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Renewable power for China: Past, present, and future

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Abstract

This paper briefly examines the history, status, policy situation, development issues, and prospects for key renewable power technologies in China. The country has become a global leader in wind turbine and solar photovoltaic (PV) production, and leads the world in total power capacity from renewable energy. Policy frameworks have matured and evolved since the landmark 2005 Renewable Energy Law, updated in 2009. China’s 2020 renewable energy target is similar to that of the EU. However, China continues to face many challenges in technology development, grid-integration, and policy frameworks. These include training, research and development, wind turbine operating experience and performance, transmission constraints, grid interconnection time lags, resource assessments, power grid integration on large scales, and continued policy development and adjustment. Wind and solar PV targets for 2020 will likely be satisfied early, although domestic demand for solar PV remains weak and the pathways toward incorporating distributed and building-integrated solar PV are uncertain. Prospects for biomass power are limited by resource constraints. Other technologies such as concentrating solar thermal power, ocean energy, and electricity storage require greater attention.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Eric Martinot

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  1. Eric Martinot
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Correspondence to Eric Martinot.

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Dr. Eric Martinot is senior research director at the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo, research fellow at the Worldwatch Institute, and senior visiting scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He served as research director and lead author for the widely read REN21 Renewables Global Status Report from 2005 to 2008, and continued as lead author from 2008 to 2010. He is on the editorial board of the journal Energy Policy and a chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy. From 2000 to 2003, he was a senior energy specialist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and renewable energy program manager for the Global Environment Facility. He likewise served as adjunct professor at the University of Maryland from 2002 to 2004. Author of 70 publications on sustainable energy, he holds degrees in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley and in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Martinot, E. Renewable power for China: Past, present, and future. Front. Energy Power Eng. China 4, 287–294 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-010-0120-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-010-0120-z

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