Analysis of China's Renewable Energy Development under the Current Economic and Technical Circumstances

At present, the development of renewable energy relies mainly on government support. The government invests in a considerable number of projects to improve public welfare and to assist in poverty relief If China is to replace fossil fuels on a large scale with renewable energy sources, the production costs and prices of renewable energy must be brought down. All countries are facing the challenge of moving to a more secure and low-carbon energy system without weakening economic and social development. In this regard, China is facing an even greater challenge in terms of economic cost, as cheap coal remains the main energy form. Technical innovation and industrialization in the area of renewable energy is an important means of lowering cost. China is in for a period of high-speed development of its economy and the rising demand for energy is irreversible. If the technical progress and development speed of renewable energy lags behind the growth in demand, it will be difficult to realize the improvement of its energy structure.

Will auctioning promote the renewable energy generation in China?

Renewable energy generation,as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change,will play a central role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving China's goal of carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutral before 2060.However,the impact of carbon quota auctions on renewable energy generation has not been sufficiently discussed.The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether China can rely on quota auctions to increase renewable energy generation in the short term,and to demonstrate which is more effective in promoting renewable energy development,policy enforcement or auction constraints?The improved neo-trans-log production model,the multiobjective linear programming model and the dispatch heuristic were used to predict additional emission reduction cost,optimized power mix with different auctioning rates,with economic development,technological progress and the unique characteristics of China's power generation industry being taken into consideration.The results show that the auctioning rate will have little influence on the optimized energy production structure,especially on the share of renewable energy resources;when the total on-grid electricity generation ranges from 7625 to 7926 billion kW h and the auctioning rate ranges from 0% to 5%,policy enforcement will influence the generation of renewable energy to a greater extent than auctioning in the near future.

Potential and policy issues for sustainable development of wind power in China

This paper presents a macroscopic view on the prevailing policy and potential issues in respect of the sustainable wind power development in China.It starts by analyzing the characteristics of wind power resources and pin-pointing the relationship between the regulatory policies and various economic,taxation,legal and grid integration attributes relating to the wind power development.Then it follows by analyzing the status quo and capabilities of the wind power manufacturing industry in China including its operational efficiency and grid integration standards.The economic and environmental benefits are estimated by relating to the associated costing analysis in respect of the major contributing factors such as manufacturing,operational and financial factors.Results of the associated benefits analysis indicate that the use of the wind power generation helps to save a significant equivalent amount of standard coal consumption resulting to reduction of emission effectively.Finally,the potential of wind power development in China is shown to be affirmative and the sustainable energy policy is effectively implemented in China.

Will biomass be used for bioenergy or transportation biofuels? What drivers will influence biomass allocation

Potential competition for biomass for current and future bioenergy/biofuel uses in Brazil, Denmark,Sweden and the USA were compared. In each of these countries, bioenergy and biofuels are already important in their energy mix. However, there is limited competition for biomass between bioenergy(heat/power/residential/industrial) and transportation biofuel applications. This situation is likely to continue until advanced biofuel technology becomes much more commercially established. In each of these countries, biomass is predominantly used to produce bioenergy, even in those regions where biofuels are significant component of their transportation sector(Brazil,Sweden and USA). The vast majority of biofuel production continues to be based on sugar, starch and oil rich feedstocks, while bioenergyis produced almost exclusively from forest biomass with agricultural biomass having a small, but increasing, secondary role. Current and proposed commercial scale biomass-to-ethanol facilities almost exclusively use agriculture derived residues(corn stover/wheat straw/sugarcane bagasse). Competition for biomass feedstocks for bioenergy/biofuel applications, is most likely to occur for agricultural biomass with coproduct lignin and other residues used to concomitantly produce heat and electricity on site at biofuel production facilities.