Wow! Here’s some hot news:
China aims to expand its wind power generating capacity to 100,000 megawatts by 2020, more than doubling the current world’s installed capacity.
The plan - which is five times the previous target - was set forth by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top industry planning body.
“The NDRC has just recently completed an internal meeting to discuss the possibility of increasing wind power capacity to 100,000MW,” Shi Pengfei, vice president of Chinese Wind Energy Association, said. “It’s not 20,000MW or 30,000MW as previously targeted.”
Now that is something to write home about, and many of us did back in April 2008 when this story ran.
Forgive us then if we don’t get too excited about headlines over the last couple of days that proclaim “China Triples Wind Power Capacity Goal” or stories that breathlessly report
China will have 100 GW of wind power capacity by 2020, more than three times the 30 GW the government set as a target 18 months ago.
The goal may very well change, but I’m not believing it until I see a formally amended copy of China’s Medium & Long-Term Renewable Energy Development Plan. Fool me once . . . .
Let’s assume the target does change, that, of course, will be great news, but let’s also put it into perspective. In McKinsey’s China’s Green Revolution Report, their baseline scenario for China’s greenhouse gas emissions (the one where China doubles its 2005 carbon emissions by 2030 and we’re all drowned by rising sea levels or parched in barren deserts) assumed 100GW of wind capacity by 2030. Thus, if that target is achieved 10 years early that would be an improvement. However, under McKinsey’s abatement scenario (the one where China limits the growth of its annual carbon emissions to 15% or “just” 1 additional Gigaton over 2005 levels by 2030 (6.8 Gigatons of CO2e in 2005 vs. 7.8 Gigatons of CO2e in 2030)) China is assumed to have installed 300 GW of wind capacity by 2030 (along with a whole host of other carbon reduction actions). So even if China hits a goal of 100 GW by 2020, it will still have its work cut out for it to hit the 2030 McKinsey goal.
There are currently structural and technical barriers which will restrain the growth of wind in some areas of China. It is simply not a matter of build it and they (the grid) will come. Increasing goals are good, but be cautious that you don’t get blown away by the hype, especially if its recycled hype.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Julian Wong, The Green Leap Forward // May 6, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Hey Charlie,
not completely surprising considering that the Chinese wind industry have expressed projections reaching triple figure gigawattage for some months now. If you consider the fact that China is projected to add 8 GW this year (for a total of 20GW by year end), and assume 8GW for the next 11 years (not an unreasonable assumption on the resource side), it’ll surpass 100GW by 2020. In fact talk now is that such a 2020 target may actually be raised to as much as 150 GW.
What I am keeping my eyes peeled for are a revision in the 2020 solar targets, which are now 1.8 GW, but there’s chatter of revising that upwards to 10 GW, or as much as 20GW(!).
Also, it seems there’s an overall long term target of 40% of electricity production by renewables by 2050. Watch my site for updates!
2 cmcelwee // May 6, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Thanks Julian. Of course will watch for the update! FYI, McKinsey says baseline scenario (which includes China’s currently enumerated renewable energy goals) gets you to 35% of total power generation coming from renewables by 2030. McKinsey says it is actually feasible to get to 67% renewable generation by 2030.
3 Julian Wong, The Green Leap Forward // May 7, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Seems like these McKinsey scenarios are even more bullish than those recently released by the Tyndall Ctr, which have renewables accounting for 60% by 2050. Wow.
On the Tyndall Ctr scenarios:
http://greenleapforward.com/2009/05/04/tyndall-centre-climate-report-high-hopes-for-low-carbon/
4 Greg // May 9, 2009 at 12:06 pm
McKinsey’s forecasts seem to focus on “if everything works exactly right and falls into place…”. Beijing has other things to spend its money on like making the Varyag seaworthy (it is now in dry dock somewhere), water related projects, road and rail projects, manned space program (the first space station module should be going up in 2-4 years) and floating African dictators.
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