China Struggles with Surplus Green Energy Production

China, the biggest source of climate-warming greenhouse gasses, has pledged to raise total wind and solar capacity to 1,200 gigawatts by 2030, almost double the current rate, with plans to build large-scale renewable energy bases in northwestern desert regions. China's total renewable energy consumption is set to reach about 1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent (TCE) by 2025.

While this is extremely good news, the capacity of the grid to assimilate or store surplus renewable energy is meager. This has resulted in the wastage of green energy in some provinces in China. Economic Information Daily stated that nearly 12% of the power generated by wind turbines in Inner Mongolia in 2021 dissipated due to the grid being overloaded in capacity. Simultaneously, 10% of solar power in Qinghai could not be effectively employed. In the sparsely populated Gansu province, the utilization rate of wind and solar power could drop below 90% this year from nearly 97% in 2021. While many other countries suffer from insufficient green energy installations or grapple with the vagaries of weather in existing solar and wind farms, China’s problem is markedly different.

These statistics underline the issue of not factoring in all aspects of the green energy transition and considering different perspectives involved in the energy crisis. The solution to harness this bountiful supply of renewable energy is a suitable technology to effectively store and redistribute the energy when needed, as well as long-distance power lines to transmit the excess green energy to areas in need. Scaling up these solutions in China will have to take precedence over the unmitigated growth of renewable project installations. Any bottlenecks should not translate to a curtailment of green energy initiatives in the long run and necessary steps must be taken.

Like storage and distribution infrastructure for green energy, another solution that is often overlooked while considering the energy transition or solutions to the energy crisis is energy efficiency. It empowers one to do more with less and is the current need of the hour. Countries and economies can hugely benefit from shaving off a percentage of the power consumed in households and commercial spaces while they wait for an effective green energy transition. ENPOSS promises a great solution using FORCE to reduce your energy consumption by over 10-15%, and the vision of a cleaner, more sustainable future.