Michael Richardson: China looks to answer blowing in the wind

Wind energy has expanded fast in the United States and Europe in recent years. It is also becoming an increasing part of the energy scene in Australia and New Zealand. But the growth of the giant modern windmills to generate electricity is being limited by concerns that include blade noise, visual pollution and the death toll on passing birds and bats.

Such concerns, however, are not a hindrance in China which is expected to emerge as the leading global user of wind power within a decade or so. Worried by high oil prices, chronic electricity shortages and air pollution caused by burning coal, China is set to embark this year on a campaign to promote alternative energy sources using the power of the wind, sun and river water instead of fossil fuels.

Last February, China's Parliament passed a renewable energy law that sets tariffs and other incentives in favour of non-fossil energy such as water (hydro), wind and solar power. The law takes effect this month.

The Government says China uses renewable energy to meet 7 per cent of its total needs and plans to raise that amount to 15 per cent by 2020. One of the biggest boosts is expected for wind energy.

A report issued in November by a domestic industry group forecast that China's wind-power sector, using the windmill-like turbines in clusters or farms both on land and offshore, should be able to generate 40 gigawatts of electricity a year by 2020. By then, China would have overtaken Germany, Spain, the United States, Denmark and India to become the world's largest producer of wind power.

The Chinese Government is more conservative in its predictions but also sees great potential for harnessing the wind.

"By 2010, we plan to reach 4000 megawatts, and by 2020 we expect to reach 20,000 megawatts, or 20 gigawatts," says Wang Zhongying, director of China's Centre for Renewable Energy Development. He adds that these targets are conservative and may easily be surpassed.

Even so, wind power needs to be put in perspective. If the official target of 20 gigawatts by 2020 is reached, it will be equivalent to just 1 per cent of China's predicted annual electricity consumption at that time. Base load power generation will continue to come chiefly from coal although hydro- and nuclear-power will be increasingly important.

Still, more than 40 wind power farms are operating in various parts of China. The biggest is near Huitengxile in Inner Mongolia. It plans to increase its generating capacity to 400 megawatts by 2008, from 68 megawatts today. This would make it Asia's largest wind farm.

South Korea's Electric Power Corp (Kepco) recently started work on a wind power plant in Yumen city in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu. It is the first foreign electricity firm to enter China's wind power market and many others are likely to follow.

The plant will cost about US$58 million ($83.6 million) and is due to start operating next August.

One of the most promising areas for catching the wind is in industrialised Guangdong and some local officials say wind power could help cut the air pollution plaguing the province and adjacent Hong Kong caused partly by plants that burn coal or fuel oil to generate electricity.

An expert study commissioned by the Greenpeace environmental group and published last October said that Guangdong had the potential to produce 20,000 megawatts of energy, or 17 per cent of its current demand. About 10,000 turbines, or windmills, would be needed to produce this much electricity. The provincial government has set its target to raise wind power from 86 megawatts, to 3000 megawatts, by 2020. This is about the amount of electricity that three large nuclear power plants could generate.

At present, the wind power industry in China is limited by its high costs, with the price of power from a 100-megawatt wind project over two times higher than the equivalent from a coal-fired utility. Around 80 per cent of equipment is imported and few Chinese firms make the larger turbines needed for more cost-efficient generation.

However, China plans to build its first offshore wind farm in the Bohai Sea off the northern province of Hebei this year and Shi Pengfei, vice-chairman of the Chinese Wind Energy Association, says he expects the cost of wind-generated power to move closer to that from coal-burning plants when there is around 3000 megawatts of wind-power output - a point likely to be reached in the next few years.

* The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.