FT story. Fukushima is the cause. People see smart countries like Germany and Japan basically ditching nuclear power and they’ve got to wonder about China building so many so fast. China has 15 running, 26 under construction, 51 in the planning stages and 120 proposed.
China is the biggest energy consumer in the world, and gets just 2% of its power from nukes – a tiny dent in its massive use of coal for electricity generation. Overall, on energy (electricity, transpo, etc.), it’s still 71% coal, 18% oil, and natural gas on 4%! The renewables/water/nukes are about 8%.
But here is where the fracking revolution can be huge, as Wikistrat just explored in its multi-week sim on the North American Energy Export boom (just finished report and taped brief on that). China has the biggest shale gas reserves in the world – something on the order of almost 20% of all known reserves and 50% more than #2 America.
As the shale revolution eventually takes off in China, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with China’s quiet ambition to take over the global nuclear supply industry from a fading Japan. Maybe attempting to be the biggest producer of shale gas will do the trick, but I’m better China tries to master both domains. It just needs that much more energy over time.