The use of coal-fired power plants in China to generate electricity will drop to as low as 30% by 2050 after the fossil fuel accounted for 74% of the country's electricity generation in 2005, according to a study released Thursday by the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The forecast is one of many made by the authors of the study, which analyzed current and past energy infrastructure and electricity demand trends in China in an effort to predict the future of the country's energy use and output of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
As such, the study -- which was commissioned by the US Energy Department and funded by the China Sustainable Energy Program -- assumes that China will hit its peak for energy use by 2025, with the country's carbon dioxide emissions anticipated to peak by 2027 at 9.7 billion mt under a so-called "aggressive scenario." The less aggressive energy use scenario in the study would see consumption rates begin to go down by 2030, the study said.
The "conservative scenario" for anticipated increases in Chinese output of CO2 would see the country produce 12 billion mt by 2033 that would drop to 11 billion mt by 2050, according to the study.
"There has been a perception that China's rising prosperity means runaway growth in energy consumption. Our study shows this will not be the case," study co-author Mark Levine said in a statement on the paper.
The study authors assume that the Chinese government will succeed in its efforts to meet targets to decarbonize the country's energy production and consumption.
For example, the study assumed that a recent slowdown in the development of nuclear power in the China following the earthquakes in Japan last month will not last as a long-term trend, and that the government will oversee an increase in nuclear power use to 86 GW by 2020 compared with 8 GW in 2005 and 550 GW by 2050.
The country is also widely anticipated to take up the use of 356 million new cars by 2050, of which 30% will be low-carbon electric cars under a "continued improvement scenario? or 70% under an 'accelerated improvement scenario.'"
The report also analyzed anticipated future demand for energy intensive consumer goods in China such as refrigerators and air conditioners and it assumes that a "phenomenon known as saturation" in the country's domestic consumer market will see China's curve of energy demand begin to "moderate" between 2030 and 2035 and then "flatten thereafter" as people slowly begin to accumulate household goods, according to the Berkeley Lab statement on the study.
"There will come a time -- within the next two decades -- when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak," the statement said.
Meanwhile, demand for new rail infrastructure in China will hit a saturation point before 2030 and 2035 "resulting in very large decreases in iron and steel demand," the study said.
