Is there a slowdown in the Chinese nuclear sector, as some observers have argued, ending nuclear power’s “last hope for growth”? No, says François Morin, Director China of the World Nuclear Association. Nuclear has experienced a temporary setback but is still set for strong growth the coming years.
Much speculation is made about nuclear power in China from the observation that no new construction authorizations have been delivered in 2016 and 2017. This is sometimes characterized as a “slowdown” in line with the rest of the world, giving reason to nuclear pessimists to announce the inexorable decline of nuclear power in the world. They say nuclear power has simply become too expensive, even for the state-owned enterprises in a country like China. But do the most recent facts corroborate such theory?
The National Energy Administration (NEA) issued a report on October 31 with detailed figures showing that electricity consumption, after a fall in 2015 (growth of just 0.5%) has fully recovered in 2016 and shown further growth in the first 9 months of 2017. Growth is now at 6.4%, equal to GDP growth itself.
Renewables have their shortcomings, requiring a large proportion of constant supply. But they also have direct environmental impact, playing a role in desertification growth and consuming a big share of rare earth resources
The main reason is that not only residential demand in the least developed regions has increased substantially (7.5%), but also energy-intensive industries such as chemical industries, mineral products, smelters and others saw energy use rise last year, up to an average 4%1.
Some observers had expected and hoped that “shifts from energy-intensive industries to services and worldwide policies to limit coal use intensify”2 had kicked in in China, all the more since at the end of 2016, China had itself an annual growth target for energy consumption of 2.5% on average during 2016-20203.
But recent news has highlighted that the reality is that the deep structures of national economy are not easily moved4.
Electricity growth versus GDP
Ref. Analysis of China National Bureau of Statistics data.
Coal consumption has grown, its contribution to electricity is around 67%. Coal efficiency has also increased, up to 315gCO2/kWh, but this is only 21g less than seven years ago. With a total of 963GW capacity installed by the end of September 2017, China still has more coal power than any country in the world. When oil and gas are added, thermal sources of electricity still represents some 74% of the mix, and their growth at 6.3% exactly follows national electricity growth!
Can renewables take the lead?
The impressive growth of wind energy over the last few years -and now solar too – has not affected the rather stable share of thermal. Production of electricity from wind has grown again substantially this year (25.7% over the first nine months) to overtake nuclear at 212.8 GWh against 183.4GWh. Wind now accounts for 4.5% of the mix.
But all this at a high cost: installed capacity increased by more than 25% in 2015 and again as much in 2016; however, in spite of efforts to increase it by 11% this year, the utilization rate stays at a depressing level of 5 hours/day utilization. The investment rate starts adapting to this reality and dropped by 14% this year. Solar, even with a 70% rise this year, remains behind, while hydro looks flat at stable 17% of the mix. At 330GW capacity hydro has reached nearly 70% of the whole country potential determined by geography and geology, and probably will never overpass 400GWe due to environmental concerns: in Sichuan people even believe that high density of water reservoirs has impacted the seismic potential of the area.
Variable renewable energy sources have their shortcomings in any system requiring a large proportion of constant supply. But they also have direct environmental impact, playing a role in desertification growth in western China and consuming a big share of rare earth resources in Inner Mongolia (World Bank5). In fast growing China huge wind farms and solar energy plans already present challenges in terms of land needed and efficiency. The more farms are added the more the rejection or curtailment rate will grow, due to the increased sensitivity of the grid to production variations. This is why the gap between installed capacity (9% of total) and actual kWh (4.5% of total) is only rising.
Based on current trends China is on track to overtake France in 2023 and USA in 2028, but, even more impressively, it should double this last figure again by 2040, representing then three times France’s capacity
At the same time overall electricity demand is growing and will continue to grow, as per capita electricity consumption is, in 2017, at 4435 kWh, still less than South Africa and 23% below UK. The 2030 target of 20% fossil-free energy remains accessible, provided that the electricity share in primary energy grows (more electric cars, robots, trains etc.) and that the share of clean sources in electricity production will also grow from 26% today to nearly 35-40%.
To achieve this kind of growth in clean power, nuclear power is the most reliable means. Nuclear electricity generation has grown by 29% in the first nine months of 2017, following a 25% increase in 2016. In this period the utilization rate or load factor increased 3% to 5379 hours (roughly 20 hours/day). That is to say, nuclear plants have produced more and better.
