China continues to green light multiple renewable energy projects in an effort to lessen its dependence on fossil fuel sources. The country's power capacity using renewable power sources, such as wind, solar, hydro, and biomass farms, increased by 12 percent in 2018. The country aims to further increase that number this year with more projects now underway.
The country has been aggressively pushing for more renewable power sources as part of its drive to slowly get rid of its dependency on coal and oil. The government's "energy revolution" program also aims to decrease the country's pollution output by a significant amount and to lessen its contribution to the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2018, China's total power capacity coming from renewable sources increased to 728 Gigawatts. The power comes mainly from multiple plants around the country producing electricity from natural sources. This includes power production from geothermal, hydro, biomass, solar, and wind power plants.
According to the National Energy Administration, the increased power capacity from renewable sources now accounts for 38.3 percent of the country's total power capacity. The latest installation came in the form of additional wind farms, which contributed 20.59 Gigawatts of power to the grid. Majority of the farms are located in the northwestern part of China in regions of Xinjiang and Gansu.
New solar farms installed last year also contributed a total of 44.3 Gigawatts of power. A new hydro-electric power plant in the southwestern part of China has also recently been completed and it is expected to add an additional 8.54 Gigawatts of power.
There have been some concerns from grid operators of a possible lack of capacity if the current trend continues. The NEA has mentioned that it will gradually ramp up its installation of new renewable power plants at a reasonable pace. This is apparently to give grid operators ample time to set up additional infrastructure to handle the added output. Grid operators will have to catch up and increase their transmission capacities in order to ensure that the power generated from the new sources is not wasted.
Despite the increase in renewable energy sources, China is still largely dependent on coal power plants. Power generated from these plants accounts for 80 percent of the country's power capacity. However, the country has added numerous countermeasures to lessen the emissions of its existing power plants. By the end of 2018, the majority of the country's coal power plants have implemented new "ultra-low emission" technologies that significantly lower their impact on the environment.
