Analysis of the market penetration of clean coal technologies and its impacts in China's electricity sector
Introduction
China, with nearly 10% annual economic growth in the past two decades, has already become the world's second greatest energy consumer. As the main domestic energy resource accounting for 70% of energy demand mix (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2006), coal plays the most important role in China's energy strategy especially for electricity sector. China reserves 1003 billion tons of coal, and coal production has surged since the start of the decade in response to strong demand, reaching 2.3 billion tons in 2006 (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2007). About 46% coal consumption is for generating electricity to meet the rapid demand growth. In the year 2005, China's electricity sector generated 2497.5 TWh, almost two times as the year 2000 (China Electric Power Committee, 2006). At the same time, the installed capacity reaches 517 GW, just behind the United States, ranking second in the world (China Electric Power Committee, 2006). Coal-fired generations account for about 75% of total capacity. It is expected that coal-fired generations will increase at an average rate of 4.9% per year, while total generation is projected to be tripling by the year 2030 (China Energy Research Institute and National Development and Reform Commission, 2004). The surprising expansion requires about 2939 million metric tons of coal then, two times as much as in the year 2005 (IEA, 2007).
However, behind the great achievement, exploration and utilization of large amount of coal at low efficiency in electricity sector has already brought severe problems such as resource depletion and environment degradation. Sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are caused by direct combustion of coal with weak pollutants control in China's electricity sector. China is now the world's greatest SO2 emitter and the second largest CO2 emitter. The emission of SO2 and energy-related CO2 reach 26 million tons and 5101 million tons in the year 2005, respectively (IEA, 2007). The trends of China's electricity sector are summarized in Table 1. Currently, about 30–40% of China's territory, especially the southwest, is suffering from acid rain and respiratory system disease are continuously increasing. Moreover, it is predicted that China would surpass the United States to become the world's top CO2 emitter by the year 2009 (IEA, 2007) and have deeper impact on global warming. Therefore, to eliminate airborne pollutants and to deal with the international requirement of carbon emission reduction and to meet the target in the coming post-Kyoto, if China possibly becomes a member, would be huge challenges to Chinese government (China Energy Research Institute and National Development and Reform Commission, 2004).
As a countermeasure, a series of policies is implemented such as developing the increased use of nuclear power, hydro power and renewable power. Nevertheless, considering the resource availability and technology maturity, even if other alternatives achieve their upper limit of development, the situation that coal will still be dominant for power generations for a considerable time in the future would not be changed (Steenhof and Fulton, 2007). In that sense, development of coal-based technologies could become a possible solution.
There are several problems existing in coal-fired generation in China's electricity sector. First, China owns great variation of coal resource and generally, the fuel coal quality is low. China's coal resource is classified as 29% bituminous, 29% sub-bituminous and 16% lignite (Attwood et al., 2003). Moreover, the outdated technology results in low efficiency and serious environment problem. In spite of steadily improving to 33% in the year 2003, coal-fired efficiency of China is still lower than the United States (37%), Western Europe (39%) and Japan (42%) (Zhao and Gallagher, 2007). Under that situation, development of clean coal technologies, which are designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use, was on government's agenda. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan (the year 2001–2005), most clean coal technologies were included in 863 Program and several important tasks were identified. In electricity sector, super critical (SC), ultra-super critical (USC) integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), and pressurized fluidized bed combustion (PFBC) are technologies that are being utilized (Lu et al., 2008). The efficiency and emission factors of each clean coal technologies are summarized in Table 2.
Super (ultra-super) critical power generation coupled with pollution-control technology would be a prior choice because it is technically mature and China has mastered the key technologies. Currently, the efficiency of super critical and ultra-super critical is around 44% and 40%, respectively. Compared with other CCT technologies, super (ultra-super) critical power generation can be easier commercialized and manufactured on a large scale. There are many operating units existing around the world and the risks to investors and producers are quite low (US Department of Energy, 2007). Until the year 2005, the capacity of super critical is 11 GW and more than 100 GW is ordered in China. Also, about 20 GW of ultra-super critical is under construction.
As one of the coal gasification technologies, IGCC is considered as the most excellent clean coal technology for its high efficiency, near-zero emission, well adoption to all types of coal, easier connection with carbon capture system and lower water requirement. Also, along with electricity production, IGCC is able to co-produce other commercially desirable products through the coal–gas process. In China's case, due to the reality that fuel coal quality is low and most coal mines are located in the area meeting huge water problem, IGCC is suitable. Research on IGCC in China started form 1970s, and eventually, in October 1997, China's first IGCC demonstration power plant involving two 300–400 MW units is constructed. Until now there are more than 10 new units waiting for approval, which shows the great interest of IGCC by Chinese government. The current barrier to the adoption of IGCC is the high capital cost and low reliability. According to China State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) (1999), there would need to be at least 20% reduction in capital cost for IGCC to be competitive.
By using the fluidized bed combustion technology with higher than atmospheric pressure (5–20 bar), the potential of PFBC plant efficiency could achieve up to 45%. Also, PFBC has the advantages of high SO2, low-NOx emissions and the ability to burn low-quality fuels, while the capital cost is lower than IGCC. However, due to the constraints of boiler's material, the real efficiency is difficult to be raised. Also, the process of increasing pressure requires a large amount of energy therefore PFBC does not performance well in cost-effectiveness aspect. In China, research of PFBC started from the year 1981 and two 100 MW demonstration plants are under construction.
Based on a scenario exercise by establishing China's electricity model and using a multi-period market equilibrium model (Market Equilibrium and Technology Assessment Network Modeling System (META Net)), this paper mainly discusses how much market penetration clean coal technologies (in this paper, ultra-super critical, IGCC and PFBC are considered) would gain if new policy instruments such as stricter environment regulations or larger amount of subsidy are implemented. Also, the social–economic impacts of introduction of clean coal technologies will be quantified.
Section snippets
Energy modeling and META Net approach
Modeling has been an integrated tool for national energy planning since the mid-1970s. At that time, the main issue was coping with the first oil embargo. More recently, global warming has become one of the most significant topics for decision-makers. Just as physical models which can predict the impact of increased carbon show the economic and technical impacts of alternative economic strategies to minimize emissions.
There are several previous analyses using scale models for China at the
Scenario design
One reference scenario and three policy scenarios are explored in this research. Reference scenario design is based on assumptions of development of China up to the year 2032. Policy scenarios design is associated with the current or future possible policies.
Results
In this section, the results of the scenario analysis are presented. This includes the changes in energy, environment and economic aspects.
Why CCTs are good choices and the reasonable developing path of CCTs
Having its unique resource status that China never had large reserves of oil or natural gas, coal is undoubtedly the dominant resource in the country especially in electricity sector. Considering the resource abundant and price, this situation is impossible to be changed in the near future (Steenhof and Fulton, 2007). For example, although natural gas combined cycle generations show the most excellent performance in both efficiency and emission aspects, constrained by resource price and
Conclusions
Based on the modeling results in this study, several conclusions can be summarized. China's growing economy strongly depends on use of coal and will remain so for a long time. As for the electricity sector, if only considering the economic factor, due to its cheap price and short construction cycle, the demand of conventional pulverized coal generations with FGD would increase significantly and dominate the thermal electricity sector with the economy growth. However, the pulverized coal
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge Professor Zhongyang Luo, Zhejiang University, China, for the valuable constructive advices on this study.
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