HUITENGXILE, China, June 25 - From the distance
the turbines look almost forbidding, looming very large on the horizon like
some clawed space invaders. But one must get up close, very close, to hear the
slightest hum as their blades spin, harvesting power from the wind.
Apart
from the random bleating from a huge herd of sheep, the loudest noise in this
open, rolling grassland of Inner Mongolia is
the buzz from the transformers that dot the plain, collecting electricity from
this small army of 96 metallic monsters with their spinning blades.
Blessed
with vast, empty countryside and a seemingly permanent stiff breeze blowing
across the steppes, the buzz of transformers is growing steadily louder in this
far northern province
as investors pour money into the wind farm. It is already huge, and may soon be
getting much larger.
"Today
we're producing 68 megawatts, but by 2008, we'll generate at least 400
megawatts," boasted Li Yilun, the director of the Huitengxile power plant.
"By then, we will be the biggest wind farm in all of Asia."
China's skyrocketing energy needs have recently grabbed the world's
attention through its bold efforts to take over foreign oil companies like the
American oil independent Unocal. It has also made big investments in petroleum
production in countries as far-flung as Sudan
and Venezuela.
But at home, with petroleum growing scarce, coal choking the air of major
cities and coal mining killing 6,009 people last year, the Chinese government
is moving just as aggressively to develop alternative energy supplies.
By 2020, starting from a
minuscule base that it has established only recently, China expects
to supply 10 percent of its needs from so-called renewable energy sources,
including wind, solar energy, small hydroelectric dams and biomass like plant
fibers and animal wastes.
So far, wind power is
making the most impressive strides, so much
so that even if Mr. Li's boast of soon having the largest wind farm in Asia
comes true, he will have plenty of competition within China alone.
Already,
large wind farms are sprouting up in much more heavily populated provinces,
like Guangdong, Fujian and Hebei, and with Chinese and foreign turbine
manufacturers competing furiously for this fast-expanding market, the cost per
kilowatt is becoming increasingly competitive with China's abundant coal. Many
coastal provinces, meanwhile, are developing plans to build wind farms just
offshore, where winds are strong and land use is not an issue. Projects like
these are expected to deploy huge new turbines with 87-yard-long blades, each
capable of generating 1.2 megawatts of electricity, enough to power hundreds of
homes, if not more.
"We
have huge goals for wind power development," Wang Zhongying, director of China's Center
for Renewable Energy Development. "By 2010, we plan to reach 4,000
megawatts, and by 2020 we expect to reach 20,000 megawatts, or 20
gigawatts." If anything, Mr. Wang
said, these targets are too conservative, and may be easily surpassed.
The
biggest limitations, he said, were not in China's wind-power potential, or in
its generating technology, but rather in the country's antiquated power grid, which
cannot automatically reroute power from one region to another as demand and
supply rise and fall. That makes it difficult to take full advantage of wind
power, whose output vacillates according to the weather.
China's
wind-power program has roots in a visit to the United States 18 years ago, early
in the country's economic takeoff. A Chinese delegation witnessed modern wind
turbines at work in Utah,
then came back determined to adopt the technology at home. "We bought
some turbines and brought them to Urumqi
to see how they performed, and the production data was very, very good,"
said Wu Gang, a member of the delegation who was fresh out of engineering
school at the time.
What followed is a story
that encapsulates some of the main ingredients of China's economic miracle, including the disciplined marshaling of
intellectual and financial resources by a state determined to solve a problem and establish a sector it deems strategic.
After
his return from the United States,
Mr. Wu was put in charge of a state-financed wind farm in the western province of Xinjiang, where he was able to master
all the technical aspects of the business. Later, the government provided the
seed money for the business he now directs, the Goldwind Science and Technology
Company. It is China's
largest producer of wind turbines, and remains 55 percent state owned.
China has backed wind power and other alternative sources in other
ways. It has provided tax incentives for developers, imposed standardized
electricity rates that amount to a subsidy for power sources like wind, which
remain more expensive than coal, and has imposed equipment requirements that
help local manufacturers.
In February, the Chinese
government passed a nationwide renewable energy law that formalizes many of
those incentives and mandates clear targets for increased power generation from
alternative energy sources. China's provinces will be required to buy electricity from alternative
providers, even when the cost per kilowatt is substantially higher.
The
outcome has been a real boom among suppliers of wind power equipment. "We're expecting the sector to grow 50 to 75
percent a year between now and 2020,"
said Jens Olsen, the chief representative of Vestas, a Danish turbine
manufacturer that is the leading equipment supplier in China.
"The
problem here now is the sector is growing so fast that the equipment producers
can't keep up," said Mr. Wu of Goldwind. "China has a strong industrial base,
and last year, more than 10 Chinese companies came into the market, but they
will find that wind energy is not so easy. It involves so many different kinds of knowledge: aerodynamics,
computer science, turbines, gear boxes."