Yes, the original 12th 5 year-plan target of 58GWe operational in 2020 won’t be reached, but honestly, due to construction time, this is a fact known since end 2014 by all serious analysts. The pause in construction which followed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident means that this 58GW target should instead be obtained in 2022.
While perhaps unfortunate this delay can hardly be construed as a policy change. Further, the wish to achieve 150GWe in 2030 has been repeatedly expressed by major decision makers in the industry. For example, He Yu, chairman of CGN, has said: “At least 10 new reactors need to be launched each year in order to achieve the national goal of reducing greenhouse gases”6.
There has in fact never been an official state target for 2030, but it can be safely assumed that approximately 115 GWe should be operating by that time, then making China the world’s leading nuclear country. And at that time like now, China will also still be the first nuclear country in terms of reactors under construction!
Based on current trends China is on track to overtake France in 2023 and USA in 2028, but, even more impressively, it should double this last figure again by 2040, representing then three times France’s capacity. The current suspension of new authorizations is not a retraction of this program or a confirmation of “oversupply”. It’s a reasonable management of competition between products reaching maturity at the same time.
These robust companies have the means to ensure reliable research in all areas and to develop a variety of designs
AP1000 construction as well as EPR had to go through various obstacles (post-Fukushima accident reviews) and technical delays (primary pump/vessels anomalies), which gave the Hualong and CAP1400 designs the opportunity to catch up; these delays are now over with connection to the grid for both AP1000 and EPR expected within months. Once this is done authorization process can resume, either giving priority to AP1000 as per original plan of the 2006 national bid, or by promoting further the Hualong and CAP1400.
The overall picture is not blurry at all and can be accurately enough predicted: there will be 16 to 18 AP1000’s, 2 EPR’s (hopefully 4 for CGN), 2 more VVER’s and the rest (25~30GWe) shared by Hualong and CAP1400.
To what extent is electricity price an obstacle to development?
All Chinese nuclear plants offer competitive electricity prices. The actual selling price for nuclear electricity has been set at 0.43Yuans/kWh; it might rise soon, up to 0.45CNY/kWh. As a comparison the wind price is at 0.51, 0.54, and 0.61CNY/kWh depending on the regions (0.85 for offshore!) and solar is between 0.65 and 0.85CNY/kWh.
In China quantities are determined by regulated quotas not by prices. These quotas are fixed in each province taking into account various factors including recent carbon related policies, local supply balancing, local industry activity etc.
It is true that coal prices, except in two provinces this year, Guangdong and Hunan, are below the nuclear reference price. How could it be different in a country where building a coal power plant costs US$460/kW? This is 4 to 6 times lower than other technologies. And yet still, the nuclear selling price is not that far off.
As a corollary to the supposed intrinsic defects of a regulated market, it is often highlighted that the size and structure of large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) add additional harmful inertia to an insufficiently fluid market. However, to cope with this problem, the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has been actively restructuring SOEs in a bid to improve efficiency, with the number of central SOEs falling in 2017 to 98, down sharply from 196 in 20037.
This is partly done by merging companies, creating even bigger entities and enhancing monopolies. But the major nuclear companies have avoided this kind of merger; they remain healthy competitors that earn profits! In 2016 CNNC’s profit rose 32.4% versus 2015, its highest level ever. All indicators exceeded SASACs assessment targets.
CGN’s global revenue grew by 12% in 2015 up to 50.6BCNY (and profit rose by 18.2% to11.2BCNY) and reached 65.4BCNY in 2016 (again +29%). These figures do not support the gloomy picture drawn by skeptics. Somehow these SOEs, designated as a problem by itself, might be the solution to a complex problem of energy structure evolution in a low-carbon economy.
These robust companies have the means to ensure reliable research in all areas and to develop a variety of designs which cannot be described as an “uncertainty in type of reactor in the future”. Yes, the Chinese fleet is made up of a mix of Canadian, French, Russian, US and Chinese reactors or technologies. As the famous French political writer Benjamin Constant once noted “Variety is what constitutes organization; uniformity is mere mechanism”.
The CO2 emissions goal as well as industry requirements and electricity demand growth only make the realization of the nuclear program more urgent
Would the learning effect be the strongest characteristic of the nuclear industry, then all efforts should be made to unify the fleet. But specific factors limit the learning rate in the construction of nuclear plants. The diversity of Chinese designs is supported by the breadth of research institutes and supply chain factories. An intense localization process has been undertaken leading to 85% Chinese local content today against 30% in 2008. The Chinese have the capacity to build up to 40 units per year. Each big equipment manufacturing company, such as Shanghai Electric, Dongfang Electric, Harbin Electric, 1st and 2nd Heavy Industry, can supply 5 sets of key components per year.
