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Winding up for clean energy from the wind
September 18, 2009, Friday
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CHINA is throwing its weight behind alternative energies such as wind power to sustain its economic development.
On August 20, GE Drivetrain Technologies, a unit of GE Transportation, and Chongqing XinXing Fengneng Investment Co Ltd announced a joint venture to produce gears for wind turbines.
US-based First Solar signed a memorandum of understanding in early September to build a 2 gigawatt (GW) solar plant in Ordos City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region; it will be followed by several more plant openings over the next 10 years.
China's giant state-owned energy companies are not sitting on the sidelines. In mid-August, China Electricity International announced plans to invest 120 million yuan (US$17.6 million) in a project to develop wind power in Inner Mongolia, while four other state-owned players - GD Power Development, China Huaneng Group, Datang International Power Generation and China Power Investment Corp - also hope to invest in Inner Mongolia.
Jeff Jiang, managing director of Renaissance Carbon Investment (RCI), the carbon investment and trading arm of Pivoton International, a US private equity company, says wind may be the cleanest energy resource currently available.
Unlike hydropower, he explains, wind power plants do not have to be near water or valuable arable land. The main challenge, however, is transmitting the power from remote parts of China, such as Inner Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to areas where energy is needed most.
China's wind power market has grown quickly, with installed capacity doubling annually over the last four years to reach 12GW in 2008. Today, China ranks fourth in the world after the United States, Germany and Spain in terms of installed wind capacity and accounts for 10 percent of the world's total.
The solar photovoltaic (PV) sector is also growing, though more slowly. It reached 150 megawatts (MW) in 2008, representing only ome percent of the global total. But China supplies 30 percent of the world's PV cells, exporting 95 percent of its capacity in 2008.
Liang Zhipeng, an official from the National Energy Bureau, said in May that China will invest 3 trillion yuan in alternative energy by 2020.
The National People's Congress is reviewing an amendment to the alternative energy law requiring the state grid system to purchase electricity generated by alternative energy companies.
Even if China were to reach its target of deriving 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, the majority of its energy will still come from coal, notes China Greentech Initiative - a private-public commercial collaboration of alternative-energy specialists.
According to a report published by Greentech during the World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, Liaoning Province, on September 10, between 70 percent and 80 percent of China's energy supply now comes from burning coal.
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
On August 20, GE Drivetrain Technologies, a unit of GE Transportation, and Chongqing XinXing Fengneng Investment Co Ltd announced a joint venture to produce gears for wind turbines.
US-based First Solar signed a memorandum of understanding in early September to build a 2 gigawatt (GW) solar plant in Ordos City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region; it will be followed by several more plant openings over the next 10 years.
China's giant state-owned energy companies are not sitting on the sidelines. In mid-August, China Electricity International announced plans to invest 120 million yuan (US$17.6 million) in a project to develop wind power in Inner Mongolia, while four other state-owned players - GD Power Development, China Huaneng Group, Datang International Power Generation and China Power Investment Corp - also hope to invest in Inner Mongolia.
Jeff Jiang, managing director of Renaissance Carbon Investment (RCI), the carbon investment and trading arm of Pivoton International, a US private equity company, says wind may be the cleanest energy resource currently available.
Unlike hydropower, he explains, wind power plants do not have to be near water or valuable arable land. The main challenge, however, is transmitting the power from remote parts of China, such as Inner Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to areas where energy is needed most.
China's wind power market has grown quickly, with installed capacity doubling annually over the last four years to reach 12GW in 2008. Today, China ranks fourth in the world after the United States, Germany and Spain in terms of installed wind capacity and accounts for 10 percent of the world's total.
The solar photovoltaic (PV) sector is also growing, though more slowly. It reached 150 megawatts (MW) in 2008, representing only ome percent of the global total. But China supplies 30 percent of the world's PV cells, exporting 95 percent of its capacity in 2008.
Liang Zhipeng, an official from the National Energy Bureau, said in May that China will invest 3 trillion yuan in alternative energy by 2020.
The National People's Congress is reviewing an amendment to the alternative energy law requiring the state grid system to purchase electricity generated by alternative energy companies.
Even if China were to reach its target of deriving 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, the majority of its energy will still come from coal, notes China Greentech Initiative - a private-public commercial collaboration of alternative-energy specialists.
According to a report published by Greentech during the World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, Liaoning Province, on September 10, between 70 percent and 80 percent of China's energy supply now comes from burning coal.
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
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