China's average coal consumption for power supply of 60 gigawatts or more of thermal power has dropped 34.4 percent from 1978 to 2017, and hydropower has grown substantially. Nuclear power, wind power and solar power have been developed from scratch, according to the "power industry summit to commemorate the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up" held on Friday.In the past 40 years, while effectively ensuring the needs of economic and social development, China's power industry has adhered to efficient and clean development and made outstanding contributions to the construction of ecological civilization and the response to climate change.

Liu zhenya, chairman of the China electric power enterprise federation, said at the meeting that by the end of 2017, China's installed power generation capacity will be 1.77 billion kw, the generation capacity will be 6.4 trillion KWH, and the per capita electricity consumption will be 4,600 KWH, 31 times, 21 times and 18 times higher than in 1978.The length of transmission lines of 35 kv and above voltage grades nationwide reached 1.826 million km, and the capacity of substation equipment reached 6.63 billion kva, 7.9 times that of 1978 and 52.6 times that of 1978, respectively.The reliability rate of power supply for users nationwide is 99.814%, and that for urban users is above 99.9%.The power supply capacity and service quality have been continuously improved, and the power grid has maintained a safe and stable operation, ensuring the growing demand for electricity from the economy and society.

As China's power security capacity has been greatly enhanced, the development efficiency and clean development level of the power industry have been increasingly improved.First, the efficiency of thermal power has been greatly improved.According to liu zhenyan, the proportion of 300mw and above units in China's installed thermal power plants increased from 3.8% in 1978 to 73.7% in 2017, and the average coal consumption for power supply of 6000kw and above decreased from 471g standard coal/KWH to 309g standard coal/KWH.

Secondly, clean power development has achieved remarkable results.By the end of 2017, installed hydropower, nuclear power, grid-connected wind power and grid-connected solar power in China had reached 34.119 million kilowatts, 35.82 million kilowatts, 163.67 million kilowatts and 13.25 million kilowatts respectively, according to the statistical bulletin of the national economic and social development of the People's Republic of China 2017 issued by the national bureau of statistics.Over the past 40 years, hydropower has grown substantially, while nuclear, wind and solar power have grown from nothing.In the field of thermal power, 100% of coal-fired power plants achieve desulphurization, and 92.3% of thermal power units achieve denitrification.

China's installed hydropower capacity and power generation jumped from 17.27 gigawatts and 44.6 billion kilowatt-hours at the time of reform and opening up to 341 billion kilowatts and 1.19 trillion kilowatt-hours at the end of 2017, an increase of nearly 20 times and 26 times, according to yan zhiyong, chairman of the China power construction corporation.

The substantial increase in installed capacity of clean energy sources such as hydropower, wind power, photovoltaic and nuclear power has promoted the diversification, cleanness and optimization of China's power supply structure.

"Through measures such as developing clean power generation, reducing coal consumption and line loss, the power industry will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 11.3 billion tons from 2006 to 2017.During the period from 1990 to 2017, when the installed scale of coal power generation increased by 10 times, the emissions of soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power generation in China in 2017 were only 7.2 percent, 28.8 percent and 49.8 percent of the 1990 levels, respectively."Liu zhenya said.