Why solar energy in China?
The energy market in China is growing rapidly. China is today the worlds largest consumer of primary energy. The total amount of installed solar capacity is expected to grow 30-fold – from 43 GW to 1219 GW – between 2015 and 2040.
The country’s legacy investments primarily in coal as a source of energy combined with the rapidly growing energy demand pose a huge environmental challenge with negative consequences reaching far beyond China’s own borders. In addition to air pollution, which causes breathing difficulties for many of China’s residents, coal combustion leads to extensive carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and eventually environmental destruction globally.
Climate benefits
The Chinese electricity system is based on coal power. This means that climate emissions is very high. Producing one kilowatt hour of electricity in China generates emissions of about 531 grams of CO2 equivalents, the corresponding figure in the Nordic countries is 90 grams. Producing electricity with solar panels also entails emissions from a life cycle perspective of approximately 41 grams per kilowatt hour produced. This means that the savings in climate emissions from solar energy in China will be more than 10 times as large in China compared with the Nordic countries (490 grams compared with 49 grams).
China is the world’s largest market for solar energy
The Chinese government has high ambitions for the expansion of solar energy and the market is experiencing strong growth. From a global perspective, China has by far the largest installed capacity, with 35% of all installations in the world. At the end of 2019 China had an installed capacity of solar energy of 204 GW – compared to Sweden with a total of 0.7 GW at the end of the same year.
The Chinese interest in renewables has also gained new momentum. In September 2020, China’s leader Xi Jing Ping stated that China will achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and in December of the same year, it communicated a new target for renewable energy that will reach an installed capacity of 1,200 GW by 2030. These are ambitious goals that confirms that China will invest heavily in solar energy in the coming years.
Gigasun is a long term sustainable, well-tried and scalable business concept
Since 2014, we contribute to sustainable development of the rapidly growing energy market in China by providing solar power solutions to medium-sized and large private public companies and state-owned companies and organisations such as universities. We finance, build, own and manage solar PV installations for our clients who commit on long contracts to buy all the electricity that the solar PV installations produces.
