China is improving its infrastructure for long-distance power trading, “but it’s definitely not where it needs to be”, he added.<\/p>\n
Coal also benefits from being a “dispatchable resource” – easily ramped up or down – unlike solar and wind, which depend on weather.<\/p>\n
To increase renewables, “you have to make the coal plants operate more flexibly … and make space for variable renewables,” Myllyvirta said.<\/p>\n
China’s grid remains “very rigid”, and coal-fired power plants are “the beneficiaries”, he added.<\/p>\n
\u2018INSTRUMENTAL\u2019 ECONOMIC DRIVER\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other challenges loom. The end of feed-in tariffs means new renewable projects must compete on the open market.<\/p>\n
Fishman argues that “green power demand is insufficient to keep capacity expansion high”, though the government has policy levers to tip the balance, including requiring companies to use more renewables.<\/p>\n
China wants 3,600 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2035, but that may not meet future demand, risking further coal increases.<\/p>\n
Still, coal additions do not always equal coal emissions – China’s fleet currently runs at only 50 per cent capacity.<\/p>\n
And the “clean energy” sector – including solar, wind, nuclear, hydropower, storage and EVs – is a major economic driver.<\/p>\n
CREA estimates it contributed a record 10 per cent to China’s gross domestic product last year, and drove a quarter of growth.<\/p>\n
“It has become completely instrumental to meeting economic targets,” said Myllyvirta.<\/p>\n
“That’s the main reason I’m cautiously optimistic in spite of these challenges.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China is improving its infrastructure for long-distance power trading, “but it’s definitely not where it needs to be”,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,512,19165,75,31614,8146,128,2261],"class_list":{"0":"post-224924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-coal","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-fossil-fuel","14":"tag-renewable-energy","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-sustainability"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}