China Energy Outlook 2020 - Flipbook - Page 11
Energy is further used in China to manufacture vehicles and consumer products, along with
construction materials that are used to build China’s buildings, roadways, bridges, and other
infrastructure. While China exports manufactured products and consumer goods, the majority
of these are consumed in China to support domestic demand. China’s industrial sector is not
only the largest economic sector by far in terms of primary energy consumption but its share of
total energy use has remained relatively constant, fluctuating between 67% and 73% since 1980
and settling at 70% from 2013 to 2018.
The energy required to meet these consumer demands is both produced domestically and
imported. China is rich in domestic coal resources and coal is China’s dominant fuel source, not
only for production of electricity but also as a source of energy for China’s vast industrial sector,
which has been responsible for roughly 70% of China’s primary energy consumption for
decades. But use of natural gas and oil is growing rapidly, especially in the buildings and
transport sectors.
Overall, China’s energy structure is electrifying, growing from a share of 19% electricity in total
final energy use in 2010 to 23% in 2017. The buildings sector is approaching 30% electrification
– up from 25% in 2010 – followed by industry at nearly 25%, with transport at a mere 4% in
2017. While still dominated by fossil fuels, recent growth in China’s electricity generation
capacity has mostly been in solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power - also to meet the growing
demands of the industrial, buildings, and transport sectors. The share of non-fossil energy
(renewable electricity plus nuclear) in total primary energy consumption has grown from 6.2%
in 2000 to 12.3% in 2017, and it is reported to have reached 14.3% in 2018 (Liu, 2019).
These trends also mean that China is decarbonizing, with CO2 emissions per unit of energy
consumption – which held steady at a rate of about 2.5 gCO2/gce from 1980 to 1995 and then
fluctuated between 2.5 and 2.4 gCO2/gce until 2010 – recently declining at a relatively rapid
rate to the current value of 2.19 gCO2/gce, the lowest it has been in China. China’s value is still
high when compared to the global average (1.63 gCO2/gce), the U.S. (1.53 gCO2/gce), and
Europe (1.37 gCO2/gce) (IEA, 2019c).
During China’s 13th FYP period (2016-2020), energy intensity and CO2 emission intensity
reduction targets of 15% and 18%, respectively, were established for 2020 along with a goal of
having approximately 15% of total primary energy from non-fossil sources. After the release of
the 13th FYP, an energy development plan under the 13th FYP was announced (NDRC, 2016a).
This plan established several key goals for 2020, including limiting China’s total energy
consumption to under 5 billion tonnes of coal equivalent (Btce) and capping the total coal
consumption within 4.1 Btce by 2020. The plan also calls for increasing the share of non-fossil
energy consumption to 15% and above by 2020 while reducing the share of coal in total energy
use to below 58%.
China appears to be on track to meet all of its key 13th FYP 2020 energy and CO2 emissions
goals, except the services sector share of value added which was 52.2% in 2018, just slightly
behind the value needed to keep on a steady pace to the goal of 56%. Regarding installed
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