China's Wind Power Plans Turn On Coal

2009 Dec 10

As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, much focus will be on China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. The country has unveiled new energy intensity targets and aims to have 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

So far, wind energy makes up just 0.4 percent of China's electricity supply. However, Beijing is building the world's biggest wind power project, although paradoxically, adding wind power in China also means adding new polluting coal-fired power stations.

The blades of a 20-story wind turbine slicing and chopping through the air are the only noise out here in China's western Gansu province. More than 100 Chinese-made turbines dot the bleak landscape. They call this the "Three Gorges on the Land," drawing parallels to China's gigantic hydroelectric project.

This is the first stage of a massive wind power complex, which will produce 12 times the amount of power of the world's current No. 1 — the Roscoe Wind Farm in Texas. In total, China will build seven of these mega-wind farms. In 2005, China produced just 1.28 gigawatts of wind power; just three years later, that figure was almost 10 times higher.

Zhang Huayao, an engineer who spent almost two years building this wind farm for China Energy Conservation Investment Corp., drives through the field of turbines with a proprietorial air. The project is in Yumen district of Jiuquan, in Gansu province. Like most of China's wind farms, it's far from the massive cities that need the electricity.

"It's tough building a new project," says Zhang. "But when I see my wind turbines turning, I feel very happy. Of course I'm proud. This is the first wind farm in the 10 gigawatt mega-project."

That sense of pride is shared by the locals, who are building roads to the wind farms. These sandy, snow-strewn wastelands bordering the Gobi desert are sparsely populated. So no people needed to be resettled and no land seized to build these wind farms. And the wind farms are bringing much-needed work — an estimated 6,000 jobs a year in this area.

Li Geping has a scarf wrapped around her face to guard against the freezing temperatures as she toils on the road. But she is happy to earn $8 a day, and she loves the wind turbines.

"Normally, there's no work here, but the wind farms have brought a lot of new jobs," she says, smiling. "This place is normally so barren and desolate. Now, the wind turbines are here. It's beautiful."

The government subsidizes wind power. As a result, it costs the government almost 8 cents for each kilowatt hour of power produced by the wind farm, about 50 percent more than the government pays for electricity produced by coal. Zhang says it will take 10 years for this wind farm to break even.

Back in a spotless control room where blue-suited technicians monitor the new computer system, he notes another issue.

"It's a beautiful day today, but there's no wind," he says, shaking his head. "There's very little wind at all."

Nature is unpredictable: Sometimes there is no wind; other times, it's so strong the turbines have to be shut down. Because China's transmission power grid can't cope with the intermittent nature of wind, the government is adding back-up coal-fired power plants along with wind power to level out those peaks and troughs.

In Jiuquan, new coal-fired power plants with 13.6 million kilowatts of installed capacity — the same amount of energy generated by Chile in 2009 — will be added by 2020. The need to add baseload coal-fired power plants has the effect of reducing the clean benefits of wind power.

But the local economic planner, Wang Jianxin, chairman of the Jiuquan Development and Reform Commission, says adding more polluting coal-fired power plants is unavoidable if you want to be green.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch. We're trying to get the best benefit for the lowest cost. But nothing happens without a sacrifice, and this is a necessary cost," Wang says.

During a recent visit, only four of the farm's wind turbines had been hooked up to the grid, though more are being added every day. According to Caijing, an influential business and investigative magazine, one-third of the wind power generated in Yumen district is wasted.

And that is typical, with just 72 percent of China's total wind power capacity connected to the grid, according to data from the China Electricity Council. In many parts of China, the transmission network can't cope with the rapid growth in renewable energy. But Wang, the economic planner, says these are just teething problems.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121244275&ft=1&f=1004

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