In 2009 China’s installed wind capacity more than doubled to 25.9 gigawatts and overtook Germany (25.8 gigawatts) for second place in terms of total wind installed capacity. The U.S., with 35.15 gigawatts, is in first place.
Last year China added 13,732 megawatts in new wind capacity. The U.S. added 9,922 megawatts and Germany 1,880 megawatts.
Pie charts show installed wind generation capacity at the end of 2008 and at the end of 2009.
Remember the Beijing Olympics? A little more than a year ago the question driving the media cycle in the months and days leading to the games was the city’s endemic pollution and whether authorities would ever be able to provide some crucial clean air to the athletes competing there. So, what did Chinese authorities do? Simple, they shut down the polluting factories for the duration of the games. An impressive feat, only possible in a single party state like China.
But the move was just a bandaid solution. Now, China, one of the world’s largest consumers and producers of coal, is taking a more long-term approach to resolving its “CO2 problem.” On the policy side, it has been talking to the world’s other energy guzzler, the U.S., to work together on climate change issues. On the investment side, in the wake of the global economic crisis, China’s announced a mega $220 billion green-focused stimulus package to prop up wind and solar generation.
Last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association, China added some 6,300 megawatts in wind capacity. The International Energy Agency estimates the country needs to increase its total generation capacity by 800 gigawatts by 2030 to meet demand — roughly double its current capacity.
This is just a start. The much talked about China Greentech report, released last week, estimates that the country’s green energy market, which includes everything from wind and solar farms and battery-powered automobiles, could be worth between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year (yes, that’s per year!) by 2013.
The number is mouthwatering for many clean tech companies. A sliver of that pie could secure a comfortable bottom line for decades.
Already the country’s growing cleantech needs has lead to the creation of some homegrown champions like Yingli Solar. It’s also motivated key foreign players to invest there. Marlboro, Mass., EverGreen Solar is spending up to $20 million to finance the construction of a new 100 megawatt solar panel manufacturing facility in Wuhan, China, it will jointly operate with Jiawei Solar, a local company. And last week Tempe, Ariz. First Solar announced an MOU with the Chinese government to develop a 2 GW PV farm in the country’s remote Inner Mongolia region. We wrote about that here, impressed by the boldness of the plan, although there are some serious questions about whether First Solar can even execute this mammoth plan. Securing basic materials, including tellurium, on which it relies to build its low cost PV panels will be a major challenge for the company.
On China’s green aspiration, Environmental Capital’s Keith Johnson (quoting the greentech report) writes that the country’s heavy-handed approach offers obvious upsides and some downsides.
China Greentech Reports writes:
The benefits of China’s concentrated and state-dominated greentech markets are offset by poor incentives; lack of competition reduces efficiencies and innovation that come from open and competitive markets. The challenge for any nation, including China, is to know how and when to strike a balance between these two sides […]
Back to the Beijing Olympics. The government’s decision to just shut down the region’s polluters underscored the upside of that top-hand approach in implementing high impact, short-term policies. However, it probably won’t work to implement a long-term transformative energy policy. At least, that is if China is able to fuel its own innovation based on the intellectual property of outside investors, who are likely to be willing to share proprietary technology for a piece of China’s huge green pie.
One of the most pressing questions in the green energy revolution (if indeed it is at hand) is, who’s going to be making money from the rush toward sustainability?
This morning we have at least a tentative answer: General Electric.
The industrial giant’s overall profitability took a nosedive in the second quarter but energy infrastructure profits increased 17 percent over Q2 2008 to $1.79 billion, despite a small dip in revenues. It represented a whopping 37 percent of profit for the quarter. As our friends at WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog note (as ever, thanks to Keith Johnson) the energy infrastructure division makes generation equipment including wind turbines and parts for nuclear power plants.
How much of this surge in profitability is due to green energy compared with traditional power generation, we don’t know yet. But we have to imagine the company will be focusing more on the cleantech sector as, say, Britain looks to populate its countryside and the Thames Estuary with windmills and focus on renewables.
China is set to begin construction on a massive wind generation project located in the northwestern part of the country, which could produce about 5 gigawatts of power by next year and 20 gigawatts by 2020.
The installation in Gansu Province, known as the “Three Gorges of Wind Power,” is expected to cost more than $17.6 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal‘s Environmental Capital.
China’s government announced late last year that it would spend $220 billion over the next two years on clean energy – twice as much as what the U.S. is looking to invest as part of its own green-focused stimulus.
Besides this project China is set to build another half-dozen utility-scale wind farms. Wind generation in China is much cheaper to build, costing about one-third of the cost of European and U.S. wind farms or less than $1 million per megawatts.
As part of its massive green stimulus package China seeks to raise its wind power capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2020, or eight times the current level.
Iowa, with 2,791 megawatts in installed wind-generation capacity, has surpassed California (2,517 megawatts) in installed wind power, according to a report released today by the American Wind Energy Association.
Despite having one of the country’s most aggressive green agenda, California aims to get 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, that effort has been hampered by a slow permitting process, needed to secure land to build new wind farms and transmissions lines.
Besides Iowa and California, the states with the most wind power include Texas (7,118 megawatts); as well as Minnesota (1,754 megawatts) and Washington (1,447 megawatts).
Indiana installed the most new turbines, going from zero to 131 megawatts in a single year. Michigan’s wind power capacity grew by 48%. Utah, New Hampshire and Wisconsin also installed a significant amount of wind generation in 2008.
As of December 31, 2008 the U.S., has 25,300 megawatts in installed wind power, which is enough to serve the equivalent of close to 7 million average U.S. homes.
GE Energy provided turbines for 43% of all new capacity installed in the U.S. in 2008. Other large suppliers include Vestas, which accounted for 13% of new capacity, Siemens and Suzlon at 9% each, and Gamesa at 7%. Several new companies–Acciona, REPower, Fuhrlander, DeWind and AWE–entered the U.S. market in 2008.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Environmental Capital provides an insightful take on the growing U.S. wind generation portfolio, noting that if Texas was a country it would rank 6th in the world in wind power capacity. Specifically, it points out that the state’s 19th congressional district, in the northwest part of the state, has as much wind power as all of Denmark.
