Yves here. While this post makes the interesting point that China now has a higher percentage of electricity use in its final energy consumption than any other large economies, it’s not correct to think that this directly means less fossil fuel use. A chart in the article below show that coal is far and away the biggest source for China’s power generation.
By Alex Kimani, a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. Originally published at OilPrice
- China leads the world in electrification, with a 30% electrification rate—far ahead of the U.S. and EU at ~22%—dominating sectors like transport and industry.
- Massive investment in electric vehicles, high-speed rail, and renewables has positioned China as a superpower in clean energy technologies, with renewables now making up 10% of GDP.
- Despite progress, China’s ongoing coal expansion complicates climate goals, as the country remains the largest greenhouse gas emitter, raising doubts about its transition timeline.
Many people are perhaps familiar with the term “petrostates”, which usually denotes oil-rich nations that are deeply intertwined with the oil industry, often facing economic and political challenges due to oil price fluctuations and the potential decline in hydrocarbon resources. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Iran are some of the world’s leading petrostates. But with the world’s electrification drive now in full gear, scientists have coined the term “electrostates” to refer to countries that have made the most progress transitioning away from processes and technologies that rely on fossil fuels to electrically powered alternatives.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electrification is “one of the most important strategies for reducing carbon emissions from energy.” And, as in many other scientific arenas, China has emerged as the nation that is leading the electrification race, ahead of the United States and Europe.
According to a study, China’s electrification rate has hit 30%, significantly ahead of the U.S. and the EU and US where the electrification rate has plateaued at ~22% in recent years.
The study defines the electrification rate as the share of electricity in final energy consumption versus energy coming from fossil fuels. According to the study, the U.S. still leads the world in the electrification of buildings; however, China recently caught up to the U.S. and Europe in industrial electrification, and has overtaken both in the electrification of transport. In 2024, electric vehicles (EVs) made up approximately 47.9% of the total passenger car sales in China, a huge increase from 2020, when plug-in EVs accounted for just 6.3% of total sales. In comparison, electric vehicles accounted for less than 23% of new car sales in Europe over the timeframe.
The rapid expansion of China’s modern rail network has also helped supercharge the electrification of the country’s transport sector. China boasts a 45,000 km high-speed rail network, five times the size of the EU’s. That figure is expected to expand to 60,000km by 2030.
Source: Climate Energy Finance
China’s President Xi Jinping has been largely credited with the country’s remarkable electrification journey. When Xi became the leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012,
China had emerged as the world’s second-largest economy and the United States’ archrival nuclear power. However, the country was still highly dependent on other countries for its energy needs. China’s oil and coal imports were surging to record highs, exposing the country to potential supply disruptions amid growing geopolitical tensions.
Fast forward to the present, and China is not only rapidly advancing towards energy security but also controls the critical minerals that underpin technologies of the future.
“Nobody had been seriously worrying about energy security or supply chains for armaments and critical industries and food because everyone thought that went with the Cold War,” says Andrew Gilholm, head of China analysis at consultancy Control Risks. “Meanwhile, China has been working on that for years.”
China now leads the 4th Industrial Revolution, making huge strides in electrification, renewable energy, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and the Internet of Things. And, just as oil and gas drive the petrostates of the Arab world, clean energy technologies are powering China’s growth.
To wit, renewable energy accounted for a record 10% of China’s GDP in 2024, driving a quarter of economic expansion, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has revealed.
Beyond energy security and economic growth electrification is expected to play a critical role in addressing climate change.
“We cannot see any way to a zero-carbon economy except through massive electrification,” Lord Adair Turner, head of the Energy Transitions Commission, said.
This is particularly critical for China, which remains the world’s biggest polluter and emitter of greenhouse gases. China’s power sector emissions hit record highs last year, driven by a surge in coal consumption. However, the country’s progress in electrification and the transition to renewable energy will be able to mitigate some of the damage.
