China green-lights 11 new reactors in nuclear push

BEIJING

China has approved 11 nuclear reactors across five sites, state media reported, as the country continues its push to combat rising emissions from fossil fuels.

Premier Li Qiang presided over a State Council executive meeting on Aug. 19 that gave the green light to the projects, state news agency Xinhua said.

China National Nuclear Power received approval for three reactors, the company said in a statement on WeChat, while State Power Investment Corp said it had received approval for two units.

CGN Power Co, the listed unit of state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp, said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing that it received approvals for six reactors in three sites.

China currently has 56 operating reactors, accounting for around five percent of its total electricity generation, according to the World Nuclear Association.

The new reactors will be spread across Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang and Guangxi provinces, state-run China Energy News reported.

State-controlled Chinese business news outlet Jiemian reported the total investment for all 11 reactors was expected to exceed 220 billion yuan ($30.8 billion), with construction taking around five years.

China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that are driving climate change.

A recent jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants has added to concerns that China will backtrack on its goals to peak emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.

Meanwhile, Eurostat announced on Aug. 19 that solar power overtook hard coal as an energy source for the European Union in 2022.

“In 2022, hard coal for the first time was overtaken by solar energy in electricity generation in the EU,” the statistics authority said in a statement, noting that solar energy produced 210,249 gigawatt hours (GWh) for the EU that year, compared with 205,693 GWh for hard coal.

Brown coal, a type of coal with lower energy content, is used in electricity generation by nine member countries and was the source of 241,572 GWh of electricity, according to the statement.

During the same period, the union’s import dependency for hard coal reached its highest point at 74.4 percent, up from some 60 percent in 2021, likely owing to countries building up stocks of hard coal.

In 2022 – the year the Ukraine war began – Russia remained the largest supplier of hard coal to the EU at 24 percent, down from 45 percent in 2021, followed by the U.S. with 18 percent and Australia with 17 percent.