The State Grid Corporation of China, which covers over 80% of the country’s power grid, has raised its planned investments for this year to a record-high of $82.7 billion (600 billion Chinese yuan) to boost transmission lines from the key renewable-generation centers to demand hotspots.
The corporation has recently lifted by 13% its budget spending for 2024, according to the Economic Information Daily cited by Bloomberg.
China is looking to ease grid bottlenecks as soaring capacity installations of solar and wind power need to be connected to the grid to deliver clean energy.
China has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 and to see a peak in its carbon emissions by the end of this decade.
The country is the global leader in renewable energy spending, but it’s also one of just a few major economies still approving and building coal-fired capacity.
Energy security and the need for stable power generation during peak demand to back the growing economy and supply stability precede concerns about emissions.
Despite continued growth in coal-fired power generation, China reached a momentous milestone in clean energy in the first half of this year, as rising hydropower, solar, and wind output pushed down the share of coal in power generation to below 60% for the first time ever.
This year, double-digit growth in China’s hydropower output pushed coal’s share of electricity generation down to below 60%.
Coal-fired output continued to rise, as did all other power sources amid growing electricity demand in China. But the rise in coal generation was outpaced by much higher increases in hydropower and solar output.
China continues to be the undisputed global leader in solar and wind capacity installations as it is currently constructing twice as much renewable power capacity as the rest of the world combined, think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said in a report earlier this month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
