To promote the development of the emerging energy industries and meet the carbon emissions reduction targets of 2020, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has compiled a development plan for emerging energy industries from 2011 to 2020 that will require direct investments totaling 5 trillion yuan (NZ$1 trillion), according to the NEA on July 20.
Jiang Bing, director-general of the Policy Planning Department under the NEA, was quoted by People’s Daily online as saying that the plan has specified major policy measures for the development and utilization of nuclear, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, unconventional natural gas and other new energies.
The plan has also detailed the industrialized application of new clean coal, smart grid, distributed energy and alternative-fuel vehicle technologies to meet emission targets.
According to initial calculations, the new plan will greatly ease China’s excessive reliance on coal in 2020 and cut sulfur dioxide emissions by about 7.8 million tons and carbon dioxide emissions by about 1.2 billion tons in a year. Furthermore, this will contribute 1.5 trillion yuan in added-value per year and create 15 million job opportunities.
The key energy structural adjustment tasks during the 12th Five-Year Plan period include taking effective measures to increase energy efficiency, enhancing the utilisation levels of traditional clean energy and expanding the utilisation scales of natural gas and other clean energies. It also includes accelerating the construction of hydropower and nuclear power facilities.
The plan will support advances in renewable energy sources such as the conversion and utilization of wind, solar and biomass energy. It also includes comprehensively planning for the construction of major energy bases and cross-region energy transmission channels in order to optimise energy resource allocation.
The NEA estimated that China will consume 260 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2015 and the proportion of gas in the country’s total energy consumption will rise from the current figure of nearly 4% to over 8%. In addition, 250 million kilowatts of hydroelectricity and 39 million kilowatts of nuclear power will also be consumed in the same year, and their joint share in total primary energy consumption will rise from the current figure of around 7% to nearly 9%.
In addition, the joint share of wind-generated electricity, solar power, and biomass energy will rise from the current figure of nearly 1% to nearly 3%. The consumption of renewable energy, excluding hydro energy, will increase by nearly 2% with the figure standing at 110 million tons of standard coal, and the share of non-fossil energy in total primary energy consumption may reach 11%.
