China needs hydro approvals for energy goal

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.