Chapter 17 - Low-Carbon Electricity Development in China: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This chapter discusses the low-carbon electricity development in China, and its opportunities and challenges. China's role in an international climate-change solution cannot be overstated. Now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has become the focus of scrutiny as climate-related impacts are revealed and global policy solutions are debated. At the center of this scrutiny is China's rapidly growing power sector: the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Coal has played and continues to play a crucial role in powering China's economic development, particularly for electricity generation. Diversification away from coal and toward a range of low-carbon power sources will need to be at the core of any climate-change mitigation strategy that moves China to a lower-carbon development pathway. The power sector is at the core of China's climate-change challenge. A complex multidimensional universe comprising many actors and competing forces, China's power sector is expanding at a massive scale, with momentum driving it toward a coal-based future.