BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s renewable energy projects are struggling to get access to land, while in some areas, the grid cannot absorb all the power generated, the country’s energy authority said, as it called for further policy support for the fast-growing industry.
Beijing has spearheaded an ambitious drive to increase the country’s renewable energy capacity in recent years and renewables now account for 31.3% of the country’s total power supply capacity.
Last year, China installed 152 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity, or 76.2% of all new energy capacity, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Monday.
This additional renewable capacity is broadly equivalent to the total energy capacity of Norway.
However, its rapid growth has put it into competition with other industries, particularly agriculture, for land use, making it increasingly tough to win land rights for installing solar panels.
Central government restrictions on land use had been implemented by local governments in a “one-size-fits-all” way, Wang Bohua, honorary chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said at a conference last week, adding that these policies, if not improved, will “greatly influence the scale of new solar installations in eastern and central China”.
China needs to remove the hurdles to construction and promote integration with the grid to ensure its first batch of large-scale wind and solar power bases are put into operation on time, the NEA said in a report following a recent meeting on the issues.
President Xi Jinping has pledged to bring China’s total wind and solar capacity to at least 1,200 GW and to cap its carbon emissions by 2030.
The country is also planning to build 450 GW of solar and wind power generation capacity in the Gobi and other desert regions.
China has said it aims for renewable power to account for more than 50% of its electricity generation capacity by 2025.
(Reporting by Andrew Hayley; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