Public acceptance is a complex issue that cannot be described through polls results, all the more since such polls have not been carried out in China. The Chinese people are now more susceptible to foreign attitudes, skepticism and anti-nuclear campaigns than they previously were. However the obvious cleanliness and positive safety records of nuclear are the basis for the general support of nuclear.
In conclusion one can see the current pause in new build authorizations as a normal trend following developments in the national economy and adjustment to the expected phases of industrial development. The “slowdown” is a theory built up on opportunistic data, in particular the tiny growth of GDP and energy in 2015. However, the CO2 emissions goal as well as industry requirements and electricity demand growth only make the realization of the nuclear program more urgent. A shift of few years does not undermine the decision, the construction and supply chain capabilities or the building up of technological competences.
Performance records of nuclear plants are very good. And we have not even mentioned that new projects for small modular reactors (SMRs) are being launched, a travelling wave reactor joint project is on track, a high temperature reactor is close to final installation, export projects are accumulating. Nuclear power is not a ‘last resort’ but has a strong future in China.
All data from China Electric Council (http://www.cec.org.cn), National Energy Administration (http://www.nea.gov.cn), National Bureau of Statistics (http://data.stats.gov.cn),
1 http://www.cec.org.cn/guihuayutongji/gongxufenxi/dianliyunxingjiankuang/2017-10-20/174187.html
2 ref. International Energy Outlook 2016 IEA
3 https://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/singapore/china-to-cut-annual-energy-consumption-growth-27745783
4 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/13/climate/co2-emissions-rising-again.html?smid=tw-share
&:http://blogs.platts.com/2017/05/02/china-coal-fired-power-generation-surprises-naysayers/
“Some energy market analysts have been quick to write off China’s growth potential as a market for thermal coal exports, advancing the argument that the Asian country is diversifying away from fossil fuels and into other energy sources such as solar and wind”
6Interview of He Yu, CGN chairman, March 6, 2017. http://www.cgnpc.com.cn/n471046/n471126/n471156/c1314955/content.html
7http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-08/29/content_31273321.htm
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Bob Wallace says
“Production of electricity from wind has grown again substantially this year (25.7% over the first nine months) to overtake nuclear at 212.8 GWh against 183.4GWh.”
Wind and nuclear were basically tied in 2012 at 96.0 TWh for wind and 97.4 TWh for nuclear. Since 2012 China has produced more electricity with wind than with nuclear each year.
Nuclear reached the 1 TWh threshold in 1993. Wind came on the scene much later, registering 1 TWh for the first time in 2003 but caught up with and passed nuclear in 2013 and has out produced nuclear each year since. In 2016 wind produced 13% more electricity than did nuclear.
It looks like wind will widen its lead in 2017, being 16% ahead at the end of the third quarter.
Solar entered the scene much later due to its very high price until recently. Solar crossed the 1TWh threshold in 2011 but is growing much faster than did wind and nuclear in their early years.
Solar has been growing at an early years rate roughly 2x that of wind and 5x that of nuclear.
With the rapidly falling prices of wind and solar it is going to be interesting to see how China allocates its energy spending going forward. China’s leaders seem to be fairly good a math.
Francois Morin says
To be fair and honest, according to official statistical data from Chinese government (http://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=A01) cumulative production of Solar since January 2017 is by end of October 53.38 TWh (39.3TWh in whole 2016). Growth is +70%/2016. However we included private solar production as stated by NEA, reporting therefore the most favorable figure of 1.8% of the mix.
The solar kWh price is not “falling” at all, but it is guaranteed at 175% of nuclear Kwh. Without this support it wouldn’t survive, even in China.
Bob Wallace says
OK, let’s talk about the cost of solar.
Unsubsidized solar in the US is now at an average cost of $0.05/kWh in the US (Lazard, 2017).
To say that solar could not survive in China with it’s access to very inexpensive Chinese solar panels and labor rates which are very much lower than US rates is pure bunk. Solar in other countries is as low as $0.02/kWh.
It may be that the price paid to solar projects in China is higher. There are two possible reasons.
1) China’s solar installation industry might not be mature enough and the government is supporting higher prices so that companies can establish themselves and bring down their internal costs.
2) China wants a lot of clean generation. The cost of air pollution both in terms of health costs and political ‘danger’ is high in China. The fastest way to close coal plants is to replace them with solar. Nothing else can bring significant amounts of electricity online in only months.
