China's all-energy example
HSBC’s Low-Carbon China report from late last year demonstrates the nation’s efforts to de-carbonise are much greater than our own. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to concede this fact. Some commentary on the subject has made the mistake of confusing electricity with energy and playing down the significance of China’s 15 per cent non-fossil fuel energy target by 2020.
Australia is far from overshadowing China’s valiant attempt to rein in its fossil fuel use by 15 per cent in 10 years. The fact is that if Australia followed China’s lead and aimed to meet 15 per cent of its entire energy requirement from clean sources by 2020, the amount of fossil fuel usage avoided would be the equivalent of increasing the national electricity sector’s renewable energy target to the far more impressive figure of 70 per cent.
China’s all-energy target means just that: It accounts for all the ways in which fossil fuel is used in the economy. The rising Asian giant is in the process of updating its entire energy system to increase the proportion of carbon-free sources, which is much more comprehensive than the electricity sector alone. Their target includes transport fuels (predominately diesel and petrol); the energy used for space heating (from coal, oil or gas); as well as electric water heating and the use of gas in industrial processes.
In contrast to Australia’s electricity sector-only approach, China’s targets apply to energy-intensive activities like steel-making. All energy targets are encouraging China to upgrade to modern facilities such as direct-reduced iron (DRI) furnaces that use less fossil fuel to make steel.
Australia, on the other hand, is stuck with outdated Whyalla and Port Kembla blast furnace steel-making facilities. Instead of encouraging industry upgrades, our government was set to subsidise poor practices under the ill-fated Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation, and has no plan to transform the sector.
Then there are China’s efforts to de-carbonise its transport sector. China has overtaken Europe and Japan to have the most extensive high-speed rail (HSR) network on earth, at some 7,431 km worth of track. It has also broken HSR land-speed records with operating services capable of traveling at close to 400km per hour. What’s more impressive is that China’s ambitions for HSR extend far beyond the nation’s borders. China plans to build an integrated HSR network from London to Beijing, then through mainland south-east Asia to Singapore by 2020. This means serious competition for the carbon and oil-intensive aviation industry.
While it’s true that China’s growth in deployed renewable energy is occurring with fossil fuel use, the absolute increase in renewables demonstrate what’s possible in Australia. HSBC estimates that China will have 40 GW of installed solar energy capacity in 2020, as well as 150 GW (soon to be around to 230GW) of installed wind. Given that Australia’s total energy system is designed for peaks of around 50 GW, China’s renewable energy capacity could meet Australia’s electricity demands three times over by 2020.
It has also been claimed that efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the developed world will do nothing to reduce the CO2 produced by China and India in the decades ahead. This assessment completely misses the critical role that nations like Australia can play. Investing in the early adoption of renewable energy generation will bring down the costs of low-carbon energy for all.
Furthermore, early adoption of renewable technologies like baseload concentrating solar thermal power in Australia can deliver contingent benefits. We can benefit from new jobs and income from the twin avenues of a substantial domestic manufacturing base and considerable trade by exporting intellectual property.
Rather than feeding China’s waning fossil fuel requirements with coal, Australia could be exporting heliostats, solar thermal components and engineering expertise to this enormous market – where such goods and services will be in increasing demand. Now that’s an optimistic vision for Australia’s economic future.
Meanwhile, those who don’t understand the difference between 'all energy' and electricity targets can perhaps take some solace that their confusion is at least patriotic. But ultimately, our lack of a Chinese-style all-energy target holds Australia back. Adopting all-energy targets for de-carbonisation and deploying renewable energy are in the national interest. The failure to implement such measures will see Australia cede economic opportunities to our competitors that all have all-energy targets – the European Union, China, India, and South Korea.
Matthew Wright is director of Beyond Zero Emissions and 2010 Young Environmentalist of the Year. Beyond Zero Emissions a volunteer-based climate change and energy research organisation. It is now producing a second iteration of its Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy plan.
Comments on this article
Permanent Magnet Direct Drive Wind Turbines have no gearbox oil
Permanent Magnet Direct Drive wind turbines have no gearbox oil and therefore can not burn in the way that, this older turbine has caught fire. And one or two turbines burning are less polluting than a car fire, there are some 120 million cars on the world's roads and many of them catch fire.
