Analysis: China’s worst heat wave on record is crippling power supplies. How it reacts will impact us all

It’s dimmed skyscrapers, shut Last week, Chinese vice-premier Han Zheng said the government would step up support for coal plants to ensure stable power supply.While the jump in coal consumption is likely a temporary fix, Li, the Greenpeace adviser, feared the hydropower crisis could be used by coal interest groups to lobby for more coal plants.”There is a possibility that power shortages caused by future extreme weather events might become a new motivation for China to approve more (coal-fired power) projects,” he said.Last year, after a coal shortage caused a series of power outages across China, the government began to signal a renewed focus on “energy security.” By the last quarter of the year, new-approved coal capacity surged back, especially in state-owned enterprises, Greenpeace said in a “The big challenge in China’s system is the grid is being operated in a very rigid way,” he said. “Different provinces aren’t sharing their capacity and using their capacity in an optimal way to to balance the loads within the region.” Therefore, the need to build more thermal power plants can be significantly reduced if China’s electricity grid can be managed more efficiently and flexibly, Myllyvirta said. Apart form new coal power, China is also stepping up construction of renewable energy — its installed solar and wind energy capacity now accounts for 35-40% of the global total.Fishman, the energy consultant, said the new coal power plants are not necessarily going to be used; instead, they were built as backup for the fast expanding renewable energy sector — in case it runs into problems, like the ongoing drought in Sichuan.”Capacity doesn’t equal generation. The capacity being there creates a lot of optionality and flexibility for all these other (renewable energy sources) they’re building.” he said. “For now, I see the coal capacity additions, as for the most part, targeted at being able to support wind and solar.”Fishman said China’s power system planners are aware of the challenges they face, and that the industry overall is moving “in the right direction.”The record heat wave and the power crunch in Sichuan highlight the need to reform the grid system, he said. “Because without them, this would be an event that could happen every five or 10 years, and it would be crippling every five or 10 years — or maybe even more frequently,” he said.