Five Major Strategies Cope with Five Major Energy Challenges

By Ni Weidou   Academician, the Chinese Academy of Engineering

The problem of energy and environment related to energy has
become a worldwide focus of attention in recent years. Due to
the shortage of per-capita energy resources, the limitation in
environmental capacity and the fragile ecology in the western
region, the problem of energy and environment is especially
serious in China. The GDP in China is developing at an annual
rate of around 10%, the energy consumption is increasing
drastically and the environment and ecology are deteriorating
with each passing day. The development mode based on the
unplanned and predatory extortion to nature can not last long
and has caused serious and irreversible consequences today.
Penalties by the nature have already shown themselves and will
become even heavier in future.

    1  Several unchangeable facts

Coal is and will remain to be the main energy in China (up to
2050 or even later). Although its proportion in the energy mix
will have a gradual reduction (from 75% down to around 60%), its
total consumption will still increase.

The proportion of coal used in power generation will increase
from 50% today to more than 70%.

The mining and the direct combustion of coal have already induced
serious ecological and environmental pollution. More than 70%
- 80% of SO2, NOx, Hg, granular substances and CO2 are generated
in the direct combustion of coal.

Oil resources are in short supply. China imported around 190
million tons of crude oil and oil products in 2005 and the
dependence on imports reached 48%. It is estimated that the
import amount will be 250 million tons in 2010 and the dependence
rate will exceed 50%. A series of energy supply security problems
will be triggered.

In the direct combustion of coal, the emission reduction of
greenhouse gases can hardly be achieved in view of technology.
The trapping of CO2 with a concentration of 13% -14% from
large-volume flue gas in power plants would consume a great deal
of energy and the power generation efficiency would be down by
around 10 percentage points. The emission of greenhouse gases
in China already holds the second place worldwide and still keeps
increasing in recent years. If the situation remains unchanged
for ten years or a little longer, China will surpass the United
States and hold the first place in the world.

Renewable energies (mainly wind energy, solar energy and biomass
energy) can hardly occupy a considerable proportion in the
energy mix balance before 2020. China's situation is widely
different from European countries. In some European countries
their total energy consumption has no longer grown (or grew at
a small rate) and renewable energies are replacing fossil
energies being used there today. China, however, still has a
drastic growth of the total energy consumption. The capacity
added each year in power generation equipment (mainly coal-fired
power plants) alone is approximately 60 - 80 million kW,
exceeding three times of the capacity of Yangtze River Gorges
generation  projects. In such a fast increasing amount, the role
renewable energies can play is very limited.

    2  Five major severe challenges

(1) Rapid increase of the total demand

The GDP is planned to be quadruped from 2000 to 2020 and the
energy consumption will be doubled. It means that the elasticity
coefficient of energy should be 0.5. In the past three years,
however, the elasticity coefficient is more than 1.3. That is
to say, the demand for energy will be far more than what is
planned. Judging from the development trend, the industry in
China has entered the stage of heavy industry. Based on the
historical rule for the development of various countries in the
world, the stage of rapid energy consumption growth seems
impossible to be bypassed. The problem is whether China is able
to meet such a huge demand for energy, whether China has enough
environmental capacity to accept the pollution and how China
should cope with the situation.

(2) Shortage of liquid fuels   

The dependence on imported oil in China is becoming heavier. How
can China guarantee energy safety? How can China accelerate oil
substitution? How the automobile industry and the petrochemical
industry use innovative development modes to cope with the
situation? China should use the opportunity of vehicle
substitute fuels to open up a road of innovation.
   
(3) Seriousness of environmental pollution

Eighty percent of pollutants such as SO2, NOx, Hg and CO2 are
generated in the utilization of fossil energies, especially the
direct combustion of coal. 30% - 40% of regions in China
(especially the southwest region) have been experiencing acid
rain and diseases of respiratory systems are increasing. A topic
is how big the environmental capacity in China is to "tolerate"
such pollutants.

(4) Emission reduction of greenhouse gases

More than 25 billion tons of CO2 is emitted in the world a year.
In more than 150 years of industrialization the CO2
concentration in atmosphere has increased from 280 ppm (part per
milliard) to 380 ppm and is still increasing at a rate of 3 ppm/a
today. Greenhouse gases will bring catastrophic consequences to
the earth. The whole world is therefore adopting various
measures to reduce the emission of CO2. China already became the
37th signatory to the "Kyoto Protocol" in 2002. As a responsible
big country China will shoulder the task of reducing the emission
of a certain amount or even a big amount of greenhouse gases in
a short-term. From today, therefore, China should start to
seriously consider strategies, technologies and policies
related to the stepwise emission reduction of CO2 in China.
Otherwise, China would have to pay a greater price in the next
several decades.
   
(5) Huge demand for energy in rural areas and urbanization

A considerable amount of farmers have not got sound energy
services by now. They still rely on local agricultural refuses
(stalks and grasses) as major energy. In some places they are
even felling forests and damaging ecology. Besides, the
urbanization in China is advancing at an annual rate of 1%.
Nearly 10 million people are settled in new urban areas each year.
The per-capita energy consumption for urban residents is 3.5
times the per-capita energy consumption for rural population.
Where should such a huge portion of energy addition come? How
can China deliver modern energy services conforming to national
conditions to vast rural areas and new medium/small urban areas?
It is an important component of the overall energy strategy.
    These five points are severe challenges China is faced with
in energy sector. Energy strategies, energy science and
technology and energy policies should all take these five points
as basis.

    3  Several important strategies

The problem of energy and environment is huge and complicated.
It covers science, technology, culture, historical tradition,
education, diplomacy and politics. These aspects are also
interlocked and interactive. This report only involves some
strategies from the aspect of technology only.

(1) Emphasis on energy conservation

Although China has insufficient per-capita resources and