Biomass energy has great potential to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality in China

1. Coal power emissions account for the largest share of China's carbon emissions

The International Energy Agency pointed out in its "2050 Energy Zero Emissions Roadmap report" that the key energy sectors for CO2 emissions are power, industry, transportation and buildings, and stressed that the power sector should be the world's first zero carbon emission areas. The report proposes a road map for coal power plants to be phased out completely by 2040, starting with the least energy-efficient subcritical units. China's total installed capacity of coal-fired power generation has reached 1.1 billion kilowatts by 2021, although its share has been reduced to less than 50%, but the proportion of coal power generation is still more than 60%. In 2020, China's carbon emissions will total 11.3 billion tons, of which 9.9 billion tons will be emitted from the energy sector, accounting for 88%. China's thermal power generation was 5,333 billion KWH, and the actual statistical data of carbon emissions was 5.12 billion tons, accounting for 51.76% of China's total CO2 emissions that year. Moreover, with the deepening of industrialization and urbanization, China's total energy consumption will peak around 2030, and electricity demand will continue to grow. The harsh reality is that to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality, energy is the main battlefield, and coal power carbon reduction is the main force. Without first achieving substantial carbon reduction in coal power, the "dual carbon" goal is impossible to achieve.

irreplaceable

According to China's power development plan, by 2030, the total installed capacity of renewable wind power and solar power generation will reach more than 1.2 billion kilowatts, but under the "double carbon target" and the establishment of new energy as the main body of the new power system, it is expected that by 2030, the installed capacity of new energy will greatly exceed the original plan and will reach more than 1.7 billion kilowatts. However, it must be seen that wind power and solar power generation have shortcomings that cannot be ignored, that is, "uncontrollable", which is an unstable intermittent power supply. Its installed power generation capacity is severely limited by natural meteorological conditions such as day and night sunshine, seasonal changes, cloudy or sunny weather, and wind strength. According to reports, in 2019, when the proportion of non-fossil energy generation in the country was only 32.6%, wind power and optoelectronics have generally faced problems such as grid-connection difficulties, absorption difficulties, and scheduling difficulties. In February 2021, due to the cold weather in Texas, the entire state power grid completely collapsed in four minutes. 4.5 million homes and many businesses lost power; Days of power outages killed nearly 100 people. One of the main reasons is that wind power and photovoltaic power supplies, which already account for a considerable proportion of capacity, cannot be produced due to freezing wind blades and continuous haze weather. Frequent power rationing in several southern provinces last winter and spring is due to low rainfall affecting hydroelectric power generation, and poor wind and light conditions affecting the normal operation of wind power and photovoltaic power.

In fact, it will be difficult to replace the basic supporting role of the existing large coal power units in China's electric power production. First of all, China's coal-based power supply structure is determined by China's lack of oil and gas and abundant coal resource endowment characteristics, is more than 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially in the past 30 years, the vast number of cadres, workers and technical personnel of the national power front, through self-reliance and hard work, the introduction of digestion and absorption of foreign advanced technology, bold and active innovation established. It has formed the world's largest and leading, rational, stable and reliable coal power production and power transmission and distribution of a huge system, which has strongly guaranteed and supported the country's energy security, production and social development, and the continuous improvement of people's living standards. China has become the world's most powerful coal power production, this historical process and results have a huge inertia, change is not short-term, let alone overnight.

With the adjustment of China's industrial structure and the process of urbanization, the structural changes on the power demand side are obvious, the load instability and the change range increase sharply, which requires the power generation side to have the initiative of deep follow-up, and the power grid scheduling and regulation are highly flexible. As mentioned above, wind power and photovoltaic power generation in the current large-scale energy storage technology has not been breakthrough, can not meet these requirements, while China's large-scale coal power system can adapt to changes in the demand side.