Coal remains a controversial topic in China, with Beijing indicating it will start phasing down coal consumption between 2006 and 2030. Whereas this suggests a gradual decline rather than a complete and immediate phase-out, the IEA predicts that coal generation in China will likely peak around 2025 and decline thereafter. However, recent reports indicate that China is still building new coal plants, which raises questions about the commitment to phasing down coal use: Reuters has reported that China plans to keep building coal-fired power plants through 2030.
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The Chinese are not daft. They know ( unlike apparently the Spanish and many other European nations) that you need a good chunk of mid-merit power stations that are dispatchable so supply can match demand second by second, and that you also need a good chunk of rotating metal to provide grid services such as frequency control. So until or if new breeds of nuclear power stations can safely turned on/off and up and down second by second. they will continue to require good chunks of coal or gas fired power stations however much wind and solar they build, which will be limited by the amount of energy they can export when its windy or sunny.
Absolutely.
“power stations that are dispatchable so supply can match demand second by second, and that you also need a good chunk of rotating metal to provide grid services such as frequency control.”
Perhaps a dumb question, but doesn’t hydropower fulfil both requirements?
And what proportion of the generated electricity must be dispatchable and “rotating metal” so that the network is balanced for demand/supply and frequency?
Overall, it seems that hydro represents 16% of the mix (14% in China according to the above figures); is that enough for those two requirements?
The problem is the integration of those renewable sources to the existing “rotating metal” sources. AC distribution from multiple generating sources requires synchronization of frequency, phase and voltage of all the sources. The renewable sources and their inverters can be designed and built to perform those functions but they can’t rely on synchronization to an inherently unstable reference. That reference would be that “rotating metal” that by it’s nature will change its speed in reaction to the load presented.
What is needed is a stable common synch source and adequate storage at the variable generator sources. A combination of battery and ultra capacitors can provide instantaneous and durable response to load variations. These unfortunately cost money and that costs profit.
I understand that, but hydropower does work with turbines, i.e. rotating metal. Is the proportion of about 15% hydro enough to produce that stable, sychronized frequency?
This isn’t correct.
Most if not all inverters since about 2010-2015 have grid forming abilities specifically because the power grids and engineers forsaw the issue with grid stability. While inverters can’t do rotating mass( inertia) they can do the same thing via power electronics.
California has been 100% renewable for months , with minutes to ten hours per day and no issues.
It’s done with the inverters as well as specific grid stability inverter/batteries that act just like peaker plants except lots faster.
Then there are some wind machines that have grid connected motors and not electronics which actually are inertia. They have huge inertia via massive blades.
My 10kw home inverter has it. It can add hz, volts, PF correction, plus a couple of other things. Often called rule 21. In my case it’s not enabled but it can be.
For the utility scale they probably are because again they learned a long time ago that having solar or wind drop out because of a small instability is exactly opposite of what’s needed.
From what I’ve read about Spain it seems to be pointed to a large transformer that failed. Was it a breaker or fuse or something else I haven’t heard yet.
As Yves points out but not harshly enough, the measure touted in the article is fatuous, it is apples to oranges! Electricity is not a primary energy source, it is a form of energy.
The proper analysis would be the extent to which electricity is used in comparison to thermal-mechanical (internal combustion, steam turbines etc) and direct thermal (smelting, kilning etc) and non-thermal mechanical (water wheels etc, presumably negligible).
Including it as a source distorts the trend depending on which energy generation modes are growing, renewables generally being electrified. Electrification percentage would rise without any increase in actual electrification if internal combustion and direct thermal fell. Electrification could fall if ICE and direct thermal rose, even if the economy became more electrified at the same time. A country could be 100% electric on this measure and use entire gas power plants!
Still, China is ahead in actual electrification, which is what drove the 20th century and will drive the 21st. However, it is essential to retain diversity of supply and so there must be a prudential limit to reliance on grid electricity (Carrington events and Russia’s campaign on Ukraine’s energy grid…).
