By Colleen Howe
BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s energy administration said on Wednesday that it will push renewable energy use beyond the power sector over the next five years, aiming to better absorb the country’s booming wind and solar output.
Provinces and power producers should help local governments to build up their industrial bases for green hydrogen, green ammonia, green methanol, and sustainable aviation fuel during the next five-year plan from 2026-2030, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in its opinion document on integrating new energy.
Green hydrogen uses renewable electricity to power a chemical reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. It can serve as a low-carbon fuel for heavy industry and transport, power industrial processes or vehicles, and as a feedstock for ammonia and methanol, which are used in fertilisers, shipping and elsewhere.
The department encouraged coastal areas to explore using offshore wind to produce hydrogen, a still nascent production method.
The document also called for using renewables to power heating, particularly in industrial parks. Energy planners see low-carbon industrial parks as a key to decarbonisation goals because industry consumes some 60% of the country’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
Finding new outlets for renewable power is becoming more urgent as China’s fleet, the world’s largest, sometimes generates more electricity than the grid can accept, a mismatch known as curtailment. That is expected to be a focus for energy regulators during the next five-year plan.
Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie forecast recently that solar curtailment rates would average more than 5% in 21 Chinese provinces over the next 10 years.
That would be up from just 10 provinces experiencing that level of curtailment during January to August this year, according to official data, though still within China’s national-level limit of 10%.
(Reporting by Colleen Howe; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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