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Developing Environment-friendly Advanced Electric Powern Technology

to Promote Sustainable Development in China

Liu Deshun, Zheng Zhaoning, Pan Tao

Modern Management Research Center

Energy-Environment-Economy Research Institute, Tsinghua University

Ⅰ.Introduction

Sustainable development is strategic requirement and inevitable choice for national economic

development in China, and has already become a decided basic state policy. For the purpose of

successfully realizing the sustainable development in China, each kind of resources must be sure

of sufficiently supply. An ambitious strategic plan is that, by 2050s, China will accomplish its

modernization and become a middle-developed nation, and people will obtain much better

material life standard. Energy is the driving force of sustainable development, thus, with the

economic development and the improvement living standard, the demand for energy, especially

clean energy with high quality, will be remarkably increasing. Electricity is the only secondary

high quality energy that can be generated from various kinds of energy resources, such as coal,

hydropower, nuclear power, and renewable energy resources. Power industry will act a more and

more important role in both energy demand and energy supply with the development of society

and economy. The achievement of China’s ambitious object, sustainable development, is, to large

extent, determined by whether energy supply, especially electricity supply, can meet the

requirement of the economic development.

As a public utility, electricity sector is the infrastructure of the national economy as well as the

social development. Electrification is one of the important signs measuring the level of

modernization. Electricity first is an objective law of economic growth. The policy that electricity

construction should reasonably take priority in the economic development has been maintained

since the establishment of P.R. China 50 years ago. The elasticity ration of electricity production

has always been high, greater than 1 during most of years and surpassing the elasticity ration of

energy production for more than 20 years (see annex table 1). The pressure of electricity shortage

has been mitigated much as a result of 20 years’ capacity building, and in some provinces and

regions surplus electricity occurs. But one thing we must note is that, China is still a

comparatively poor developing country with low level of energy and power demand (see annex

table 2). Compared with modern society established on the basis of high level of energy

consumption, China still has a long way ahead. By the end of 2000，the gross installed capacity of

China has amounted to 319.3209GW, and annual electricity generation has reached 1368.484

billion kWh1. Small thermal power generators of about 2300MW total capacity were closed in

2001 while about 14980 MW new large and medium power generators were built. The annual

electricity generation has reached 14789TWh, ranking the second of the world. But the per capita

installed capacity was only 0.25 kW in 2000, and the per capita power generation only 1150 kWh

in 2001, barely half the level of the world average 2252 kWh of 1998, and one seventh of the per

capita consumption of 7751 kWh in OECD countries of 1998. In China, high quality energy,

1 /statistic/to-2000.htm 2000年电力工业情况 especially electricity accounts for a small percentage of the final energy consumption. In 1997, the

average percentage of the world was 17%, that in OECD was 18.6%, while in China was only

12.1%. The level of the household electrification is too low: the average power demand of each

family in developed countries is 2000 to 4000 kWh, while that in China is only 130 kWh. As far

as 1999, electricity was still not available to 50 million rural residents in China. Therefore,

requirement for energy and electricity growth in China is greater than that in developed countries.

According to the development experience from advanced countries, for a country to basically have

realized the modernization, the per capita electricity demand ought to be no less than 3500 kWh.

Estimated on this basis, and calculated on the demand that the population will reach 1.6 billion in

2050, electricity demand in China will be no less than 5600GWh, 3.8 times the current electricity

demand. Calculated by the fact that power plant with the capacity over 6000 kWh in 2000

consuming coal of 363 gram/ kWh, equivalent to 2.0328 Gt TCe, 2 times the total of primary

energy in 2001. Therefore, the future electricity generation of China faces tremendous pressure.

Ⅱ.Constraints on the electricity generation development

Resources constraints

Electricity generation relies mainly on the primary energy conversion. In 1995, coal accounted for

77.8% of the fuel for electricity generation in China, while water energy 19%, petroleum and gas

2.1%, nuclear 1% and others 0.1%. According to the current demand level and exploiting

technology, the verified coal resource all over the world can meet the demand for 200 years, and

gas 60 years, petroleum 40 years. The remnant proved reserves and years for exploitation (based

on conservative prediction) of fossil energy in China is referred in Table 1.

Table1. Remnant proved reserves and exploitable time limit of fossil energy in China

Varieties Coal Petroleum Natural gas

Remnant proved reserves 114.5billion tons 3.2736 billion tons 1170.4 billion m3

Exploitable time limited (a) 54~81 15~20 28~58

Deadline 2050~2077 2011~2016 2024~2054

Resource:：1999 White book: New and renewable energy in China pp31

China has various kinds of resources and with an abundance of primary energy resources.

However, from the perspective of sustainable development, there remain serious energy issues in

China. Though the total amount of primary energy is large, the per capita level is very low, and the

distribution of the resources is quite unbalanced, with three regions of north, southwest and

northwest of China having three quarters of the total resources of the whole nation, the majority of

coal resources concentrating in north and northwest of China, areas in the northeast of China

having nearly half the petroleum and gas, and two thirds of water energy resources centering in

the southwest of China. All of these bring about a series of problems to the exploitation and

transportation of resources.

China is among the few countries in the world that take coal as its major energy resource, and coal

is also China’s main resource to generate electricity. Utilization of coal is subject to the

unbalanced geological distribution of resources: coal resources in the west is far from the

consumption center, which limits the exploitation scale best matching its resource capacity; coal