See the Enercon E-126 7.5MWe or a well known Chinese 6MWe clone of it. 8000 E-126 turbines could provide 50% of Australia's energy in 2020. (with some balancing power from Gemasolar equivalent Molten Salt Power Towers.
Leading Wind Companies Enercon, GE, Siemens and Vestas are all moving their range towards Permanent Magnet and the US DOE funded research is developing lowing the rare earth required for the magnets.
This is of more concern, Chernobyl like meltdown that is more likely to occur in a generation II reactor than a generation III reactor (according to the nuclear industry)
Unfortunately only Generation II reactors are being commissioned around the world as a Generation II reactor has never been commissioned.
http://nuclear.stockaninews.com/chernobyl/chernobyl-2-wmv.html
Double standards
"...given the standards we accept these days."
And that's a big part of the issue right there. 'The standards we accept these days' are ridiculously extreme squarely because of the irrationality of most Western thinking about nuclear. Even Generation II nuclear is 10-100 times safer than coal by any reasonable risk metric. Any industry can be strangled by excessive regulation. It could yet happen to wind, with the increasing backlash from impacts on local residents and chopped-up birds, not to mention incidents such as this: http://www.victorharbortimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/cant-fight-t...
"No company has achieved building a 3rd Generation plant"
Better run hard with that line (which is only true in any case if you play semantics with companies vs countries, as if that's relevant) while you can. It has a use-by date of 2013.
China still building dangerous 2nd generation nuclear plants
The nuclear technology industry, Areva, Mitsubishi, General Electric, Westinghouse et al don't sell 2nd generation plants anymore because they're considered not to be safe enough to market, given the standards we accept these days.
But unfortunately China is still building these old outdated Nuclear plants.
No company has achieved building a 3rd Generation plant and china certainly doesn't have the expertise to do this, importing some 70% of the equipment for a 3rd generation plant. (versus 70% local content for a 2nd generation)
The only serious action in Nuclear on the ground globally is in China and it is in power plants that are not acceptable to western nuclear companies or western civilsiation.
The simple fact is China's wind turbines are acceptable, they are marketed around the world, they already sell 6MWe permanent magnet direct drive wind turbines which are almost as big as the world's leader Enercon with their 7.5MWe unit.
Last year the globe received 7.4TWh per annum of new electricity generation from Nuclear and 10 times that figure from the 30GW of wind that got installed.
And 5x that figure in China alone. Nuclear is a far too complicated a way to boil water.
Behind the facade
"Few wind farms are commercially viable, and most rely on government subsidies. The China Electricity Council says more than a quarter of the country's wind turbines were still not connected to the grid at the end of last year."
http://bw.china-embassy.org/eng/xwdt/t755048.htm
"a 5 trillion yuan (US$757 billion) emerging energy industrial development plan" Yes, that would be the plan that "is about utilizing clean energy sources such as nuclear, wind, solar and bio-mass energy". Again, note the order. Given those priorities, if $227 billion is going to wind, where do you reckon the other $500-odd billion is headed? I'll give you any odds it's not solar or biomass getting the lion's share.
So what's wrong with the statement by a Chinese official quoted above? Why are the Chinese right about wind, but wrong about nuclear?
In short, why are we even having this argument? I've long held that we need every tech we can lay our hands on to get within a bull's roar of decarbonising our economies sufficiently. Any subset won't do it. What's your excuse for ignoring nuclear entirely? Are you seriously suggesting it poses a greater threat than GW?
16 GWe of Wind commissioned in 2010 and just 1GW of Nuclear
In 2010 Chinese Nuclear went up around 1GWe while Wind Power went up 16GWe
To compare annual delivered from each of these contributions here are the calcs
Wind
16 * 0.25 * 8760 = 35TWh per year from 2010's build out
Nuclear
1 * 0.85 * 8760 = 7.4TWh per year from 2010 build out
Almost 5x the energy will be delivered to the grid from wind turbines built in 2010 than from Nuclear. And then there's Solar Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal with Storage on top of that.