François Morin says
If 1) China wanted to promote Solar ‘as fast as possible’ and if 2) solar cost were so low,
then why would they set the selling price so high? It doesn’t make any sense. For the sake of spreading fast this wonderful CO2-free energy, they would accept lower margins and enable every province to buy it at a price lower than coal!!!
The truth is that they set the price so high, it’s for encouraging investors to keep investing in Solar, which costs a lot ; but companies are still complaining they don’t make money. The arrangement is just leading all parties to a deadlock
Bob Wallace says
We know that the installed cost of solar is very low so why not start there and work your way back up?
Helmut Frik says
If you waant to install things fast, a high price is requiret so investors accept high risks to install things fast, e.g. ordering material even before contracts for ground and poer connection are finalised, and to expand installation capacity faster than the 30% year to year which most industries can expand without extreme cost increases.
This also means that costs for installations in china are likely to fall significantly when growth (in percent year over year) will slow down compared to the nearly 100% of today. Because then people working in that job can learn how to do this job good and efficient, and projects can be built with more reasonable sequence of planning and construction, and based more on designs and contracts used more than once before.
China decreases the feed in tarifs regularily. But china also wants to reduce air pollution as fast as possible. And they want to increas their solar industry, most likely to make it fit for huge amounts of export of products and services in the future.
looks like solar installations in china this year are around 60GW, maybe more, and are likely to be higher again next year. So equivalent to more than 10 GW new nuclear this year, and even more in the next years.
jmdesp says
Nothing else can bring as many GW of capacity online in only months as solar, but in none of the countries where this kind of large deployment happened has solar been able to become a significant part of the mix at the end.
Germany has solar still at only 7% of the mix.
Bob Wallace says
Solar in China is growing at a very much higher rate than did nuclear. Nuclear got it’s start in 1993. Solar didn’t really start until 2010, 17 years later.
If we start from the time at which nuclear and solar each first produced 1 TWh of electricity in a year we see solar growing about 5x faster than did nuclear.
Bob Wallace says
“The investment rate starts adapting to this reality and dropped by 14% this year. ”
Globally investment rates in renewable have slowed. But installed capacities continue to increase year on year.
That is because the cost of renewables are rapidly dropping meaning that a grid can spend less and get more.
Utility solar dropped 20% 2016 to 2017. One could invest 14% less and still bring a lot more panels online than with the higher amount in 2016.
[…]
Jim Green says
The difference between a current World Nuclear Association (WNA) executive (Francois Morin – author of the above article) and a former WNA executive like Steve Kidd is that Morin has to promote industry viewpoints whereas Kidd can say what he wants.
In an August 2017 article in Nuclear Engineering International, Kidd notes that China’s nuclear program “has continued to slow sharply”, with the most striking feature being the paucity of approvals for new reactors over the past 18 months. China Nuclear Engineering Corp., the country’s leading nuclear construction firm, noted earlier this year that the “Chinese nuclear industry has stepped into a declining cycle” because the “State Council approved very few new-build projects in the past years”.
Kidd continues: “Other signs of trouble are the uncertainties about the type of reactor to be utilised in the future, the position of the power market in China, the structure of the industry with its large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the degree of support from top state planners and public opposition to nuclear plans.”
Over-supply has worsened in some regions and there are questions about how many reactors are needed to satisfy power demand. Kidd writes: “[T]he slowing Chinese economy, the switch to less energy-intensive activities, and over-investment in power generation means that generation capacity outweighs grid capacity in some provinces and companies are fighting to export power from their plants.”
Kidd states that nuclear power in China may become “a last resort, rather as it is throughout most of the world.” The growth of wind and solar “dwarfs” new nuclear, he writes, and the hydro power program “is still enormous.”
Chinese government agencies note that in the first half of 2017, renewables accounted for 70% of new capacity added (a sharp increase from the figure of 52% in calendar 2016), thermal sources (mainly coal) 28% and nuclear just 2%. In October 2017, Beijing announced plans to stop or delay work on 95 GW of planned and under-construction coal-fired power plants, so the 70% renewables figure is set for a healthy boost.
