The world’s biggest dam holds back a vast reservoir up to 175 meters deep and stretching back 660 km along the Yangtze River in central China.
The dam was built to house 26 generators capable of producing 84.7 million kilowatts of electricity annually.
Although it was conceived long before climate change became a global issue, the Three Gorges project is a key part of China’s drive to reduce coal use and increase the nation’s hydroelectric power capacity to 300 million kilowatts by 2020.
Building scores of hydro, wind and solar projects, along with a major expansion of the country’s nuclear power industry, should help it to meet a target of reducing carbon intensity per unit of gross domestic product by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020.
More than 90 percent of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, Hu Xiulian, an energy researcher at the government’s National Development and Reform Commission, told the DPA.
The government’s long-term measures to reduce coal consumption should lead a big drop in the percentage of electricity produced from coal by 2020, and an increase to 15 percent in energy produced from non-fossil sources, Hu said.
“In the situation of energy saving, the installed capacity of coal-fired power stations will take up 60 percent, and in a low carbon situation it will be 47 percent,” he said, referring to two different scenarios mapped out by experts.
Like the Three Gorges project, several of the Chinese renewable energy schemes are the biggest in the world of their type.
Last month, US firm First Solar Inc. signed an agreement to build what could become the world’s largest solar power plant in the Odos area of China’s Inner Mongolia region, a 2,000-megawatt plant scheduled for completion in 2019.
The First Solar deal symbolizes the ruling Communist Party’s commitment to move away from a heavy reliance on coal and oil, particularly since Ordos is one of China’s largest coal-producing areas.
The northeastern city of Fuxin, once a major coal-mining area, is China’s first pilot area for transformation into a “green economy” dominated by wind power farms.
And in one of its largest and most notoriously unsafe coal-mining regions, the northern province of Shanxi, the government will try to control the supply of coal by forcing smaller mines to join large state-run groups. But another giant energy project underway in Ordos shows that China will continue to rely on coal for decades to come.
The Shenhua coal group is testing a coal liquefaction plant designed to produce up to 3 million of diesel oil, gas and other chemicals annually.
Company officials told state media that the plant could run for 100 years, since it lies over the world’s eighth-largest coalfield in Ordos, which has proven reserves of 223.6 billion tons.
Shenhua is also developing China’s first carbon capture and storage project at the Ordos plant.
But Hu sees such technology as decades away for most of China’s coal users.
“Carbon capture technology will not be adequate in 2020,” he said.
“In the power industry, it may come after 2025 or 2030.”
The announcement last month of voluntary reduction of carbon intensity was welcomed by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.
Greenpeace estimated that the cut of up to 45 percent in China’s carbon intensity from 2005 to 2020 would be equivalent to a reduction of 15 percent to 30 percent.
“Given the urgency and magnitude of the climate change crisis, China needs stronger measures to tackle climate change,” said Yang Ailun, head of the Climate and Energy Campaign for Greenpeace China.
“The biggest problem for climate change is China’s over-dependency on coal,” Yang said.
Other critics said China’s target only reflected its ongoing policies to curb carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.
While emissions per unit of GDP will fall, the economy is expected to continue rapid annual growth of up to 8 percent, meaning that China’s carbon emissions will not peak until 2030 at the earliest according to most forecasts.
Yang said the government had so far pursued only “cheap options” such as closing some high-emission factories and power plants.
But she admits that the scale of coal production means the government faces a “big challenge” in local implementation of its programs to curb carbon emissions.
Many poor areas are economically dependent on coal mining and related industries, while large Chinese companies could also resist moves to curb carbon emissions, Yang said.
“Resistance at the local level will definitely be a concern.”