Jan 14 2011 China surpassed US on Wind Power
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/7260646.html
China in 2010 became the country with the most installed wind power capacity, supplanting the United States.
China installed 16 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2010, a 62 percent annual increase, taking its total installed capacity to 41.8GW, said Li Junfeng, secretary-general of Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.
The US installed about 5GW of new wind power capacity in 2010, taking its total installed capacity to 40.2GW, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
China's State Council is considering a 5 trillion yuan (US$757 billion) emerging energy industrial development plan. If approved, some 1.5 trillion yuan of investment will flow into the wind sector.
Forecast credibility
Found it. As I suspected, the source for the estimate of 230 GW in China by 2020 is a "joint report by Greenpeace, the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association (CREIA) and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC)." And even they said 'at least 150 GW and possibly 230 GW over the next ten years'.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/10/chinas-wind...
Self-interest much? As I said earlier, not the most authoritative or reliable source. I'll believe it when I see it in 2020.
Wind outpaces nuclear in china on every metric
@Mark Duffet Your reference
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2010-05/17/content_9855919.htm
dated May 17 2010 and the 12th Five Year plan hasn't been released yet.
Versus this from Reuters
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_622840.html
is dated January 11 2010.
They are reconsidering their 40GWe target. But still on annual figures if they approach 80GWe then there will still be more annual delivered power from Wind than from nuclear. And that's despite nuclear being at scale for around for 30 years longer than large scale wind power.
For wind to only achieve 230GWe would involve almost a flat lining of Wind Turbine annual installation growth. But in the last 5 years wind installations in China have doubled each year.
If the doubling continued the figure would be astronomical.
If Wind installations grow at a modest 20% per year then by 2020 China will have 500GW of wind power and 40% per year 600GWe. There is no precedent for such a slow growth rate.
And another thing...
"Nuclear is being completely outpaced by Renewables in China"? That's not what the China Daily article linked below indicated: "The development of new energy industries will also be highlighted in China's national 12th Five-Year Plan for the energy industry...In terms of scale they will be developed in this sequence: nuclear, hydro, wind and solar energy," (my emphasis).
@Bond Watson, I was primarily addressing Matthew Wright claim that China's renewable capacity could meet Australia’s electricity demands three times over, not 3 GW over. Yes, "such quantities would definitely cover a large portion of Australia's own generation capacity". But, without massive wodges of storage that are not in the Chinese plans, not all, and this is the point. If you want to keep the power on 24/7/365, you're also arguing for massive amounts of backup gas capacity, as Craig Schumacher points out.
Why didn't you say so in the first place?
So, Mr Wright, you are aware of nuclear developments in China after all? We may indeed quibble about the numbers. My reading of the various sources, for example http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2010-05/17/content_9855919.htm is that your 40 GW of Chinese nuclear by 2020 is at least two years out of date, and 70 GW by 2020 is a minimum. There seems to be some confusion (loss in translation?) about the 'too fast' report quoted above; other reports using the same primary source give it as indicating a 100-GW-by-2020 ceiling. Conversely, my memory is that that 230 GW of wind forecast ultimately originates with Greenpeace - not what I'd call an authoritative or reliable estimate. Other forecasts for Chinese wind have it as not even half that in 2020.
In any case, surely you must concede that even with the most pessimistic numbers for nuclear and the converse for renewable, nuclear is very significant, and should have been mentioned.
No future for renewables.
None of these assumed Chinese renewables developments will be able to overcome the basic issue of intermittency and the need for gas backup. This fact alone completely demolishes any scenario whereby China (or anywhere else) is able to obtain significant power from such sources. Nuclear, on the other hand, can continue to grow into the forseeable future.
40GWe of Nuclear official 2020 target while 230GWe Wind target
China has a 230GWe Wind Target for 2020 the average capacity factor is 30% - Though this is likely to increase as hub heights are increased and as more offshore turbines are deployed. But for conservatism we'll use 30%
230GW * 0.3 * 8760 = 604TWh in 2020
While Nuclear would be using NET delivered figure not a gross figure that doesn't take into account plant parasites
40GWe * 0.85* 8760 297TWh in 2020
Therefore China will be getting more than twice the electricity from Wind in 2020 than from Nuclear.
