Some megacities have already completely or almost completely converted their bus fleets to electric motors.
However, as long as the electricity is not generated CO2-free, this does not help the climate much. But this is happening increasingly. The share of coal in electricity production has fallen from 78 percent in 2000 to 61 percent in 2022, said German climate think tank Ember. This was made possible by the expansion of hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, the latter to a much lesser extent, said the Junge Welt report.
Solar and wind energy have also made a significant contribution to reducing the share of coal. From 2015 to 2022, their generation increased fivefold. Last year, their share of electricity production grew from 11.5 percent in the previous year to just under 13.5 percent. Nowhere else in the world have so many new solar panels and wind turbines being built as in China. In 2022, 96.6 gigawatts (GW) were added in new solar systems and 37 GW were installed in new wind turbines in China.
Meanwhile, the expansion in China should go even faster in the future. For 2023, 120 to 140 GW of new solar capacity is now expected. Wind turbines will also be installed more than in previous years. All in all, it looks as if China wants to achieve its expansion target of a total of 1,200 GW of solar and wind power five years earlier than it has set itself for 2030.
However, this is typical of the expansion of renewable energy sources in China. The seemingly ambitious targets have been exceeded for years. So there is hope that this will also be the case with the climate targets, said the Junge Welt report.
