Growth of Chinese Wind Power Outpacing Coal 1,000 to 1

October 20th, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

Competing claims about China’s energy is widely disparate in the US media, depending on whether you get your facts from the right wing rags like the WSJ, or from the actual data the industries involved publish, so I think it is instructive to compare them, to put the plans for wind next to the plans for coal in context.

Currently China gets 70% of its power from coal, much higher than the US. Year-to-date, coal-fired plants contributed 45.6% of the power generated in the United States (EIA: October) in 2010. [Ed: as of 2012 that is expected to drop below 39%]

By 2015, China’s 1.4 billion people will get 933 Gigawatts of their power from coal, by building an additional 300 Gigawatts of coal-fired power units and putting 290 GW of coal-fired units into operation. The right seizes on this: “We can’t do anything about climate because China is building a coal plant a week!”

Yet coal will actually go down as a percentage of China’s power from 70% to 67% by 2015. How can adding more coal plants reduce the percentage of coal on the grid?

Because the ramp-up in all the renewable power in China is much faster. It is gathering steam to the point where it impacts the percentage of coal on the grid.

By 2020, wind power in China will have increased by between 500% and 1,000%.

Total wind installed was 26 Gigawatts at the end of 2009. The most conservative estimate of how much China plans to ramp that up to, is to get at least 150 Gigawatts of wind on the grid by 2020: a five-fold or 500% increase. (China Wind Power Outlook 2010 report)

A moderate estimate, assuming business as usual, by the Global Wind Energy Council, based on current incentives and laws in place, projects that China will have 230 Gigawatts of wind on the grid by 2020 (GWEC). Almost ten times what it was in 2009.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

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Tags: China

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Dewaynecurry

“By 2015, China’s 1.4 billion people will get 933 Gigawatts of their power from coal, by building an additional 300 Gigawatts of coal-fired power units and putting 290 GW of coal-fired units into operation.”
Are you saying theyare adding 300, 290 , or 590 total?

“Total wind installed was 26 Gigawatts at the end of 2009. The most conservative estimate of how much China plans to ramp that up to, is to get at least 150 Gigawatts of wind on the grid by 2020″

So in your math system 124 GW 5 years later equates to 1000x (even using smallest guess of what you meant) 290GW.

I guess this is liberal math.

Th only reason I read any article by you is to see what is the latest lie you are perpetrating. Articles like yours are why CleanTechnica no longer has any journalistic integrity.

Is it so hard to just write that China is ramping up its wind production but unfortunately they are still building lots more coal plants.
Anumakonda Jagadeesh

Good post Susan Kraemer. Yes. China is moving towards massive scale of Renewables like Wind and Solar.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
Roger Branning

Will China builds infrastructure for its people, USA fights Islamic wars and the middle class.
Pingback: World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Begun by China – CleanTechnica
Pingback: China’s Coal-Fired Energy is Going Out Their Inefficient Windows – CleanTechnica
Bob Percopo

With 43 1,000Mw nukes on the drawing board the reduction in the percentage of carbon emissions will come from emphasis on nukes not wind. Also due to the pragmatic approach of the Chinese they understand the need for baseload capacity (nuclear, coal and hydro) which for some reason the US is ignoring. This ignorance will come back to haunt us when the economy again begins to grow and it stalls again due to the lack of base load capacity
Frank Hanlan

I am surprised that you did not include any mention of the large solar array energy plants that they have announced. As I recall from previous articles China has announced either 1st & 2nd or 1st and 3rd largest in the world.
Jukka Rintamaki

While wind energy will grow more in proportion, according to this article China will still have 933GW of energy coming from coal by 2015. Now, even if we assume China’s wind energy production capacity will be 230GW by 2020, coal will still be significantly bigger. Ergo, coal will still dominate. Which means the title of this article is somewhat misleading.

I’d like to point out that China’s efforts to increase its wind power capacity is still something to respect, and something to look up to. We in the western countries should take heed and not complain about wind power plants ruining our view etc.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Right. They are both true. The ramp-up is extraordinary. Yet wind will be providing 230 GW while coal will be providing 933 GW (67%) of a total energy budget. However, bear in mind that wind is not the only clean energy source that China has really ramped up fast. I am interested in the hard numbers on the solar, hydro and geothermal portion of China’s energy plan for how to reduce coal as a percentage of its energy.
NObama is Good bamaName (required)

Interesting that everyone at the WSJ is a white wing waycist extweemist crackpot nut job not even worthy of a Rachel Madcow moment.
Keep up the great journalism !
- David M
  
  I second that. You lost your objectivity and credibility in just one sentence.
  - Rawrs
    
    Never knew those on the right were so fragile. Perhaps the author needed to be more politically correct for the sensitive right-wing readers.
http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/ Paul

BUT, they are building another 300 GW worth of coal plants (more than double the 124 GW worth of wind planned over the same period). Coal plants have a 40-50 year operational life so these news plants won’t be closed down till 2060-70 minimum. Good if your Australia who supplies the coal, not so good if you have to breath that stuff.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  A moderate estimate, assuming business as usual, by the Global Wind Energy Council, based on current incentives and laws in place, projects that China will have 230 Gigawatts of wind on the grid by 2020
  - Frustrated
    
    Let’s be clear. The incremental output from the two developments you mention will be:
    
    Wind:
    (230GW) x (8,760 hours/year) x (Capacity factor .25) = 504 TWh (TerraWatt Hours) / annum
    
    Coal:
    (290GW) x (8,760 hours/year) x (Capacity factor .60, which is a low estimate) = 1,524 TWh / annum
    
    So to summarise, the INCREMENTAL addition of coal will produce three times as much energy as the incremental addition of wind. And if we add in the incremental nuclear capacity (43GW) mentioned above, using a capacity factor of 90%, that would add 339 TWh / annum.
    
    Adding wind and nuclear together is still about half of the INCREMENTAL coal being added to China’s grid. That doesn’t mean that what China’s doing is not impressive; it is! But your story makes no sense, nor does the title of it.
    
    And again, I’m just using your numbers for additions, and applying industry-standard capacity factors.
    
    As someone who works in clean tech and sustainability, I’m quite disappointed in this website’s accuracy.