Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Thermal power generation in China, fuelled mainly by coal, fell at the beginning of the year, down in both January and February, official data showed, one of only a handful of times it has declined during that period in more than two decades.
China's total power generation dipped by 1.3% to 1.49 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in the first two months of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.
Outside of 2020, at the start of COVID-19, and 2009 - following the global financial crisis - this was the first time power demand has fallen since at least 1998.
An unseasonably warm winter has weighed on demand. Last year was China's warmest since comparable records began more than six decades ago, according to meteorological data.
China's mostly coal-powered thermal power generation led the decline, falling 5.8% in January and February, to 1.02 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh). Natural gas-fired power plants also contribute a small portion to thermal power generation.
The data is combined for both months to smooth out the effects of the Lunar New Year.
Hydropower, China's second-largest power source, rose 4.5% to 146.1 billion kWh, while solar and wind power generation grew 27% and 10%, respectively, during the period.

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A mild and very wet winter are the main factors for this. Good news is that the hydro generation will likely continue to soar over the next month at least, looking at the forecasts, there's gonna be a lot of rain for south-west china for the month. Bad news is that a warm winter will likely mean a very hot summer, especially when 2024 was already a record year for heatwaves in China.

Looks like unless we get a very very bad summer, China is more or less guaranteed to have a fall in their carbon emissions and coal usage this year. If the summer is mild too by some miracle, then we could actually see a very big drop. Maybe 5%?

I don't think people quite understand the insane scale of pumped hydropower projects in China right now. All sources below are from globalenergymonitor.org. The info is from mid 2024 so it might be a little outdated.


To summarize China currently has the following pumped hydro projects
51 gigawatts in operation, representing 44 projects
144 gigawatts currently under construction, representing 107 projects
219 gigawatts in pre-construction, representing 172 projects
62 gigawatts in announced projects representing 50 projects
Adding everything up gives you 476 gigawatts and 373 projects in total.

Those 144 gigawatts under active construction, most will enter service before 2030, with a handful entering service after 2030. Unfortunately hydro projects take a very long time, so the projects in the pre-construction and announced phase will likely take a decade or more, entering service around the mid and late 2030s. While there's only info about the power capacity and not the amount of stored energy, pumped hydro storage tends to have around 4 hours of peak capacity as a rule of thumb, with the outliers being larger, not smaller. So 51 GW means 204 gigawatt-hours. 144 GW means 576 gigawatt-hours of storage. The combined total of 476 gigawatts gives you 1.9 terrawatt-hours, enough to power all of China for an hour. An insane amount of energy storage, outstripping current and future battery projects by an order of magnitude.

Some other fun facts that I have gleaned.

1) Gansu, Guizhou, Guangxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Tianjin, Yunnan and Xinjiang have zero operating pumped hydro projects as of 2024, though all of them have at least 1 more project in development or announced
2) Yunnan is the odd one out, considering their population size, industry, elevation, rivers and exiting hydropower dams. They don't even have a plant under construction or pre-construction, just announced projects. Same for Sichuan, but at least they have 9 projects in various stages of development.
3) Beijing has one operating pumped hydro plant, but no further projects are scheduled, not even announced.
4) Tibet is also the odd one out, with only one pumped hydro project in operation and one announced, but understanable given it's lack of population and industry.
5) Guandong takes the crown for the most operating pumped hydro plants in operational today, both in number and in the power output, Zhejiang takes the crown for the most pumped hydro currently under construction, pre-construction and announced.
6) Japan takes the 2nd spot at 23 gigawatts of current operation capacity, with the USA at 3rd spot with 19 gigawatts.
7) In terms of future projects though, japan appears to have completely given up, with only 600 megawatts in the pipeline going forward.
8) America and india have the 2nd and 3rd most amout of planned pumped hydropower projects, with America at 60 gigawatts and india at 37 gigawatts.
9) The most that China has added in a year was in 2021, with 9 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage added to the grid.
10) 2024 or 2025 might be another record, a lot of projects I have seen list 2024 or 2025 as their completion rate.

