By Kostantsa Rangelova and Yang Muyi
Rising use of air conditioning requires extra power storage, electrical energy pricing reform and sturdier grid infrastructure, write two consultants from think-tank Ember.
What wants to alter
The northern summer season of 2024 didn’t simply break information. It shattered the illusions held by local weather sceptics.
As thermometers in Beijing hovered close to 40 °c and hospitals throughout the hemisphere overflowed with heatstroke sufferers, one message turned unmistakable: the period of local weather penalties has arrived.
This new actuality is rewriting the foundations of power safety, and no nation is exempt. In China, the US and India, unrelenting heatwaves compelled grids to the brink as electrical energy consumption rose to historic highs, largely to energy air conditioners.
The scorching months noticed coal and fuel crops roaring again to life. These international locations are prime examples.
They’re dwelling to the world’s three largest electrical energy markets, collectively accounting for over half of world demand. It was a stark reminder that fossil fuels stay the fallback when excessive climate strikes.
From Texas to Tamil Nadu, energy grids have been buckling beneath unprecedented demand for cooling, exposing a paradox of the power transition. At the same time as renewable capability expands, outdated fossil infrastructure continues to function a crutch throughout excessive stress.
China, dwelling to the world’s greatest clean-power system, epitomises this problem. Regardless of its inexorable march towards renewable power, the nation’s quickly increasing clean-power system stays insufficiently resilient to face up to excessive circumstances.
In 2024, when temperatures spiked, the outdated coal-centric system needed to step in to bridge the hole, as we clarify beneath.
By 2050, international cooling demand might greater than double, posing a fair better problem for China and the world’s power transition.
For China, the duty forward shouldn’t be solely to scale up renewable-energy provide, however to basically re-engineer the whole energy system, making it extra versatile, clever and climate-proof.
Cooling properties is straining grids
Final 12 months, heatwaves and an extended, hotter summer season have been key drivers of China’s year-on-year electrical energy demand development. Our current report at Ember quantifies the month-to-month impression of those temperature adjustments.
The findings are stark. Between April and September 2024, electrical energy demand elevated by 7% in comparison with the identical interval in 2023.
An estimated 31% of the rise stemmed from larger cooling wants. This quantities to an estimated 102 terawatt-hours of extra electrical energy use for cooling in comparison with the identical interval in 2023 – sufficient to energy all of Algeria for a 12 months.
The temperature impact was particularly sturdy in August and September, with common population-weighted temperatures reaching 26.5 °c in August and 23.1 °c in September – the very best in a decade.
Cooling demand doubled the year-on-year electrical energy demand development. With out it, electrical energy demand in August would have grown by simply 4%, as a substitute of 9%. And in September, it might have elevated by 4.4%, moderately than 9%.
China was not the one nation to expertise this: within the US, electrical energy demand would have fallen by 1.3% in June, however cooling wants resulted in a 9.4% rise as a substitute.
This sample isn’t any outlier. In 2022, a historic 70-day heatwave coincided with China’s worst drought in 60 years. In Sichuan, a hydropower-dependent province, reservoirs dried up, slashing electrical energy output by 50%.
Cooling demand spiked considerably. Even coal crops operating at most operation couldn’t forestall manufacturing unit shutdowns. Once more in 2023, Henan and Shandong provinces endured temperatures above 40 °c on a number of events, pushing July’s electrical energy demand to a report excessive and forcing grid operators to resort to rolling blackouts.
The implications are dire: climate-driven heatwaves power reliance on air-con, which strains grids, perpetuating the necessity for fossil fuels. Worse, that is solely the start. Local weather fashions present that at 2 °c of warming, such extremes will double in depth, and at 3 °c, they are going to quadruple.
Rising pains for the brand new system
China’s energy system is within the midst of a serious transition, guided by the precept of “constructing earlier than breaking”.
This cautious strategy prioritises scaling up clean-energy provide earlier than phasing out fossil fuels. The logic is obvious: a rustic is extra more likely to retreat from coal when it’s assured that clear electrical energy can reliably meet demand at scale and with reasonably priced prices.
The progress has been staggering. Wind and photo voltaic capability elevated by 34% previously 12 months alone. As of June 2024, mixed wind and photo voltaic capability has exceeded that of coal, and is on observe to exceed complete thermal-generation capability this 12 months.
As China’s renewable-energy system expanded at a powerful fee, coal has been in relative decline.
Whereas coal as soon as dominated, accounting for over 70% of electrical energy era within the mid-2000s, it has been rising extra slowly than electrical energy demand and shedding market share to the brand new energy system. Its share fell to 54.8% final 12 months.
Nevertheless, the heatwaves of 2024 revealed how far China nonetheless has to go. The brand new clean-power system, whereas rising rapidly, shouldn’t be but mature sufficient to make sure uninterrupted provide.
Particularly as local weather change drives extra frequent and intense excessive climate. When demand peaked, the outdated system ‒ anchored by coal ‒ needed to step in to bridge the hole.
In August, coal era was 4.4% larger year-on-year, greater than double the 2024 annual common enhance. In September, coal era jumped much more sharply, rising by 10%.
Throughout August and September, coal era elevated by a mixed 68 terawatt-hours, accounting for 59% of the annual enhance in China’s coal era in 2024.
Scaling up and turning into extra versatile
To interrupt the fossil-fuelled suggestions loop, scaling up clear electrical energy capability and persevering with to enhance air-conditioning effectivity are essential.
They’re, nevertheless, solely a part of the answer. A grid more and more dominated by weather-dependent renewables should additionally incorporate better flexibility with the intention to stand up to local weather extremes.
One answer is to speed up the deployment of power storage, corresponding to grid-scale batteries and pumped hydro, to seize noon photo voltaic surpluses and deploy them throughout night air-conditioning peaks.
Modern long-duration energy-storage options ‒ corresponding to thermal storage (utilizing molten salt or rock) and inexperienced hydrogen ‒ are additionally crucial to addressing week- and even month-long seasonal differences in renewable-energy era.
Rewiring electrical energy markets to dismantle provincial silos ‒ by introducing dynamic pricing and cross-regional buying and selling mechanisms ‒ might additional incentivise higher sharing of surplus renewables throughout the nation, guaranteeing clear energy reaches locations the place it’s wanted most.
Furthermore, climate-proofing the facility grids is now pressing. Heatwaves, droughts, and storms should be handled as routine, not exceptions. Cities want heat-resistant transmission strains, flood-proof substations, and decentralised solar-storage microgrids to maintain crucial companies throughout excessive circumstances.
Collectively, these steps would remodel China’s energy system from one which merely survives local weather shocks to 1 that thrives regardless of them.
China’s wrestle is a world warning. The trail ahead calls for greater than clear megawatts.
It requires reinventing grids to be resilient, responsive and relentlessly adaptive. By doing so, China can safe a future the place clear, dependable electrical energy powers its folks’s pursuit of a greater life and serves because the blueprint for a world dealing with the identical existential check.
First printed in Dialogue Earth.
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