Every “primary” energy source is form of energy too. Energy isn’t created or destroyed, it just changes its forms. The point of electrification is that you are standardizing the intermediate form so you can then take advantage of any further efficiency gain on both ends. So if you for example run 100% on electricity and invent cheap fusion, just plug it into grid and suddenly everything is cheap, including cars and iron smelting, not just your TV and oven.
Its a complex topic – made more difficult in that its very difficult to compare the ‘real’ outputs of countries at different stages of development.
First a point that isn’t widely appreciated enough – electrification in itself represents significant energy saving. Electric motors are far more efficient than traditional direct drive motors. For vehicles, the saving is roughly 50%, but the same applies to trains, industrial production, etc. This is why electrification is vital even if the electricity is mostly fossil fuel based.
The IEA site actually does have an excellent country by country comparison table, which addresses issues such as energy use vs electricity use, and total energy use, in addition to breakdowns over time and changes in overall efficiency. If you spend time breaking down the figures into the sub-components you can see a much more complex picture emerge than this article sets out. Most countries are in fact significantly increasing energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions, as well as breaking the linkage between economic growth and CO2 emissions, the problem is that the fast growing parts of the world are masking the overall changes (plus of course, they aren’t happening fast enough).
Interpreting the data from China is, as always, a challenge, in particular as the are doing pretty much everything at once – investing heavily in renewables, nuclear and coal and gas simultaneously as they move towards a more electrified industry (contrary to what the article says, there is little real change in transport or domestic use – the increase in electrification is almost entirely in industrial production). Most ‘justifications’ are essentially post hoc explanations for what really comes down to exhortations from Beijing to ‘just build, worry about what it’ll be used for later’.
One big unknown in China is what exactly is written into supply contracts for all the new capacity being put into place. One big problem with renewables is that sometimes they produce so much that they end up cannibalising the market for everything else – the price essentially drops to zero (this is a frequent occurrence in northern Europe). The question then is how the big thermal operators are compensated for this – or if they will get first priority for the grid. This is one reason i think that China seems to be going in big into natural gas, despite not having much of its own, and its high cost. It needs more inbuilt flexibility in its grid and only CCGT provides this. Or it could just be that they are simply grabbing every energy source then can, they’ll worry about the costings later.
“plus of course, they [decoupling, etc.] aren’t happening fast enough”
You’re absolutely right about that, PK.
More from the study itself:
Decoupling at the rate it’s been occurring is essentially irrelevant except as a talking point to defend continued Business As Usual. The rate of decoupling in the rich countries studied would need to be 10 times what it is now, and by 2030, in order to have any chance of staying under 2 degrees C.
We have 424 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere now, a level not seen in 14 million years, before there were even any hominids on the planet, much less a complex, fragile human civilization that has emerged in the quietest, most stable climate in the Earth’s history. We’re currently emitting a record 37+ Gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. Those emissions are the primary driver, though not the only one, producing a record increase of 3.7 ppm of CO2. If decoupling could increase next week to 5 times its current rate, we could continue with Business As Usual for the next 40 years while putting “only” an additional 729 Gigatons of carbon (18 x 40) in the air with a resulting increase of 72 ppm CO2 (1.8 x 40) concentration in the atmosphere, bringing us to a total of 496 ppm by 2065. Here’s what 500 ppm looks like:
Continuing with Business As Usual and relying on decoupling to save us is waiting for Godot.
One brilliant thing about Solar power is you get a bunch of power basically for free. For instance now that our home has solar, I can use electricity during the day which is essentially free. So that means I can change my usage patterns.
The same is true on a nation-wide scale, adoption of green technologies to power things like high speed trains is obviously the future.
China recently unveiled the world’s first all-electric battery locomotives. Think about it, you can use solar power to charge them and with batteries you can have all-green transportation.
As an american,
Stories like this only make me more ashamed of my country. What the hell are we doing?
China is out classing us americans by a mile.
Here we are, 24 years into our police state transformation.
All our technological innovation really just seems to be exploiting monopolies, with government funded technologies being given to our oligarchs. Which is then used to spy on us.
