Investment in mountain wind power fields up

At an altitude of 3,000 meters, Dali Zhemoshan in Yunnan is the highest wind farm in China, where renewable energy has become a priority for a government keen to reduce its carbon emissions and which has taken full advantage of the global trade in carbon credits.

"China is redoubling its efforts, with the 2020 target for wind power generation rising from 30 to 100 gig watts," said Zhai Cheng, a project manager at the farm for the Chinese group Sinohydro.

China has set a target of generating 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources - mainly wind and water - by 2020.

The rapid boom in wind farming in China - where installed capacity doubled in 2008 for the fourth year running to sit at 12.2 gig watts - places it behind only the United States, Germany and Spain.

"In terms of the scale and the pace of the build-up of the Chinese wind industry, it's without parallel anywhere in the world ever," said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council.

"At the current rate, they will be the number one in the world in cumulative capacity by the end of 2011, early 2012," Sawyer predicted.

As well as major wind farms in the north of China, such as those in Gansu province, smaller projects - like the one in Dali - are multiplying, almost always relying on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The CDM, created as part of the Kyoto Protocol, allows industrialized countries to fulfill part of their greenhouse gas reduction commitments by investing in clean energy technology in developing countries.

The carbon credits produced by the Dali pilot project will be purchased by Dutch bank Rabobank, Zhai said.

AFP
 

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