What is the Best Renewable Energy for China?

Global warming is a consequential problem now on Earth, scientists from different

nations are all trying to produce some substantial solutions for it. The most common method
now is to use renewable energy to replace fossil fuels because burning fossil fuels will release
greenhouse gases to heat up the entire planet. If we replace the use of fossil fuels gradually
into renewable energies such as hydropower, wind power, solar power, etc. Then we can solve
the problem of global warming in a certain way. China is currently the second energy producing
and consuming country in the world(1), which means that the energies that generated by China
are important to the entire world. Although China generates considerable number of energies
for the world, more than 60% of energies that China produced are from burning fossil fuels,
hydropower is only 15%(2)! If we can replace most of the fossil fuels energies into renewable
energy, then global warming will be diminished.

Then what is the best resource for China to replace burning fossil fuels? Let us check it
out. Firstly, hydropower is the second greatest energy source in China, so what are the
advantages and disadvantages of it? The average annual power generation of the Three Gorges
Dam is more than 100 billion kilowatt hours, and it satisfied the electricity demand of
upstream, downstream, and surrounding areas(3), and the total electricity generated of
hydropower is 1.3 trillion kilowatt hours(4), this can be potential evidence to support that
hydropower can substitute fossil fuels if we can build more hydroelectric dams. Although
hydropower looks flawless, we still cannot ignore the disadvantages of building dams in river
courses. As is well known, dams will intercept the continuity of rivers, then the lives in the river
will be affected in certain. For example, Chinese paddlefish is one of the largest predators in the
Changjiang River. But since 2003, no one has ever seen it again, until December 23rd, 2019,
International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that this amazing fish species was
extinct(5). This fish needs to swim back from the mouth of the ocean to the upstream of
Changjiang River, but we build dams on the river which makes the trip even harder, we also
hunt this fish a lot. The extinct of Chinese paddlefish is not an accident.
Secondly, wind power is the third greatest energy source in China and what are some
the pros and cons of this kind of renewable energy? Wind power generated 36544 million
kilowatt hours(6). Till now, China has more than 180 thousand wind turbines including onshore
wind turbines and offshore wind turbines(7), and the average cost of one wind turbine is 10000
RMB (1373 dollars), then the total costs of the wind turbines in China will be 1,800,000,000
RMB (247,140 dollars). Although cheap can be an extraordinarily strong advantage for wind
turbines, they still have a very conspicuous disadvantage, which is low conversion rate. The
conversion rate of hydropower is 80%(8), which is extremely high, but wind turbines only have
a conversion rate of 25% ~ 45%(9). In this case, we need to build more wind turbines on Earth,
but only one small or medium size hydropower plant can beat the conversion rate of a new big
wind power plant. Also, wind turbines can hurt the birds in the sky, so it can affect the lives of
the birds.
Last, solar panels will be our third competitor. Unlike Spain that builds a lot of solar
panels, China did not build that many of solar panels. Solar energy takes for 15.3% of China's
total energy sources(10). Although it is higher than wind power, it needs more places than wind
power. The biggest wind power plant in China (Dalat Wind Power Station) takes more than
6,000 acres of lands(11), and the biggest solar power plant in China (Talatan Photovoltaic
Power Station) takes 913500 acres of lands(12)! That is so insane! Talatan Photovoltaic Power
Station can generate 80 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year(13), but the Dalat Wind
Power Station can generate 5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year(14), and the Dalat
Wind Power Station even takes smaller places than Talatan Photovoltaic Power Station.

After the fair competition, I think we can find out what is the best renewable energy
source for China, which is hydropower. Hydropower stations take smaller places, and they can
generate more electricity than the other two energy sources, this is because hydropower has
the largest conversion rate of energy. Now we found that hydropower is the best, then why
won’t we turn theory into action, to replace the antiquated fossil fuels?

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