China's Additional Power Capacity

With Thorium reactors and renewables set to replace coal this chart shows just how advanced that change already is.

The chart below shows the composition of new power capacity added in China over the last fourteen years.  It’s important to remember how these years match up with the nation’s five year plans.  The figures show very clearly that, over the last five year period to 2012, new coal fired plants represented 60% of overall capacity added, and that this fell from 80% in the previous period.  The current period reflects just 40% investment in coal, and it seems entirely probable that in the subsequent period this figure will fall further.  Certainly by 2025, China should begin to have functional thorium nuclear power technology available to provide baseload power, offering the intriguing prospect that it can begin to replace older coal-fired power stations with zero emission thorium generators, re-using grid connections to keep costs down.


Source: The Climate Institute