Page 10 of the January 2018 issue of Power Magazine had some nice charts showing the generating mix of the five largest electricity generation regions in the world. (Charts can be found here) All of the charts are done as a % of total generation. To compare the size of the different markets, here is the ranking of electricity production by region according to the CIA. (Data download 1/16/18. See here)
- China 5,920 TWh
- United States 3,911 TWh
- European Union 2,771 TWh
- India 1,048 TWh
- Japan 933 TWh
One of the big things that stands out when looking at the charts is the large share of coal generation in both China and India. Both countries appear to have coal accounting for more than 70% of their electricity generation. Also, the share of natural gas generation in both countries is very small. One interesting thing to think about is that if China were to get their share of gas generation to just 25% of their total, that would be 1,480TWh of electricity. This is more generation than the US gets from natural gas every year. This would be about 27BCF/d of natural gas, which is about double the amount of natural gas that China currently produces. (See some China natural gas stats here.) One way to meet an increase in gas demand would be more LNG imports, which are currently about 3.5BCF/d. A lot of infrastructure will be needed if China is ever going to move away from coal.
The chart on Japan really shows the big shift in generation to gas after the Fukushima earthquake. If Japan can ever get their nuclear plants running again their LNG demand will drop substantially, but, conveniently for LNG suppliers, if China’s gas demand increases as expected, there will still be plenty of demand for LNG.