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China hunts for clean
energy
BEIJING - China is
gearing up to develop clean energy by using
nuclear, wind and solar sources to generate power
in order to cut reliance on coal and oil, said a
senior official from the National Development and
Reform Commission (NDRC). "The government is
vigorously making efforts to tap clean energies to
optimize the current power generation mix, which
relies on coal for some 80% of its power output,
and is blamed for severe environmental pollution
and congested transportation," Zhang Guobao,
vice-chairman of the country's top policy
regulator NDRC, told the China Power 2005
conference in Beijing August 10.
According
to Zhang, coal-fired plants accounted for 73.9% of
the national total of 440 megawatts of installed
power generation capacity in 2004. Hydroelectric
plants made up 24.5% of installed capacity last
year, and nuclear plants approximately 1.6%.
Renewable energies such as wind, biomass and solar
only took up a very small proportion, which was
essentially insignificant in light of the
country's huge power demand, said Zhang.
Coal-fueled power plants produce almost
half of the country's air pollutants such as
sulfur dioxide, said Zhang Lijun, deputy-director
of the State Environmental Protection
Administration of China (SEPA), who also attended
the power industry conference. Zhang said the
country's coal-fired plants emitted more than 13
million tons of sulfur dioxide, and the figure is
expected to rise to 16 million tons for this year.
Zhang Guobao said China should greatly
encourage the development of hydroelectric plants,
although some environmentalists argue that further
dam construction may threaten ecosystems in some
areas. Liao Xiaoyi, president of the Global
Village of Beijing, a non-government organization
promoting environmental protection, earlier told
China Daily that hydroelectric dams should not be
viewed as clean energy sources since building dams
will threaten the lives of local plants and
animals by changing the existing ecological
conditions. NDRC's Zhang responded that the
experts' sentiment is somewhat "overstated", and
hydroelectric resources are very important and
abundant reserves for power generation which
provide a useful alternative to the country's
reliance on coal and oil.
But since the
country is expected to still depend on coal for
most of its energy needs for the future, and
problems still exist in land use as well as
resident relocation for dam construction, the top
policy planning body has only set a conservative
target for further hydroelectric development.
According to Zhang, most of the power plants
recently approved by the NDRC are coal-fired, so
the proportion of hydroelectric plants in the
country's total installed capacity is projected to
drop to 22.6% from last year's 24.5%. The
vice-minister estimated the installed capacity of
hydroelectric plants in China will rise from 108
MW last year to 160 MW by 2010, or 23.9% of the
total capacity. Overall hydroelectric capacity is
set to reach 246 MW by 2020, or 25.9% of the
total.
As for renewable energies such as
wind and solar, Zhang said the target is 40 MW by
2020, or 4.3% of the country's total installed
capacity. In order to tap into wind resources
across the country, which are believed to have the
most potential renewable energy for
commercialization, the country has invested some
30 million yuan (US$3.7 million) a year in
assessing wind resources in different regions
since 2003. This preliminary work is to be
completed by next year, Zhang said.
(Asia
Pulse/XIC) |
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