The structure, problems and trends of China's electric power energy during energy transition

The main characteristics of China's electric power energy structure

The characteristics of China's electric power energy structure can be mainly explained from several aspects: first, the position of electric power in a national energy service, the second is the low-carbon power generation structure, the third is the grid structure, and the fourth is the user side power structure.

The role of electricity in energy services.

Electricity is a high-quality energy source that serves a large number of businesses and residents through an ever-expanding power grid. However, from the perspective of final energy consumption, electricity is always only one source of energy to provide energy services. As shown in Table 1, the proportion of electricity in terminal energy consumption in 2018, the world average level reached 19.2%, ranking second. At the top of the list is oil (41%), followed by heat (14.3%) and coal (10.4%). North America, the European Union and other developed countries accounted for about 21% of the electricity, Asian countries accounted for a generally high proportion of electricity, Japan, South Korea and China were 28.9%, 25.1% and 23.9%, respectively. According to the most optimistic estimates of the State Grid Energy Institute, by 2050, China's electricity will account for 50% of energy consumption in the terminal sector, but half of it will still be non-electric energy.

China's power generation structure shows low carbon trend.

At present, thermal power still occupies an absolutely dominant position in China's power generation structure. Installed power generation and power generation began to enter a low-speed growth stage from high-speed growth, from double-digit growth to single-digit growth. Whether it is installed power generation capacity or electricity generation, there is a trend of expanding the proportion of renewable energy. In 2019, the installed power generation capacity was 59.2%, and the installed capacity of non-fossil energy (including nuclear power, hydropower, wind power, photovoltaic power generation) accounted for 40.8%. The share of thermal power in power generation has shown a downward trend since 2011, while the share of nuclear power, hydropower, wind power photovoltaic power generation has steadily increased. In 2019, thermal power accounted for 68.9% of China's electricity generation, and non-fossil energy generation accounted for 31.1%.

China's power investment is mainly power grid investment, power investment is mainly non-fossil energy installed.

Since 2013, the momentum of power investment in China has been reversed, and power grid investment has continued to exceed power investment (Figure 3). In 2019, the national power investment was 799.5 billion yuan, down 2% year-on-year. Among them, power grid investment was 485.6 billion yuan, a decrease of 9.6%, accounting for 61% of the total investment in electricity, power investment was 313.9 billion yuan, an increase of 12.6%, of which thermal power investment accounted for only 20%, the rest are wind power, hydropower, nuclear power and solar power and other non-fossil energy power investment. Investment in non-fossil power sources has exceeded investment in thermal power across the board (Figure 4).

The installed scale of thermal power generation tends to be large-scale, and photovoltaic power generation tends to be distributed.

First, from the perspective of thermal power installed capacity, its installed capacity is expanding day by day. In order to reduce pollutant emissions and reduce coal consumption per unit of power generation, in 2004, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the technical standards for new coal-fired power stations, requiring that the capacity of new thermal power stations should be in principle 600,000 kilowatts and above, and power generation coal consumption should be controlled below 286 grams of standard coal/KWH. In 2019, 44.7 percent of the capacity of in-service thermal power units was 600,000 kilowatts and above. Second, in the renewable energy, the early construction of photovoltaic power generation is mostly large-scale centralized power stations, mainly built in the northwest of the area rich in solar energy resources. In 2016, the share of centralized photovoltaic power stations still accounted for 86.7% of photovoltaic power stations. By the first September of 2019, this share had fallen to 69.1%, while the share of rooftop distributed PV plants had risen to 30.9%. New photovoltaic power plants are also gradually developing from west to east. In the first three quarters of 2019, the new photovoltaic power stations in North and Central China accounted for 52.6% of the year, and the new installed capacity in Northwest China accounted for only 26.9%.

Judging from the proportion of renewable energy generation, China is still in the primary stage of energy transformation.

Some experts mentioned that China's renewable energy development scale has surpassed the United States to become the world's first, is already the world's energy transition leader. Taking 2017 data as an example, China's total installed capacity of renewable energy is about 650 million kilowatts, accounting for 29.8% of the world's total installed capacity of renewable energy; Among them, the installed hydropower capacity (including pumped storage) is 341 million kW, accounting for 29.6% of the global installed hydropower capacity; Non-water renewable power capacity of 334 million kilowatts, equivalent to the total installed capacity of the EU 28 countries (320 million kilowatts), is the United States non-water renewable power installed capacity (161 million kilowatts) twice. In 2017, China's renewable energy generation completed 1.63 trillion KWH, accounting for 26.2% of the global renewable energy generation that year. China's renewable energy generation is 2.3 times that of the United States, 7.5 times that of Germany, 9.2 times that of Japan and 16.4 times that of the United Kingdom. The development of renewable energy does contribute to climate change, and in 2017, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions due to the development of renewable energy was 1,494 million tons, accounting for 16.4% of the total emissions that year.