China to surpass clean-energy goals by 2020
U.K.-based research firm New Energy Finance has come out with a report focused on China’s clean energy industry and how it’s expected to progress between now and 2020. Among its many conclusions:
* Renewable energy will supply 19 per cent of China’s energy needs by 2020 but it will take 50 per cent more investment than Chinese authorities have budgeted for – i.e. roughly $267 billion (U.S.). The 19 per cent figure is higher than the government’s own target of 15 per cent (as set by the National Development and Reform Commission).
* Biofuels will meet 9.1 per cent of transportation fuel needs over that time, conservation efforts will take off, and as much as 54 gigawatts of wind power — compared to the government’s own 30 gigawatt target — will be supplied.
* China will also make a major push into refining its own solar-grade silicon, and it will install 5.3 gigawatts of solar PV capacity compared to the NDRC’s lower target of 2 gigawatts.
* Biomass power generation will rise from 2.3 gigawatts today to 27 gigawatts, and marine energy (tital and wave power) will even contribute 3 gigawatts.
* Surprisingly, New Energy Finance does not expect hydrogen and fuel cell technologies to move beyond demonstration phase to substantial commercial rollouts before 2020. I say “surprisingly” because China is often considered the first place where hydrogen and fuel-cell technologies will see mass deployment.
“It is common for commentators to regard China and its dramatic economic growth as part of the world’s climate change problem, not part of the solution,” said New Energy Finance chief executive Michael Liebreich in a statement. “China’s growth is allowing it to invest enormous sums in clean energy. We see the Chinese government as more committed than most Western governments — both to rolling out clean energy aggressively domestically and also to building an export industry.”
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
September 20th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Some see China’s role in leading world peace as equally promising, and the West’s as equally dismal. See July 2004 article from American Academy of Arts and Sciences journal, Daedalus, by strategic analysts John Steinbruner and Nancy Gallagher, titled Prospects for Security Transformation.
( cissm.umd.edu/documents/securitytransform.pdf )
September 20th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
By 2020? By 2020 we’ll all be in flying cars that go to the moon. What kind of j-s are they trying to peddle? This is the kind of rohrshach blot news report where anybody can see anything they want. crapometer alert
September 20th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
It’s kind of funny that China gets such rave reviews for what we should have really focused on as the worst part of communism, the fact that it’s undemocratic. On some level it seems to be paying dividends, as they don’t have to worry about raising money for campaigns (i.e. bowing to the petroleum companies and automakers, or lawyers and unions). While far from democratic, they do seem better positioned to do the right thing. However, my guess is that price of gas and their lack of petro resources has more to do with this push than global warming.
September 24th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
On the section concerning fuel cells…..my opinion is as follows…
Another research firm jumping on the ‘fuel cell naysayer bandwagon’….its a fact folks…releasing the energy stored in hydrocarbons via the electrochemical reaction of a fuel cell is more efficent than any combustion process…. Ulf Bossel , Wall Street and
the City of London analysts havent figured this out yet …..but the Chinese have. Expect
many more fuel cell applications in the near future…after all..isnt it nice to get almost TWICE the bang for your barrel of oil , gallon of methanol or cu/yard of biomass when
you reform it thru a PEM of SOFC fuel cell!….the Asians think so!
September 25th, 2006 at 12:14 am
some evidence to support my ‘wild’ claims about fuel cells provided in the link below
http://www.visionengineer.com/env/fc_efficiency.php
(ps…somebody forward that link to Ulf, Stuart Bush @ RBC, MacMurray @ Sprott and
the leader of the fuel cell naysayers (drumroll) Jonathan Hykawy @ Research Capital)
(ps…you could also pose this little question to these folks as well…”Gentlemen, if the world has only a finite supply of fossil fuels against a backdrop of growing demand, then WHY isnt it feasible that the deployment of a new technology that extends the life
of that finite supply by as much as 50% wouldnt create an investment boom in said technology?”