Why? well seems to be the government, along with our oligarchs, have no intention of making the world a better place. So they just want to be in a position to clamp down on naysayers.
We have tech companies like nvidia, whose sell by date, should be done. There are other , better , cheaper, more energy efficient tech in the world. We have microsoft…. which sucks. We have google,facebook,palantir,amazon,starlink,space x,tesla..etc… but really.. this charade of these buffoons , is just there to steal from our posterity the possibility of having a better future.
And here we are getting shown up by a fascist dictatorship…. with a mixed economy.
45,000 KM of high speed trains…. we are not even getting all out cities clean water. Just think of all the copper , the minerals and energy that has gone into building weapons…
And yet where is the american mind.
We are killing people(yemeni’s)… because they want to stop our progeny(israel) from killing people. We do this in the name of god.
We help al queda/ isis/ take over syria… We seem to dismiss that fighting al queda was the reason we gave up our freedoms in the war of terror. we use our resources to kill people in iraq,yemen,libya,syria, ukraine, the saheel of africa. we try to overthrow Venezuela for like 20 years.
We think we need a military, instead of a planet.
WTF?
boy did I forget Afghanistan. Sure did.
Well there is american ingenuity at work.
It only took the US 20 years, 4 presidents, and over 2 TRILLION dollars to replace the Taliban, with …. the Taliban.
Whoopeee!!!
But we have teamed up with china on one thing. We paid for the lab experiments that most likely is where sars cov-2 came from. Yeah ralph Baric…. go UNC…. go eco health alliance… go darpa..If the world needs a pandemic, we are your guys.
That is our bit for keeping the population down. That will help the planet, right?
It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. Sometimes though, it’s the mosquitoes.’
Thanks ‘rob’ for generating this wonderful insight (incite?) from the Commentariat. Only at NC do you find this kind of repartee.
What I’ve read is that yes more coal plants. However many are designed as peaker plants not 24/7 units.
And many are going to replace older less efficient plants and they will have better scrubbers to cut particulate pollution
So yes more GW but not nearly as much as it appears unless you break out the numbers.
One important aspect of why coal is that China has huge reserves of coal and almost no gas or oil. Importing coal has more to do with distance from
The coal regions in the far west so it’s easier to ship in coal to the eastern areas.
And it’s been postulated that renewables and EV’s are such a thing because they don’t have oil.
As to trains, most of their train network uses electric trains that are powered by overhead powerlines.
China also has stated and is on track for 150 new nuclear plants by 2035 which would be about 20% of their useage.
Yes, building more coal plants doesn’t mean more pollution from coal. Older plants are continuously being decommissioned. What’s the net growth rate of China’s coal plants? Also, many of the newer coal plants being built in China are ultra supercritical ones, much less polluting than the old ones they replace.
Another interesting point is that when China was building up its high-speed rail system, some commentators, such as Michael Pettis, were wondering if it was a waste of money because commercial airliners were readily available for China to purchase. It turns out that HSR system uses electricity like electric vehicles, probably far less polluting than the aviation industry.
I didn’t see this mentioned so I thought I would throw it in too:
Nuclear power by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
About 5% of China’s current generating capacity is by nuclear power. China is currently building 30 nuclear power plants, or roughly half of the current nuclear power plants under construction in the world at this time, and it looks like there are plans to build much more:
China Will Generate More Nuclear Power Than Both France and the United States by 2030 https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/china-will-generate-more-nuclear-power-than-both-france-and-the-united-states-by-2030/
It will be interesting to see if this actually happens moving forward, and how many will be thorium reactors. I know there was a discussion of cost per reactor a couple of days ago. I wonder how much the cost can be decreased by economies of scale with regard to nuclear power. I suspect it’s certainly not as much as EV production, but even small gains would be significant.
Communism means Soviet rule and Electrification.
Another point is that the number of permits for new coal plants dropped by some 80%.
And with all the low carbon production China has installed their co2 emissions have actually dropped.
Their oil consumption is dropping
Coal consumption is dropping
Here is a good review of the numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5pkqeOmmrY