China: The first Chinese solar roadmap almost ready with Danish support
The Sino-Danish Renewable Energy Development Programme (RED) has partly financed a Chinese solar energy roadmap, which is to be delivered to the National Energy Agency of China (NEA) in 2015. Danish solar experts have contributed to the roadmap process.
As part of the RED programme CNREC initiated in 2012 a Roadmap Project concerning solar heating, photovoltaics and thermal solar power with a moderate and accelerated scenario for the development of solar energy in China and with suggestions for development targets for 2020, 2030 and 2050. The project is carried out by China Renewable Energy Society (CRES). A Danish Solar Team comprising of Jens Windeleff from the Danish Energy Agency (DEA), Peter Ahm from PA Energy Ltd. (specialist in photovoltaic) and Jan Erik Nielsen from PlanEnergi (specialist in solar heating), has been designated to support CRES. The Danish team has over the past two years inspired and supported CRES in the form of tutorials and presentations of international roadmaps and assisted CRES with methodological guidelines on how roadmap work is organised and implemented. Furthermore, the Danish experience in the solar energy field, especially in large solar heating systems and seasonal storage associated with district heating systems, has been disseminated to the Chinese team. The Danish team has however not been involved in the quantitative work with calculation of potentials and objectives, which has been undertaken by CRES.
A preliminary roadmap was presented and commented in ultimo July 2013 in Beijing, and the Danish team participated in a field trip to the Gobi Desert to inspect the world’s second largest solar power plant with an output of 300 MW. Furthermore, members of the Danish team have participated in the roadmap workshops in connection with the SNEC PV Power Expo conference in Shanghai in 2013 and in 2014.
As the project is close to completion, an English draft of the Roadmap has been presented and discussed at the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Conference and Expo meeting in Beijing from the 13-18 October 2014. A general comment from the discussion was that solar heating is less prioritised than photovoltaics in the draft Solar Roadmap, especially regarding the future use of large scale solar heating systems in district heating, which has not been included in the roadmap. Denmark has very good experiences on such large-scale systems and the interest in the Danish knowhow from Chinese cities and experts in the field has been massive. Hopefully, the Danish experiences, which the Danish team has made available for the Chinese team in form of a report, will be included in the final version of the Roadmap.
The photovoltaic part of the Roadmap draft will be presented for the IEA Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) in Kyoto from 23-27 November 2014. The International Energy Agency has just released its 2014 editions of roadmaps about photovoltaics and solar thermal power plants, which show that solar energy, can be one of the most significant contributors to the global electricity supply by 2050, and the Chinese roadmap is much in line with this conclusion.
The final Roadmap will be presented to Chinese stakeholders in December 2014 as a significant contribution from the Sino-Danish RED programme. It is the first Chinese Roadmap for solar energy development and use and it will give valuable input to the preparation of the 13th five-year plan. Furthermore, it is expected that the Chinese national roadmap will give rise to further development activities in China at the provincial level. The Danish report on solar district heating will be published as part of the final dissemination from the RED programme.
Jens Windeleff
AC-medarbejder
Center for Erhverv og Energieffektivitet
Tlf.: 22 49 44 27
jew@ens.dk