Consuming more than half of the two billion metric tons of coal consumed in China each year, China’s electric utilities emit more greenhouse gases than any other sector.

The Electric Utilities Program supports China’s efforts to shift power-sector investments away from fossil-fuel-based electricity generation and toward end-use energy efficiency and renewable energy. The program focuses on capturing energy efficiency opportunities through demand-side management programs (DSM), public benefits wires charges, clean-energy technology tax incentives, distributed-generation policy mechanisms, and integrated resource planning policy development. The Electric Utilities Program strives to implement policy mechanisms that make energy efficiency profitable to utilities, and is responsive to provincial efforts to develop and implement energy efficiency and renewable-energy policy pilots to serve as national examples.

By the end of 2005, China’s total installed power generation capacity reached approximately 508 GW, 75.5 percent of which came from coal-fired facilities. With electricity demand growing at a torrid pace—15 percent per annum, faster than anywhere else in the world—China is fast-tracking the construction of new generation facilities, nearly 80 percent of which are coal-fired. Many of these are constructed without proper environmental approval: over the last two years, China installed over 120,000 MW of new generation capacity, more than one large (1,000-MW) coal-fired power plant per week, and 250,000 more MW are already in the pipeline for construction.

In 2005, local governments added one 1,000MW power plant every week, nearly all of which were coal. Energy growth is out of control, as local provinces are building  power plants as rapidly as possible to keep up with skyrocketing demand.  The cheaper, cleaner alternative is investment in energy efficient demand-side technologies.

Source: State Electricity Regulatory Commission.