From Scientific American:
Winds rush through the capital city of China, blowing dust storms that envelop it in grit from the encroaching Gobi Desert each spring. Last year, the government finally took advantage of those winds, installing 33 wind turbines manufactured by domestic company Xinjiang Gold Wind at the Guanting wind power field to harvest this energy and use it to supplement the electricity provided by polluting coal. Those suburban turbines began turning in earnest on January 20, providing 35 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to Beijing through July, or roughly 300,000 kilowatt-hours a day.
That may supply 20 percent of the power to the city’s Olympic venues, helping the country meet its pledge of a green Olympics. The government’s commitment to renewable energy is real: the Chinese government recently doubled its target for installed wind power to 10 gigawatts by 2010 after the previous goal of 5 gigawatts was met three years early.
Through 2007, however, despite abundant winds in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, offshore and elsewhere, the country had only slightly more than 6 gigawatts of turbines built, which supplied less than 1 percent—0.6 percent—of the country’s power. And even the most optimistic projections have wind power accounting for less than 3 percent of total electricity production by 2020—more than the current U.S. share of 0.4 percent but far less than world leader, Denmark, which gets roughly 20 percent of its power from the wind.
Read also Sunrise on China’s First Carbon-Neutral City by David Biello.
