Chinese utility pitches energy transformation credentials

Hong Kong-listed electric utility China Power International Development attempted to stress its clean energy credentials when reporting its 2020 figures, even if the attempt was somewhat undermined by including fossil fuel natural gas among its “clean energy” assets.

A China Power spokesperson told pv magazine solar made up around 15% of the company's power generation mix at the end of the year with the 4 GW of operational photovoltaics assets including the 500 MW Liaoning Chaoyang grid-parity project and a further 440 MW across three projects in Ningxia which will receive subsidies determined by competitive bidding.

The China Power representative said coal still dominated the generation portfolio of the utility, a subsidiary of the state-owned State Power Investment Corporation. Some 15 GW of coal-fired power plants amounted to around 56% of generation assets with hydro supplying around 20% (5.48 GW) helped by the acquisition of Wu Ling Power in 2009.

With 2.17 GW of wind farms making up around 8% of the portfolio, at least the 154 MW of natural gas facilities contributed less than 1% of the total.

The volume of “clean power” generation capacity added last year was less than 2% higher than that posted in 2019 but China Power sold 5% more “clean electricity”, year-on-year, with the 33.5 TWh concerned driving a 4% rise in revenue in the segment. The RMB10.7 billion (US$1.64 billion) banked as a result added up to 38% of the cash generated by total electricity sales.

Though there were few concrete commitments to new, non-gas clean power facilities this year, chairman and executive director Tian Jun said: “We will be committed to establishing a clean energy company.”