Renewables To Constitute 33% of China’s Electricity By 2025

China’s planning agency has formulated a new five year plan for the development of renewable energy in the country and aims to equip the grid with 33 per cent of power coming from renewable sources by the middle of this decade. The share of renewable energy in the national grid was 28.8 per cent in 2020.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has informed that the total renewable consumption will reach 1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2025. It also said that China is looking to increase the non-fossil fuels share in the total energy use to 20 per cent which accounted for 15.4 per cent in 2020.

China is the biggest generator of the greenhouse gases in the world with 27 per cent share in the global GHG output. The country has pledged to add wind and solar capacity of 1,200 GW by the end of this decade which means that China will require a double speed of renewable addition here onwards. The country has decided to develop large-scale renewable energy bases in desert regions of the North-West.

Challenges Still Remain

The climate warriors worry that even the new announcement by the NDRC may not help the environment as the devil lies somewhere else. According to some reports, the total energy use in China could reach about 5 billion tonnes of standard coal by 2025. During the Covid-19 led pandemic when the human movement was minimal and energy consumption was low, China amassed coal reserves unparalleled in history.

About two months ago, NDRC had held that China will boost the production of additional modern coal mines and increase the storage to 5 per cent of the local consumption in order to ensure seamless power supply.

Moreover, in its new five year plan, the NDRC has said that as far as new energy consumption growth is concerned for 2021-25, half of it would be in renewable energy. Some analysts are of the opinion that even though China wants to start eliminating coal consumption from 2026, the country would have added 150 GW of new coal capacity.