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China's Power Generation Report

Decent Essays

China Power Generation
China has no option but to continue using coal in generating electricity. Coal is the only viable resource in their disposal that can be used to generate electricity bearing in mind that in 2011 it was the largest coal producer, producing more than 3.5 billion metric tones of coal. This accounts for 135 of the worlds coal supply. Coal is used to fire 805 of China's power plants (Institute of Energy Research, 2013). There are other avenues that China can exhaust with regard to electricity generation like hydroelectric power. However, hydroelectric power has since lost its share in China's power generation market from 18% in 2010 to 12% in 2040(Institute of Energy Research, 2013). This comes even after hydroelectric power had injected an excess of 190 gigawatts of hydroelectricity generating capacity. This has relegated to the second position after coal (Institute of Energy Research, 2013). Nuclear power is ranked third. It is expected to add 149 gigawatts of nuclear capacity over 30 year projection into China's energy grid. The Fukushima incidence and other world nuclear incidences could be the reason why nuclear power is ranked lower relative to coal power. This may be because apart from the environmental concerns that have been associated with coal use it has never caused an incidence of a magnitude of a nuclear disaster. Use of wind is also gaining currency in electricity generation. However, it is still ranked fourth after nuclear power because it

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