National Government Moves to Break Renewable Energy Bottleneck

China’s capacity of photovoltaic (PV) power will increase by 86.5GW by 2020, while wind power will increase by 110.41GW, as detailed in Guiding Opinions on Implementation of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Industry that the National Energy Administration (NEA) recently issued.
However, in some places, a large quantity of water, wind and solar energy is wasted instead of being used to generate power, due to weak facilities to consume or transmit. To remedy this while expanding local markets power stations must deliver more electric power, via national power grids – trans-provincial, trans-regional extra-high voltage power transmission channels in particular. Related departments will supervise channels without detailing proportions of electricity from renewable energy sources.
PV power capacity will be up by 22.4GW this year, 21.9GW next year, 21.1GW in 2019 and 21.1GW in 2020. Local governments are free to regulate expansion plans in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Fujian, Chongqing, Tibet and Hainan, but no expansion plans are made for Gansu, Xinjiang and Ningxia, where PV power is underused to a great extent.
Insufficient subsidy is another obstacle for the renewable energy industry. The government will definitely enrich channels to support financially, but meanwhile enterprises should upgrade technologies, cut production costs and finally reduce the need for subsidies. NEA and related departments will make more stringent technology standards for PV products, urging enterprises to adopt more advanced techniques and decommission outdated facilities.