Kidd’s article is posted at http://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionnuclear-in-china-why-the-slowdown-5896525/
Steve Kidd says
While Francois is correct in stating that 115 GW of nuclear capacity in China by 2030 is still realistic, as time goes on, it’s looking more and more like a big stretch. It requires 5-6 new reactors a year between 2020 and 2030, and my feeling is that this is looking increasingly doubtful. There is clearly a big debate taking place in Beijing about how much nuclear China really needs and my feeling is that with the technical and economic problems surrounding the imported Gen III designs (look at CGN Power’s awful share price performance since its IPO) , the authorities are getting increasingly cautious. As my article in NEI highlights, China is now facing precisely the same negative issues that bedevil nuclear elsewhere in the world. The Chinese people are just as afraid of nuclear and the industry’s failure to deal with this (both in China and the remainder of the world) threatens to kill it.
François Morin says
Against the widespread commonplace that the most brutal decisions are made by the highest leaders regardless of opinions, debates have always been active in Beijing. A good illustration of this fact is a recent article by Ms. Wang Yinan, influential lady, opposing AP1000 fuel loading; then one can expect she will oppose the EPR and later Hualong under any pretext. It was predictable as she is a strong advocate and lobbyist for hydroelectricity, she says what she believes; this proves the existence of a debate, but does not say anything about the position of other leaders, or about the debate outcome.
Public opinion is largely another problem and cannot be surreptitiously proposed as the key explanation to what “kills nuclear”. What is frightening people today is pollution, jobs, revenues slow growth. The most threatened energy today is coal around cities, and wind energy nationally. The more it grows the more it shows its inefficiency
Bob Wallace says
“What is frightening people today is pollution, jobs, revenues slow growth.”
That does not mean that people are unconcerned about the danger of nuclear.
“The more (wind) grows the more it shows its inefficiency.”
That’s pure bull. Wind CFs continue to rise and costs continue to fall. Wind CFs in the US are now averaging over 40% and heading to 60%. Unsubsidized onshore wind now costs less than $0.03/kWh and the cost continues to drop.
China is lagging somewhat. They need to move to taller hub heights. And they need to build more transmission.
François Morin says
These concerns have been entirely and clearly exposed in the article and comments. The more we build Wind farms the more we have to build, even with well performing grids: The first 20GW can possibly compete with 20GW of whatever other source, but, as EU case shows it well (see comment below Dec 9 – 3:10) to “compete” or replace 100GW, you need…700GW!
Transmission upgrades are constantly built; +11% this year in trans-regional power transmission up to 311TWh. North region to East increased even by 50%. And so? Curtailment rate remains close to 30% in Xinjiang
Helmut Frik says
Yes, curtailment in Xinjiang has declined to 30%, down from 38%, and curtailment will fall further. What gives you clean energy faster: pland wind parks for 6 months, build them in 9 months and wait for two years for grid extensions to be able to exportall power also at high winds (and import wind and solar power from remote areas during times of low wind) or plan a nuclear reactor for 5-10 years, and build it for 10 years, but maybe have the grid connection ready when the plant starts producing power?
jmdesp says
315gCO2/kWh for coal !! What is that number ?? Is it per thermal kilowatt, before taking into account the efficiency ?
Bob Wallace says
“315gCO2/kWh for coal !! What is that number ??”
For every kWh produced by burning coal 315 grams of CO2 are emitted.
A measure of how much damage coal is doing to our climate.
Jan Veselý says
The number is a pure nonsense. Real world numbers for coal power plants varies between 800 gCO2/kWh and 1200 gCO2/kWh.
jmdesp says
Actually opposite to many other countries, almost all of the Chinese coal plant are very recent (some small ones that were barely 20 years old have already been replaced by larger more efficient units), so the Chine have almost only super criticial, and even a good number of few ultra supercriticial that reach about 50% efficiency. So numbers around 600 gCO2/kWh are very possible.
So the number is nonsense, but on the whole the article seems well researched and the precision about that number is high, so it’s really confusing what happened here. If it’s thermal kWh, the number is expected to almost never change, maybe some small variations depending on the coal quality.
BTW it’s not the same in India, there they are still currently building cheap inefficient plants with very little in the way of pollution filters.
Helmut Frik says
but it would need 100% efficiency to get electricity for just 315g CO2. Either it’s 315g C or its per thermal kWh.
Francois Morin says
typo pb: 350gCoal/kWh
The sentence says “efficiency”, which can mean only ‘coal’
jmdesp says
One mole of C is 12g, and one mole of CO2 is 44g, so 315 gC/kWh would be 1283 gCO2/kWh, which would be quite bad this time.
The comment of François is interesting, but we need to know the quality of the average coal burnt in China ?
