This year China will see its solar capacity outstrip its coal capacity for the first time, according to an industry group.
In its latest projections, the China Electricity Council says that, by the end of 2026, wind and solar will account for nearly half of China’s power capacity. Including hydro and nuclear power, clean energy will amount to nearly two-thirds of total power capacity, while coal will amount to a third.
Importantly, capacity refers to the maximum amount of electricity a power plant can produce. Coal plants run closer to their maximum than wind or solar plants. So while coal capacity now trails renewable capacity, coal still accounts for about half of all power produced in China.
Still, that is starting to change. For years, China built renewable power and fossil power in tandem. But now, solar and wind aren’t just supplementing coal, they are displacing it.
Even as China continues to build new coal plants, the average plant is also burning less coal. Competing with cheap solar and wind, a large share of coal plants are now operating at a loss. And under the latest government guidelines, coal will begin serving a more limited role. Increasingly, coal generators will act as “peaker” plants, meeting sudden spikes in power demand or gaps in the supply of wind and solar.
Perversely, the coming decline of coal has spurred a rush to build new plants. Facing the prospect that Chinese leaders will further limit the use of coal, developers submitted a record number of proposals to build or reactivate coal power plants last year, according to a new analysis.
Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, believes that China is now at a crossroads.
“You have to either put brakes on coal power plant construction and start closing down older coal power plants, or you have to slow down the clean energy expansion,” he said in an interview with Yale Environment 360. “That’s the choice that China’s policymakers are likely going to have to make within the next year or two.”
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