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Wind energy in full sail in China

Winds of change blow through China as spending on renewable energy soars World’s biggest polluter spends £4bn a year on wind and solar power generation in single region as it aims to cut fossil fuel use Jonathan Watts in Jiuquan Guardian UK,   19 March 2012  “….. the landscape has started to undergo a transformation as Gansu has moved to the frontline of government efforts to reinvent China’s economy with a massive investment in renewable energy.

The change is evident soon after driving across the plains from
Jiuquan, an ancient garrison town on the Silk Road that is now a base
for more than 50 energy companies.

Wind turbines, which were almost unknown five years ago, stretch into
the distance, competing only with far mountains and new pylons for
space on the horizon. Jiuquan alone now has the capacity to generate
6GW of wind energy – roughly equivalent to that of the whole UK. The
plan is to more than triple that by 2015, when this area could become
the biggest windfarm in the world.

This is the other side of China’s development. Although it is the
world’s biggest CO2 emitter and notorious for building the equivalent
of a 400MW coal-fired power station every three days, it is also
erecting 36 wind turbines a day and building a robust new electricity
grid to send this power thousands of miles across the country from the
deserts of the west to the cities of the east……
Investments in wind and solar are now more than 40bn yuan a year in
the region, he said, compared to about 1bn yuan for oil and coal
combined.

The flood of money is transforming this previously poor area. Average
urban incomes – once among China’s lowest – have almost tripled since
2000 and are forecast to be higher than the national average by 2015.

Other regions are following. National planners have earmarked seven
regions for huge wind projects, each at least 10GW in size. The state
grid has struggled to keep up. Two years ago, almost a third of the
turbines were wastefully unconnected….

March 20, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, renewable