New energy bases and sustainable development in China: A review

Due to the rapid economic and social development, China's power generation mix is dominated by thermal power, resulting in rapid growth of CO2 emission during the past decades. Suffering from the two severe problems of energy crisis and global warming, power generation mix should be optimized by installing more new energy during China's 12th and 13th Five-Year Plan periods. In order to realize the massive utilization of new energy and realize emission reduction targets in the future, it is of great significance for China to promote development of large new energy bases such as hydropower, wind power, solar power, nuclear power etc. In this paper we provide an overall review of China's large new energy bases development with a detailed presentation of construction status and future plan, analyze the policy problems and technology barriers hindering the development of new energy bases in China, which will provide sound reference for policy makers. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.