Standard bituminous coal is 46–86 percent carbon, but the better quality wouldn’t be worth burning in a coal plant. At 60% carbon, the value given by the article results in 770 gCO2/kWh, and 705 g for 55% carbon.
François Morin says
The figure given by the National Energy Administration is not 315gCO2/kWh but is 315g of Standard Coal per kWh. From peat to anthracite the share of C in the coal varies from 50% to >90%.
Unfortunately I don’t know the “standard” referred to. However, yes, a ~70%C coal seems reasonable leading to ~800gCO2/kWh.
Francois Morin says
1) Who cares about capacity? Capacity is not a thing to be proud of, it is not a solution, it is the problem: a projection of 60% of renewables in 2030 in EU concludes “The development of 700 GW of wind and PV would lead to a reduction in conventional generation capacity in the order of 100 GW”. +700 against -100! (https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/Lot%203/CHERCHEURS/Portrait%20de%20chercheurs/summarystudyres.pdf). It is all the more a problem after environmental impact studies, incl. World Bank’s one, for sure not a “lobby”.
2) About freedom of speech. Freedom comes from the truth: irrefutable numbers, figures, statistics, graphs, results, and information from the ground (and the territory), not from opinion in the room. Someone who is his own employer, Bill Gates, made the same free observations and out of them, decided on important private investments that count on a reality of Chinese success and income.
David Walters says
I agree with Morin. “Capacity growth” is almost irrelevant [… text censored} Nuclear is around 90% capacity factor, wind in China…I haven’t seen the latest numbers is around 34% and solar remains 15 to 18%.
The reason [opponents of nuclear power] use only narrow ‘install’ prices is because they don’t like to talk about the costs of tying in a small 10MW windfarm on a remote mountain to the actual transmission grid. Usually…as been the actual case in China…the costs of transmissions *greater* than the cost to build the solar or wind farm. Wind and solar advocates ignore this on a more or less regular basis.
Also, Wallace [is wrong] when he said the “fastest way to shutdown coal is with solar”. Do tell? If solar is only running from around 1030am in Central China to around 2:30pm (1430hrs) at it’s “capacity” what makes up for the other 18 1/2 hours? China runs 24/7 not just before and after lunch.
Chinese planners know this. I’ve met with their versions of the ISO and they are hesistent about wind and solar for the variability of it. There are competing “lobbies” inside both the Communist Party specifcially and the general population more generally. Among my contacts the slow down in approvals is simply an ongoing organization of both component manufacturing issues (localization) and human resources…which IS a big problem…they need *thousands* of nuclear safety engineers, reactor operators and so on. The infrascture for these (heavy equipment manufacturing and atomic engineering univesities) are now beginning to really expand. I fully expect, not just “hope”, that the pre-Fukushima levels of planned, additionally planned and approved will be attained again. This is includes a “by the end of the Century” goal of 1500GWs of nuclear, most of that by fast reactors.
Bob Wallace says
David, it’s much cheaper to overbuild wind and solar and fill in what cannot be directly supplied with storage and dispatchable generation than to supply a grid with nuclear, storage, and dispatchable generation.
That’s simply a fact.
We will have to wait to see what China does. Right now they are installing wind and solar faster than nuclear. Wind has been generating more electricity per year than nuclear for the last five years and solar is expected to pass nuclear this year.
That’s electricity generated. Not nameplate capacity.
Francois says
That is, as usually, partially true. No, Solar is not to surpass Nuclear this year! 130 GWe capacity hardly makes, in China, 22GWe equivalent at full capacity, while 38GWe Nuclear equals 30GWe at 100% charge over the year.
China as any country in the world is limited to 17-18% of “renewable fuel”* energies mix (Solar+Wind) ; beyond that figure it’s just not manageable. Being today very low, this “renewable fuel” energy share has still some growth potential; however, the Chinese authorities support it not because of its economic efficiency, but because they want to give national base to an exportable industry. No one “renewable fuel” energy producer is profitable in China.
* Renewable energy doesn’t exist, nor in reality nor in any dream. Only ‘energy based on free renewable fuel’ exists, maybe…
Jim Green says
Still no sign of a pick-up in China’s nuclear program according to the IAEA: https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/
Here’s an excerpt from a March 2018 article: Is China losing interest in nuclear power?
chinadialogue researcher Feng Hao writes:
Policymakers may cite various strategic reasons for backing nuclear power but there is a question mark hanging over the sector’s future growth. China has 20 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity under construction but plans for additional capacity are being delayed. A 2020 target of 58 gigawatts of installed nuclear capacity now looks out of reach. The National Energy Administration did not approve any new nuclear plants between 2016 and 2017. In 2017, only three new reactors started operating.
