Chinese consumption of coal and renewable energy
Last edited Tue Sep 24, 2013, 01:25 PM - Edit history (2)
I started this as a comment in the US coal export thread, but I thought I'd re-post it as an OP, and add a bit more polemical gristle to it.
All the data in the following graphs is is from BP's Statistical Review 2013, and is current to the end of 2012. The vertical axis is in MTOE, "millions of tonnes of oil equivalent", a unit used to compare different energy sources. There are some underlying assumptions involved in converting between different energy sources, but it's broadly useful for comparing thermal energy sources.
The first graph compares the performance of the world's current top 5 coal consumers :
The next compares China's coal consumption to that of the rest of the world,
In 2012 China burned half of all the coal burned in the world.
The next shows China's coal consumption since 1965 as a proportion of the total world consumption:
The trend of China consuming more and more of the world's coal is showing no signs of slowing, despite their continued jawboning about reducing coal in favour of renewable energy.
Speaking of renewable energy, China's performance has not so far been commensurate with either their public statements or their need to stop burning coal:
They'll have to to a lot better than that if they care about keeping the "Arctic methane bomb" from exploding and blowing civilization to hell.
The BP Statistical Review page is here: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013.html and the Excel workbook with the data is here: http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/excel/Statistical-Review/statistical_review_of_world_energy_2013_workbook.xlsx
= new reply since forum marked as read
And "he" works just fine for me, last time I looked! 
Actually you haven't included any substantive discussion that allows proper understanding of the comparison you supposedly are attempting.
Here is the part you elect to pretend doesn't exist:
Four Charts That Prove the Future of Clean Energy Is Arriving
“We are living it, and it is gaining force.”
Full article: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/four-charts-that-prove-the-future-of-clean-energy-has-arrived?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily
Observe in your charts that there was roughly a trebling of coal consumption in the past 10 years. The charts track consumption so we know that the decisions and policy actions that led to this trebling were another 10 years in the making. I mention this to show something you full well know - change requires time. Your pretense that no change is taking place isn't supported by the facts, and you are making a false claim when you say
"The trend of China consuming more and more of the world's coal is showing no signs of slowing, despite their continued jawboning about reducing coal in favour of renewable energy. Speaking of renewable energy, China's performance has not so far been commensurate with either their public statements or their need to stop burning coal"
In 2007 China - with the exception of solar hot water - had virtually no renewable energy installed, but they were enticed by the economic opportunities overseas and started fostering their domestic renewable energy manufacturing industries.
In 2008 they accomplished their first assessment of their renewable resource assets and when the results were released in early 2009 they found they had more than enough renewable potential to provide all of their needs if they chose to develop them.
They did. Previously they had followed the standard World Bank fossil fuel model for developing countries building out their energy infrastructure - they focused on coal and dabbled in nuclear.
After the assessment they started setting ambitious goals for their own use of renewable energy and routinely exceeded those goal by huge margins.
Concurrently they started pumping money into the solar manufacturing industry. In 2002 the US Dept of Energy had predicted that IF global PhotoVoltaic panel manufacturing capacity could hit 3 gigawatts annually by 2020 it would lead to price reductions in solar sufficient that the world would be well on its way to replacing fossil fuels for electricity.
The Chinese were far more ambitious and hit that target almost overnight on their way to building more than 10X.
Here is a recap of what that has resulted within China's domestic energy sector from the investment in lowering the manufacturing cost of solar:
PreMarch 2011 - PreFukushima the goal for installed solar PV was 5GW by 2015. "... installed solar power capacity at the end of 2010 was less than 1 GW"
Post March 2011 - Just after Fukushima they doubled that to 10GW by 2015.
Dec 15, 2011 – "...government has set a target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015..."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=china-scales-up-solar-power-50-percent
July 2012 - Raises goal to 21GW by 2015 (includes 1GW of CSP)
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/07/china-quadruples-2015-solar-energy-target-to-aid-demand-prices
Oct 2012 - Rumors of goal being revised up to 40GW
Dec 2012 - Goal of 40GWby 2015 announced
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/12/13/chinas-new-solar-target-40-gw-by-2015-8-times-more-than-its-initial-5-gw-target/
Jan 2013 Expect 10GW of solar in 2013 along with huge amount of wind
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/01/china-to-add-49-gw-of-renewables-in-2013-solar-stocks-soar
That is how the trajectory of the curves gets altered.
July 2012 this was the status of the top 5 country's solar installations:
2. Italy — 12.8 GW
3. Japan — 4.9 GW
4. Spain — 4.4 GW
5. USA — 4.4 GW In other words,
41 GW of solar power is really a big deal.
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/12/13/chinas-new-solar-target-40-gw-by-2015-8-times-more-than-its-initial-5-gw-target/
With the evidence of China's ability to expand an energy resource evident in both the development of coal and the more recent development of renewables, only a fool would doubt their ability to deliver on the goal of moving away from coal.
Given the performance in growing their coal industry and the now low and going lower cost of renewables, there is no reason to think that the rate of growth curve for renewables will not be at least as aggressive as that of coal.
In order to get a feel for that, let's look at China's build-out rate of carbon and non-carbon energy sectors. This graph shows the performance of both sectors over the last 12 years, since their big expansion began. The carbon line includes oil, gas and coal. The non-carbon line aggregates all renewables, hydro and nuclear power. Then the current trends are extrapolated out 6 years, based on these two assumptions of yours:
1. The growth curve of of renewables will be at least as aggressive as that for carbon energy. The curve chosen for renewables is a very aggressive 4th order polynomial, while the carbon trend shown is linear.
2. Change requires time. This implies that the policy decisions in place over the last 5 or ten years that are driving today's situation will remain in force for at least the next 6 years.
The 350 mtoe increase in renewables over the next 6 years represents the addition of between 2000 and 2500 GW of renewable capacity (with an average capacity factor of around 25% to factor in wind, hydro and solar).
Carbon-based energy, on the other hand, adds over 1000 mtoe in the same period - three times as much - under very pessimstic growth assumptions. (Note that as well as using a linear trend, I started in the year 2000, including the flat toe of the coal curve in the trend-line, thus flattening it further.)
So, based on your own assumptions, we may conclude that it will probably be longer than 6 years before current renewable build-out rates begin to take market share away from coal.
Of course, if China decides to sacrifice their own economic growth for the sake of the planet's climate by reducing their coal use, all bets are off. Let's pray that happens.
> they are one of the few societies whose leaders are not wed to the idea of
> perpetual economic growth (e.g. this is a capitalist phase they are going through).
Given that the rest of the world's "capitalist phase" hasn't ended after a couple
of hundred years and China's has continued across successive leadership
changes, I don't take a lot of comfort in your comment.
