Published Wind Energy Could Power China, Study Finds

Minato-ku, Japan, January 14, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Sun Tell and other major manufacturers are budgeting to increase production of their wind turbine capacity to fall in line with projected demand.

China has rapidly become a global leader in wind energy and now ranks fourth in the world in installed capacity. But coal-fired power plants continue to supply most of the country's rising electricity needs - a development path that Sun Tell and scientists predict will lead to dangerous levels of climate change.

New models of China's wind resources suggest that coal is not the only cost-effective energy option for the country. The winds blowing in China are powerful enough to generate low-carbon electricity that eliminates "much, if not all" of the power sector's future greenhouse gas emissions, according to researchers from Harvard University and Beijing's Tsinghua University.

"We are trying to cut into the current defined demand for new electricity generation in China, which is roughly a gigawatt (GW) a week - or an enormous 50 GW per year," said Michael McElroy, lead author of the study published in the current issue of Science, in a statement. "China is bringing on several coal-fired power plants a week. By publicizing the opportunity for a different way to go we will hope to have a positive influence."

As China's demand for electricity increases an estimated 10 percent each year, the country is projected to need an additional 800 GW of coal-generated electricity during the next 20 years. With current wind energy payments of 0.4 RMB (US$0.059) per kilowatt-hour, wind energy could displace 23 percent of coal-generated electricity. If so, China would eliminate as much as 0.62 gigatons of annual carbon dioxide emissions, or 9.4 percent of the country's current annual emissions, the study said.

Wind energy could supply all of China's 2030 electricity demands, however, if wind contract prices were increased to 0.516 RMB (US $0.076) per kilowatt-hour, the study said.

Extensive regions of northern and western China hold particularly large potential for wind energy, specifically the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, and Tibet.

But the windiest areas are sparsely populated regions where electricity demands are low. High voltage transmissions lines are needed to connect these areas with electricity consumers in rapidly growing eastern China.

Still, wind farms are expanding rapidly across China. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, set a 2010 wind energy target of 5 GW, which the country surpassed in 2007.

Wind energy supplied 12.2 GW of installed capacity last year, about 0.4 percent of China's total electricity supply. China announced in May that more than 100 GW of wind energy capacity will be installed by 2020 and that renewable energy will supply 40 percent of the energy market by 2050.

The recent boost in wind production dates to the passage of a 2005 renewable energy law. The policy granted renewable energy providers with 10-year contracts and guaranteed subsidies. The NDRC clarified the renewable energy law in July by differentiating wind energy tariffs for various regions throughout the country.