India’s air conditioner makers are expecting a sales boom as historic heat, and forecasts of more hot weather to come, boosts demand for cooling systems.
Blue Star Ltd. expects as much as 30% growth over the summer, with a significant increase in sales in smaller cities, Managing Director B Thiagarajan said in an interview. “People are buying ACs as they are getting used to it at a number of places like hospitals, shopping malls and restaurants, and feel they need it.” Despite regular heat waves, very few Indian households have an air conditioner — just 10% compared with 68% of Chinese and 38% of Thai homes, according to consultancy EY.
But accelerating urbanization coupled with more frequent bouts of intense, and deadly, heat is fueling demand for cooling solutions in defiance of a broader consumption slowdown. India is expected to have about 240 million air conditioning units in 2030, up from 93 million last year, the International Energy Agency estimates.
Poor ventilation and cramped urban housing can exacerbate indoor heat, which is also driving sales, Thiagarajan said. About 40% of sales last year were purchased through consumer financing solutions, such as credit and ‘buy now, pay later’ options, he said.
Meanwhile, India’s affluent are buying more tech-focused systems that are wi-fi enabled or operated by voice command, he said.
Tata Group-owned Voltas Ltd. expects last year’s strong demand to continue, Chief Executive Officer Pradeep Bakshi said in an email. It’s looking to push beyond India’s tier-2 and tier-3 cities and expand sales in remote and rural parts of the country, he said.
The company’s volumes grew 35% between April 2024 and January 2025, beating the industry, Nomura Holdings Inc. analysts Siddhartha Bera and Kapil Singh wrote in a note this month. Its shares are up about 30% over the past year, while Blue Star has surged surged more than 70% in the period.
Most parts of the country are likely to see more days of heat waves than usual in the three months ending May 31, the India Meteorological Department said last month. That follows its second-warmest February in more than a century. India typically experiences hotter weather in the lead up to the monsoon season, which starts in June.

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The 2024 heatwave really shook India. I think Indian people are starting to realize just how bad the increasing amount of heatwave will be and that life in some of the hotter cities will literally be un-survivable without some form of cooling system by the next decade. Of course it isn't a good thing, those tens of millions of new air conditioning units will be sucking up a lot of electricity, in an era of massive data centers and EVs, and that's just to keep people alive and comfortable. I wonder if the Indian grid can keep up during summer?

Those 93 million aircon units probably have a peak power output of something like 150-200 gigawatts at peak power draw. Compare that to India's total installed capacity of 450 gigawatts and peak power demand of 270 gigawatts. More than half of india power demand comes could come from cooling systems. And most of future power demand growth will come from cooling systems too.

antwerpery said:

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The 2024 heatwave really shook India. I think Indian people are starting to realize just how bad the increasing amount of heatwave will be and that life in some of the hotter cities will literally be un-survivable without some form of cooling system by the next decade. Of course it isn't a good thing, those tens of millions of new air conditioning units will be sucking up a lot of electricity, in an era of massive data centers and EVs, and that's just to keep people alive and comfortable. I wonder if the Indian grid can keep up during summer?

Those 93 million aircon units probably have a peak power output of something like 150-200 gigawatts at peak power draw. Compare that to India's total installed capacity of 450 gigawatts and peak power demand of 270 gigawatts. More than half of india power demand comes could come from cooling systems. And most of future power demand growth will come from cooling systems too.

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It's not just whether the Indian grid can cope.

It's the cost of operating an air conditioning unit, which will be a substantial proportion of income for an average Indian family

An interesting paper about the unintended consequences of successful Chinese efforts to reduce air pollution—more global warming. Sulfate aerosols produced from fossil fuel combustion previously played a "shielding" role in reflecting sunlight and encouraging cloud formation. Pollution is obviously still bad, and removing it an equally obvious positive, but there are silver linings to everything.

Global surface warming has accelerated since around 2010, relative to the preceding half century1-3. This has coincided with China’s efforts to reduce air pollution through restricted atmospheric aerosol and precursor emissions4,5. A direct link between the two has, however, not yet been established. Here we show, using a large set of simulations from eight Earth System Models, how a time evolving 75% reduction in Chinese sulfate emissions partially unmasks greenhouse driven warming and influences the pattern of surface temperature change. We find a rapidly evolving global, annual-mean warming of 0.07 ± 0.05 ºC, sufficient to explain a majority of the uptick in global warming rate since 2010. We also find North-Pacific warming and a top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance that are consistent with recent observations. China’s aerosol cleanup is thus likely a key contributor to recent global warming acceleration, and to Pacific warming trends.

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Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were among the top importers of Chinese solar panels in 2024, with more than half heading to countries in the global south.

While American solar panel manufactures are stuck in legal quibble and can only produce solar panels of older generation, China is going full in on the more efficient newer ones.

Long thread about 101 major upcoming renewable projects for 2025, more than twice as many as last year's 47. Includes offshore wind, geothermal, green hydrogen, energy storage, and many more.