And then of course there are the other Renewables, China is going to be producing 100GWe of Solar Photovoltaic per year within 5 years. And they will soon have an installation rate that is comparable to that.
So Imagine installing 100GW with a capacity factor of 10%
that's 100 * 0.10 * 8760 That's 87TWh per year with of panels.
Global PV manufacturing capacity this year has doubled from 16GWe to 35GWe with most of that going in, in China.
And now they're entering the Solar Thermal game, in 5 years they've dominated wind, and in 5 years they'll likely dominate solar thermal. Nuclear is being completely outpaced by Renewables in China
export of engineering expertise
Mr Wright, thank you for your interesting article. I can only hope we are able to export the technology and engineering expertise in the RE industry. I have BEng(Mech) and have almost completed an MSc in Renewable Energy; the latter of which is going to waste while I project manage and engineer capital upgrades in an oil refinery!
just a small tale of irony... =)
Straits Times: China's nuclear power build-up moving too fast
Jan 11 2011
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_622840.html
BEIJING - CHINA'S ambitious nuclear power programme needs to proceed more cautiously to ensure the industry's long-term future is not damaged by safety risks, fuel shortages, untrained personnel and low domestic manufacturing capacity, researchers with a cabinet think tank said.
Scholars at the State Council Research Office said China needed to 'prevent local governments and enterprises from building too many nuclear projects too quickly in disregard of macro conditions', adding that any new capacity target for 2020 should be kept below 70 gigawatts.
'If the current development trend continues and too many projects are built too quickly, it could harm the long-term healthy development of nuclear power,'
Duffett's (Dis)ingenius issues to rebutt China's goals
Mr. Duffett, based on your capacity factors (CFs) of 20% and 30% for solar and wind respectively, and assuming the solar and wind resource (not electrical output) is 40GW and 150GW respectively as estimated by HSBC, then the electricity output would be 8GW for solar and 45GW for wind. This is a total of 53GW of power generated from renewable energy. 3GW more than Australia's total peak output.
90% of 80GW nuclear is 72GW. Taking 230GW of wind and 40GW of solar at same CFs comes to 77GW - more than the planned nuclear in China.
By right, we could incorporate efficiency, availability, reliability and any other factors; equally, we can also challenge your/my capacity factor figures and HSBC's estimates. The point is that it is a lot of power generated from renewable energy resources, and such quantities would definitely cover a large portion of Australia's own generation capacity (if not all), comparatively speaking.
Back-of-the-envelope technical calculations are not the basis for policy, they are only to determine how much output we can obtain from given inputs.
Missing the point
Surely the point of this article is not that Australia could use this (solar & wind power) technology to satisfy its energy needs but rather that China is actively pursuing new energy sources and is developing long term future industry strategies.
If Australia wants to be a 'clever' country we need to build the technical and operational skills needed to build new industries in such areas.
The coal industry which doesn't actually employ that many people, is also at risk of having its customers abandon it as part of their strategy to minimise the use of carbon based energy.
Rgds
tell him he's dreaming
I cannot see any of our political "leaders" having the forsite or will to try and drag Australia into a low carbon future.
It's a shame really, when we have so much potentil and yet no desire to take advantage of what could redefine the way we produce energy in this country.
Maybe when jet fuel is $200 a barrel we will start to finally think of HSR on the east coast.
Putting it kindly
It's more than a little disingenuous to compare China's decarbonisation efforts with Australia's, and not even mention the former's plans for 80 GW of nuclear generation by 2020. It should also be noted that this will operate with around 90% capacity factor, compared with 20% and 30% CF respectively for the projected 40 GW of solar and 100 GW of wind by 2020.
It's even more disingenuous (heck, let's not beat around the bush, it's flat out wrong) to say "China’s renewable energy capacity could meet Australia’s electricity demands three times over by 2020", as this completely ignores the capacity factor and storage issues.