FROM the way some talk about it, China sounds like a vision of a zero-carbon future: A clean utopia churning out millions of electric vehicles and billions of solar panels, connected by bullet trains, high-voltage power lines and sparkling metro systems, powered by an endless expanse of photovoltaic farms and wind turbines.
That portrait, of a solarpunk electrostate as rooted in the future of energy as the petrostates of the Gulf are wedded to the past, isn’t entirely wrong.
China’s clean energy industry justifies most of the superlatives you could throw at it. But there’s still a troubling amount of 19th Century technology propping up this 21st Century reverie.
Take the forecasts put out last week by the China Electricity Council, a trade association for the power sector.
More than 300GW of clean generation will be built in 2026, while consumption will grow by between 5% and 6%.
Put those two numbers together, and you have a problem. All those new solar panels and wind turbines should generate a massive amount of clean electricity – over 400GWh.
In almost any year up to 2020, it would have been enough to cover all the growth in China’s own electricity demand, too.
Times have changed, however.
China last year consumed about a third more grid power than it did in 2019.
Goodbye solarpunk; hello, steampunk. There are alternatives that might bridge the gap.
Eight nuclear reactors are slated to be connected this year, sufficient to add about 64 GWh. — Bloomberg
David Fickling writes for Bloomberg. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
