China Targets 70 Gigawatts of Solar Power to Cut Coal Reliance

[OnePercenter]

Great Idea!

China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, plans to speed up solar power development, targeting a more than tripling of installed capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2017 to cut its reliance on coal.

The goal would be double a previous target set for 2015, according to a statement posted today on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website. China also plans to have 150 gigawatts of installed wind power capacity by 2017, 11 gigawatts of biomass power and 330 gigawatts of hydro power.

The plans come as the nation strives to get 13 percent of the energy it consumes from non-fossil fuels. Deadly pollution has forced the government to declare war on smog.

'War on smog' is so non-Republican.

China Targets 70 Gigawatts of Solar Power to Cut Coal Reliance - Bloomberg

 

[ScienceRocks]

I hope they keep building coal out in the country side. As I want to see my 500ppm!!!

 

[flacaltenn]

You don't replace coal plants with solar panels. You still need 80% of the daytime peak energy in the early evenings. Since it's China and they don't have truly independent energy providers, the government can just order the coal plants to idle during daytime peaks and use the solar WHEN IT IS AVAILABLE. But they can't shut them down during the day because it's takes a large fraction of a day to come to up to full speed.

So at BEST you can use MAYBE 10% solar to avoid building out that last bit of capacity to handle daytime peak. If it suddenly RAINS or SNOWS -- you are screwed. Because the backbone generation needs to be hydro or nat gas to come up to speed within minutes or an hour..