CAMEL MOUNTAIN, China — Among the many people with concerns about the enormous
wind turbines being built here, count Jing Xiuwan.
"Once the windmills start turning, it will rain much less," says Jing, 56, a
farmer. "Everyone is worried."
That's a myth — a common one in China. Yet the Chinese government and industry
groups have legitimate worries about a wind power grid that they say has expanded
too fast and with too little regulation.
China, the world's third-largest economy, has made green energy a priority.
The country has doubled its capacity for wind-generated power every year for the
past four years, and President Hu Jintao pledged last week to turn to more sources
of renewable energy in coming years.
However, many wind farms have been built far from populated areas or transmission
grids, making their output largely useless for now. The China Electricity Council,
a national industry group, says 28% of the country's wind power equipment sat idle
at the end of 2008.
China's Cabinet declared last month that it would find ways to curb overcapacity
and duplicated construction in the wind sector.
Coal provides 80% of China's electricity and much of its pollution. China's fast
economic growth in recent decades has put the country ahead of the USA as the
world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas from coal.
Wind power provides 0.4% of China's electricity supply, according to the National
Development and Reform Commission.
That compares with a little more than 1% in the USA, according to the American Wind
Energy Association, a national trade group.
Wang Yuxuan, an environmental scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says the
potential for wind power in China is virtually limitless.
"In terms of both theory and resources, it is possible for China to meet all its
electricity needs by 2030 from wind power," says Wang, part of a team from Tsinghua
and Harvard universities that released a report this month on the possibilities for
wind-generated electricity.
China would have to maintain its steep subsidies for wind power plus invest a total
of $900 billion over the next 20 years, the report said.
The shift could cut 30% of China's carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the report
predicted.
Other experts are more skeptical. A study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
estimates that wind-powered electricity will reach 10% of the total supply by 2030,
says Li Jianlin, a wind power expert at the academy.
"Connecting the wind farms to national electric grids is very difficult and
expensive," he says. "Also, most of our wind farms are located in remote areas
where the (power) grid is weak."
The facility at Camel Mountain may enjoy better prospects, because it is the first
wind farm near Dalian, a relatively prosperous coastal city that hosted a meeting
this month of the World Economic Forum.
In contrast, the Helanshan wind farm in northwestern Ningxia province is more
typical — it lies far from China's booming cities in a windy, but isolated, area.
"We're located far from the main (power) grid. So at first, our electricity supply
was weak and our costs high, but recent adjustments have improved our
distribution," says Li Gening, who works at Helanshan.
Many projects have been built on sites with less consistent winds and are less
productive, says Anders Brendstrup,a Beijing-based executive at Camco China,a clean
energy company.
In windy Inner Mongolia, several projects that were slated to be connected to the
grid next year will be delayed until 2013, he says.
The popular misconceptions about the wind farms may be easier to solve, Wang says.
She compares the concerns over the wind farms' impact in China to worries in the
West that they "will hurt birds or be noisy."
"Wind farms will not influence rainfall," she says. "Our government should tell the
farmers not to worry."