Shi Lishan, head of the nuclear power office at the National Energy Administration, admitted at a meeting of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering last year that, “achieving targets set in the past now looks uncertain, with reactors that have been built and that are ready for fuelling and going into operation also on hold.”
Reasons for the shift, according to Shi, include mixed attitudes towards new nuclear power within government, and the over-supply that’s affecting China’s power generation sector. As China’s economic growth has eased, so too has the growth in electricity demand. In 2015, electricity consumption rose just 0.5%, the lowest in 40 years.
“Work out supply and demand and you can see that the market is unable to absorb any more nuclear power,” Kang Junjie, chief engineer with Dongdian Wanwei Technology (Beijing) told chinadialogue.
This leaves little room for expansion of electricity generation, meaning fierce competition between nuclear, solar, wind and hydropower. Globally, solar and wind are replacing nuclear power as the first choice for new power generation. This is true in China, too.
Cost is a key factor: the earlier nuclear power plants are now in the mid-to-late stages of their lifecycle, with operational and maintenance costs rising, according to Kang Junjie. Meanwhile, renewables are in the ascendant, with costs continuing to fall.
Analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that the cost of power from China’s onshore wind and solar will drop below that of coal in 2019 and 2021, respectively, suggesting that the cost advantage of nuclear power over renewables will only last a few more years.
Abridged from:
Feng Hao, 19 March 2018, ‘Is China losing interest in nuclear power?’, http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10506-Is-China-losing-interest-in-nuclear-power-?mc_cid=e08503abda&mc_eid=da6e209b80
David Walters says
Jim, part of the article from the China Diologue site states a truism: “Speaking at a roundtable discussion last year organised by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Zhou Jie, an energy policy expert and secretary-general of the International Forum for Clean Energy (Macau), said that slowing demand for electricity will at least give China time to make adjustments to its power sector, including reassessing the future technology mix.”
This is the very last paragraph of the article.
I don’t doubt that at all. But the author of the *statement* is an ideologically driven anti-nuclear activists which are opposed to even large development projects. This sort of shows the perspective of their thought on this subject. Something not unimportant to note.
The idea that China is moving toward “decentralized” and regionalized energy production is utter nonsense. In fact, with the truly massive…biggest in the world…north-south high voltage trunk line (both HVDC and HVAC over 1million volts) just the opposite is true…especially with regards to the large blocks of multi-GW hydro and nuclear plants (with 4 or more reactors).
There is a strong myth about the decentralized nature of solar and wind. In fact, they are need the most sophisticated switching systems, system operator and transmissions (smart grid) tech there is in order to *centralize* the generation and wheel it many many miles to where the load is. This is a huge issue for example in California where I live and has and continues to create problems trying to wheel solar generated power from the south to the north. It’s even more an issue in China. China is creating the biggest and most centralized electricity transmission system in the world. The are doing this to wheel hydro (primarily) from southern hydro stations and stranded wind stations so they can be used to wheel the power to the north and, eventually, to the west.
Bob Wallace says
Of the 6,412 TWh electricity produced in China in 2017, 118.2 TWh was generated by solar (Wiki). That’s up from 66 TWh in 2016 (Wiki). A net increase of 52.2 TWh in a single year.
246.5 TWh was generated by nuclear in 2017 (China Nuclear Energy Association). That is 128.3 TWh more than generated with solar.
It would take solar installation at 2.4x the rate of 2017 for solar to pass nuclear (assuming no new reactors online in 2018).
First quarter 2018 solar installations were 22% higher than Q1 2017. Not high enough for solar to pass nuclear in 2018.
But don’t totally rule out solal taking third place this year. China has taken some emphasis from central/utility solar and put more backing into distributed (rooftop/end user) solar. First quarter 2018 China’s distributed solar segment increased by 217% (Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory).
Perhaps not 2018 but I’d bet by 2020.
Bob Wallace says
“China as any country in the world is limited to 17-18% of “renewable fuel”* energies mix (Solar+Wind) ; beyond that figure it’s just not manageable. ”
There is absolutely no truth in that claim, Francois.
The least expensive sources of energy, globally, are now wind and solar. The 2017 global average unsubsidized cost of wind was $45/MWh and for solar $50/MWh. Nuclear was $148/MWh (Lazard).
