China Most Likely Country to Fund Renewables

A recent Bloomberg survey of key energy decision-makers concluded that China shows more government support than any other country for funding renewable energy. It also shows equally high support for transformational clean technologies, like smart grids and electric cars. With the right government backing, China could address its own energy security issues with technology to spare for export.

The graphs charting China’s economic growth and energy demand mirror one another: each resembles the left side of a mountain with no peak in sight. By the IEA’s reckoning, China’s electricity demand alone will nearly triple by 2035. On the surface, this may come across as resoundingly bad news to environmentalists. However, China’s industrial cloud has a strong green lining. And unlike the Olympics, China’s not just using green paint this time.

This year, Bloomberg Businessweek Research Services in partnership with ABB surveyed energy professionals, government officials and CFOs about the future of energy, the opportunities and the barriers. Among the results of this 2011 Energy Survey, China emerged as the strongest government supporter of clean energy technologies.

China’s renewable energy: Readers may remember that China’s wind power capacity surpassed the United States in 2010, and continues to grow. The National Development and Reform Commission estimates that China, the world leader in wind, could generate as much as 1 TW of wind energy by 2050. Similarly, this year China bumped its four-year targets for solar generation up by 50%, and the shear volume of solar panel production from the People’s Republic had US solar manufacturers suddenly in a panic.

Where will the greenbacks for China’s green energy growth come from? The Bloomberg survey shows that nearly 90% of Chinese energy decision-makers believe that the government should fund renewable energy growth. That makes China far and away the most enthusiastic about government support of renewables. By contrast, fewer than 40% of Americans surveyed think it’s the government’s role to fund clean energy. In the ongoing war of words between China and the US over climate change and energy security, those numbers speak volumes.

Smart grids: China will likely soon also be the world’s biggest smart grid market. Last year alone, it invested 3.7 billion US dollars in modernizing its electricity grid, and the so-called “12th Five-Year Plan” calls for wide installation of smart meters, IT software and other components of a smart grid over the next few years. The 2011 Energy Survey reflects the same strong government support of smart grids as for renewable energy. All of the decision-makers surveyed agreed that updating China’s is either somewhat important or very important. Moreover, as with renewable energy, over 90% believe that continued investment in China’s smart grid will come from the government.

Electric vehicles: With a smart grid with vehicle to grid technology in place, electric vehicles (EVs) also become a convenient way to store and provide energy to the grid. China’s planning to have one million EVs on the road by 2014. To support these electric cars, it’s building 400 electric vehicle charging stations by 2016. According to the 2011 Energy Survey, over 80% of Chinese decision-makers believe that the Chinese government should support the EV infrastructure, a full ten percent more than the next leading country and a great deal more than the USA, where fewer than 40% agree with government support for EVs. To this tune, the Chinese government is investing 100 billion Yuan (15 bn USD) in alternative fuel vehicles over the next ten years.

The 2011 Energy Survey is still open for participation for members of the public to give their input on the future of energy and compare their views with those of energy market decision-makers. Take the survey. You can also view a detailed list of the survey’s conclusions and watch related videos. For a summary of the conclusions, see this infographic.

Gas Helps (Not Hurts) Renewables And 7 Other Reasons Gas Can Be Green

Last week was a good one if you happen to own a natural gas well. Two reports on the outlook for natural gas, both in the U.S. and worldwide, gave a glowing assessment of the fuel’s future prospects. The International Energy Agency (IEA) cheekily titled its report, “Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?” The conclusion: global gas use will rise, in one scenario, by more than 50 percent by 2035. So, yes, it would seem the “golden age” is nigh. Meanwhile, the U.S.-centric report from the M.I.T. Energy Initiative, “The Future of Natural Gas” blasted critics who claimed that gas, when it comes from shale formations, is worse for the environment than coal.

Of course, your impression of these reports may differ if you’re a climate change activist rather than, say, a Chesapeake Energy shareholder.

