Explanation about Breakthroughs in China’s New Electricity System and Why Coal Power is Still Included

Many thanks to my dear readers who provided your valuable comments. These interactions encourage me to continue writing.

After I posted China's energy revolution plan -- to build a greener new electricity system,

I received emails asking about 1) what breakthroughs exactly China is making with regard to transmission systems, and 2) why coal power is included in China’s greener energy policy.

I realized I did not make these things clear in the article. So I will try to explain it in this one. Hope I do better this time.

China’s new energy security strategy includes 4 revolutions: energy consumption revolution, supply revolution, technological revolution, institutional revolution. The improvement of electricity system is part of the revolutions.

As we all know, renewable energy generation posts great challenge to grid. So we saw that in the "Action Plan for Accelerating the Construction of a New Electricity System (2024-2027)", the first action is “stability guarantee action.” If the power system can not be stable enough, the society will be in chaos. So actually, if more and more renewable energy is being brought into the grid, it needs a lot of inventions and innovations to keep the power system stable.

For example, in the Action 2, which is “Large-scale and high-proportion new energy external transmission breakthrough action,” it said “On the premise of ensuring the power supply capacity of the transmission channels, relying on advanced power generation, regulation and control technologies, carry out the application of new AC and DC transmission technologies, effectively reduce the proportion of supporting coal power, and realize high-proportion or pure new energy external transmission.” It shows that to ensure stable power supply, a series of technologies will be apply to reduce the proportion of supporting coal power. We could see that coal power is using as a kind of supporting factor to renewable energy transmission.

That partly explains why China still need coal power. The wider application of renewable energy needs more technological breakthroughs. Before we can have enough technological breakthroughs to allow us totally relying on renewable energy, we have to use some controllable and stable energy to support the electricity system. As coal is the easiest to find traditional stable-supply energy source in China (China is not rich in gas and oil), it is still playing an important role to support the whole power system. China is gradually reducing coal power. But before the renewable power technologies are good enough, coal will not be totally abandoned.

So, how will China deal with coal power emissions? Actually, China has made great progress on this issue. Three low-carbon transformation methods for coal power, namely biomass co-firing, green ammonia co-firing, and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), are all being in trial. By 2027, carbon emissions from coal power will approach the level of natural gas.

In China, carbon dioxide emissions from the power industry currently account for about 40% of the total carbon dioxide emissions from national energy consumption. Among them, coal power is the most significant source of carbon emissions. To achieve the "dual carbon" goals (Carbon Peak & Carbon Neutral), the low-carbon transformation of coal power plant is imperative.

On July 16, China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration released the "Action Plan for Coal Power Low-Carbon Transformation (2024 - 2027)", systematically deploying the work of low-carbon transformation of coal power plants in China. Though the plan covers only 4 years, the effort will be continued in the following years for sure.

In summary, China’s strategy is on one hand reducing the use of coal power and increasing renewable power, on the other hand, reducing the emission of coal power as long as coal can not be replaced totally in the near future.

I will put the "Action Plan for Coal Power Low-Carbon Transformation (2024 - 2027)" in my next newsletter.

Thanks for you patience to read all these. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.