OREANDA-NEWS. July 04, 2014. While energy experts see a "golden age" for growth of natural gas use in China, the outlook appears darker for consumption in the country's power sector due to the dominance of cheap coal.

China's rising demand for cleaner-burning fuel will lead the world's growth in gas use over the next five years, accounting for 30 percent of the global increase, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Medium-Term Gas Market Report this month.

"Three years ago, IEA introduced the concept of natural gas entering a golden age. The first point I would highlight today is that the golden age of gas has arrived in China," said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven in a web session for reporters during a conference in Montreal.

The Paris-based agency said China's annual gas demand rose 13 percent last year and forecast a further 90-percent increase to 315 billion cubic meters (11.1 trillion cubic feet) by 2019.

Based on the projections, China's average annual growth rate in gas use will be 11.3 percent, over seven times greater than the rise in the rest of the world.

Van der Hoeven cited environmental concerns and economic growth as major forces behind China's drive for more gas.

The study said China's push for pollution control will result in higher gas use in its transport, power and industrial sectors, offsetting the effects of slower economic growth since IEA's forecast a year ago.

"Gas is expected to see major growth right across the Chinese economy," van der Hoeven said.

Power sector

Yet, despite strong overall growth in demand, China is expected to see relatively little pressure for more gas from its power sector, compared with world averages.

Power generation will account for 53 percent of the global increase in gas demand over the forecast period but less than 35 percent in China, according to IEA estimates.

The power sector is still expected to become the biggest gas consumer in China, using 93 billion cubic meters (3.3 trillion cubic feet) in 2019, but one reason it may not be far larger is that the gas share of power generation remains small compared with coal.

"We don't believe natural gas will play as big a role in the power generation sector of China as it does in the United States," said Laszlo Varra, head of the IEA's gas, coal and power division, in response to a question from RFA.

"In the United States, natural gas is currently around 25 percent of power generation. In China, it's around 3 or 4 (percent), and we don't think it will go over that," Varra said.

Despite the environmental drawbacks, coal easily outperforms gas on both availability and price.

"Coal is cheap because there's so much of it," said Varra. "You can mine it anywhere from northern China to Australia at very little cost."

Prevalence of coal

The prevalence of high-polluting coal continues to challenge China's campaign against urban smog, despite plans to close all coal-fired power plants in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The shift to gas-fired generation in the three largest cities seems unlikely to reduce the total volume of coal burning for power in China as electricity use grows.

The leading share of coal in the power sector is the subject of various estimates.

Thermal power, largely coal, accounted for 68.8 percent of China's installed power capacity last year, according to figures from the National Energy Administration (NEA).

But last week, the official Xinhua news agency reported the share of thermal power as 80.4 percent at the end of 2013, citing President Xi Jinping's concern that China relies too much on coal and too little on nuclear plants.

In a graphic representation, the IEA report forecast that coal will continue to provide some 62 percent of China's power in 2019.

Despite growing gas use in industry and transport, the large share of coal in power production will pose a continuing pollution problem for China since electricity is consumed throughout the country.

Advances in air quality may depend, in part, how quickly China replaces older power plants with more efficient coal-fired generation technology.

As part of a five-year action plan, the government has pledged to cut coal's share in the country's primary energy mix to less than 65 percent in 2017, but that is down only slightly from 65.7 percent last year.

Gas currently accounts for 5.9 percent of China's total energy consumption, according to Xinhua. The government has set a goal of 10 percent by 2020.

In the first five months of this year, electricity use climbed 5.2 percent from the year-earlier period, the NEA said.