The IEA report, for example, concluded that increasing use of gas puts greenhouse gas emissions on a trajectory to stabilize at 650 parts per million, which would bring a long-term temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius. This figure, by any measure, is an unacceptably high level of warming and made Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, very unhappy: “Absent a high CO2 price,” Romm wrote, “gas displaces as much low-carbon electricity as it does high-carbon coal.” But there are many reasons to think Romm and IEA are being overly pessimistic. While it’s clear that an elevated carbon price – for example, a carbon tax – would incentivize the adoption of renewable energy, gas could, in the near term, mean the end of coal as a major fuel source. It can encourage the adoption of renewables along a realistic timeline – one that allows green technology to catch up with green ambition. Here are some reasons why:

1. Natural gas enables renewable energy. Natural gas power plants can fire up quickly and adjust their power output rapidly. That makes them the ideal dance partner for wind and solar, which are variable energy sources. There may be a time in the next few decades when renewable resources don’t need fossil fuel backup, but we’re not there yet.

2. Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) mandate renewables. A growing number of states and countries are requiring a certain percentage of wind, solar and other non-fossil fuel on the electrical grid. In California, for example, that target is 33 percent renewable energy by 2020. In the European Union, the target is 33 percent by 2020. As long as legislators hold the line on those mandates, natural gas can’t crowd out renewables.

3. Integrated Solar Combined Cycle is crazy efficient. Modern natural gas plants working in combined cycle – a configuration that uses waste heat to drive a steam turbine – have efficiency ratings in the upper 50 percent/60 percent range. Introduce concentrated solar power (CSP) to the equation and efficiency can shoot up to 70 percent. How? CSP uses mirrors, or heliostats, to direct sunlight that boils liquid in a central tower. The steam then drives a turbine to create electricity. In this new configuration, the CSP can share the steam turbine and increase the efficiency of the system without burning any more fuel. General Electric, this magazine’s sponsor, has teamed up with CSP pioneer eSolar to introduce this technology.

4. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is advancing. CCS is often discussed in conjunction with coal but the technology, which involves storing carbon dioxide from power plants underground, has perhaps even more potential for natural gas

This technology actually works – it’s been tested and proven at multiple sites – but is still too expensive to deploy at scale. While some in the environmental community think utility-scale CCS is a Macguffin, others believe it has enormous potential for decarbonizing energy if costs can be brought down.

5. Methane emissions from natural gas can be curbed. Recent attacks on natural gas have focused on leaks of methane, the principal component of gas and a potent greenhouse gas, during its lifecycle – the drilling, transportation and end use. While the most dire scenario of lifecycle emissions has been discredited by some researchers, methane emissions remain a problem. But it’s possible to recapture the leaking methane and there is an incentive for industry to do it, since this is fuel that can be sold.

6. Gas plants can, and likely will, knock out old coal plants. This is a point made in the IEA report but it’s worth stressing. In the U.S., tightening emissions regulations will make coal plants expensive to retrofit and natural gas plants, which emit about half the carbon dioxide, will likely pick up the slack. The emissions savings in the United States could be 150 million tons of carbon per year if 66 gigawatts of coal plants are replaced, according to one estimate. Just Thursday, one utility, American Electric Power of Ohio, announced plans to shut down five coal-fired plants by 2014 to comply with the new guidelines.

7. There is a lot of idle natural gas capacity on the grid. Those power plants are of a relatively recent vintage – most were built in the 1990s – so they’re efficient. This means that the emissions savings from natural gas are already built into the system, they just need to be activated. M.I.T. researchers believe total carbon emissions in the U.S. could decrease by 8 percent if natural gas plants are utilized at a higher level.

8. China has a lot of natural gas, which is a good thing. For all the talk about China’s renewable power ambitions, right now coal is the superpower’s fuel of the future: gas is expected to represent 63 percent of primary energy consumption by 2015. Continued dependence on coal will have disastrous consequences both for carbon emissions and for pollution in China’s already smoggy megacities. Tapping China’s vast gas resources could help make cities cleaner and electricity generation less carbon intensive.

Article appearing courtesy Txchnologist.

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