By overbuilding wind and solar the number of hours when demand is met only by wind and solar can be increased. Since wind and solar are so much cheaper than nuclear a very large amount of overbuilding (and curtailing) can occur before the cost of wind and solar approach the cost of nuclear.
If a country like China has a decent amount of hydro (or can trade power with hydro rich neighbors) wind and solar penetration can go quite high.
Denmark reached 44% electricity from wind in 2017.
I’ve run the data on California load/demand, solar production and wind production in 2017. If California was an isolated grid wind and solar could have reached an 80% penetration level with no storage or electricity from any other source.
The cost, using Lazard’s average of 47.5/MWh, would have been 95/MWh. Well below nuclear’s 145/MWh.
David Walters says
And yet, Bob, China is building out nuclear precisely because they need on demand power. Their plans are still to nuclearize their grid fairly extensively. As I noted only the install price is cheaper based on capacity. Solar and wind have no choice be to include back up and high (especially for wind…so much of which was ‘stranded’ in China) costs of transmission.
Let me qualify my point above, however about nuclearization of the PRC. Since wind and solar cannot shut down coal on a MWhr per MWher basis given in its variable nature but can lower coal usage only during times of solar peak and when the winds blows, China *is* still building out all forms of energy (including new coal plants discussed above in this thread…they have NOT stopped building only slowed down coal construction)….that a mixed generation grid is what they are viewing the grid to be by 2050. This is not unlike quite a lot of countries what want to see a mixed nuclear/hydro/gas/wind/solar grid…the proportions of which are determined by available technology and reliability.
If one talks with energy ministry officials, this is the *official* “party line”. And it is what they are doing.
David Walters says
I should add…before going to China, call your local embassy or consulate and make arrangements to meet a representative of the National Development & Reform Commission in Beijing. They will gladly provide a wealth of information for you but do arrange the meet up before you leave.
They have complained, though very mildly, that people in the west like the various “Green” websites that are pro-only-wind and solar do not give an accurate assessment of China’s electrical grid plans…they make it seems that China is “going solar and wind” when it is most demonstrably not. They give a very one sided view of China’s energy development. China’s priority, as anyone from the National Development & Reform Commission will tell you, is to provide energy and enough of it for the economy and people of their nation. They have pledged to do so with as much LOW CARBON sources…or what the ND&RC refer to as “clean energy”. This includes wind, tidal (yes, they are doing this as well though only a few FOK R&D stations), solar and nuclear. They correctly include nuclear because nuclear more than any of the others is the best to *phase out* coal. But they want ALL clean energy sources full stop.
Bob Wallace says
None of us know precisely what China will do in the future, we can listen to what they say they will do and watch what they actually do.
What we are seeing right now is acceleration of wind and solar installations and a drop in nuclear reactor construction starts. Whether this adjustment is predictive we do not know.
Might China resume building nuclear reactors at a higher rate? Perhaps.
Might China put even more emphasis on renewables and decrease their nuclear goals? Perhaps.
What is very clear is that the cost of electricity from wind and solar is much cheaper than electricity from nuclear reactors.
And while wind and solar are not 24/365 generators do remember that China has installed a lot of hydro. Hydro is a very dispatchable generator and an excellent fill-in for wind and solar.
In addition, overbuilding wind and solar can greatly increase the number of hours in which demand can be met with electricity directly from wind and solar farms. Since wind and solar are so inexpensive it can be the case that both can be greatly overbuilt at even with curtailment their cost can be a small fraction of the cost of nuclear.
Nigel West says
China’s best solar resources are located in the west, and wind far north of the country. So solar and wind power is not cheap due to the cost of transmission reinforcement over 1000s km needed to move that power to the major load centres in the east. Whereas nuclear can be built close to the load centres at an attractive price of around £0.05/kWh without needing costly extensive grid reinforcement.
Bob Wallace says
Let’s watch to see how that plays out.
I haven’t been able to find a wind map using 100 meter and higher hub heights. We’ve recently seen in the US that making towers taller opens up good wind resources in areas where we thought there was inadequate wind.
Helmut Frik says
The 23 power lines with 800kV-DC to 1100kV dc transporting 8-12 GW per System each did cost 88 billon $, and most of them would have been neccesary any way to build a stable countrywide grid which is able to mach changing supplys and demands independend of the way of power generation.
And the offer for 0,05 pounds per kWh is not yet on the market anywhere in case of nuclear power, as one can see from hinkley point and other projects.