China needs hydro approvals for energy goal
CHINA - Chinas will add only limited hydropower capacity in 20162020 unless project approvals are speeded up, making it difficult for the country to achieve clean energy development targets, an industry body warned.
China has approved only around 10 gigawatts GW of hydropower projects in recent years, and there was not any big project, the China Electricity Council, a trade group representing power firms, said in a report on its website www.cec.org.cn.
All hydropower projects now under construction will be operational in 20112015, it said.
If there is not a reasonable scale of startups of big hydropower projects every year, hydropower capacity addition will enter a trough period in 20162020, and development targets for 2020 and 2030 would be hardly achieved.
China has promised to boost the share of non fossil energy to 15 percent of primary energy consumption by 2020, which many industry officials said would require the nation to raise hydropower capacity to over 300 GW from the current 197 GW, in addition to sharp increases in wind and solar power capacity.
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Total energy investment fell for the second straight year by 12 per cent to US$1.7 trillion compared with 2015, the IEA said. Oil and gas investments plunged 26 per cent to US$650 billion, down by over a quarter in 2016, and electricity generation slipped 5 per cent.
"This decline (in energy investment) is attributed to two…