World outlook
Wind turbines built by Huaneng Group, sitting along the coast of Mulan Bay in Wenchang City, Hainan Province, China.
But if in many ways it’s an anonymous foot soldier in a vast army of construction, the planned location of the Chaozhou farm does perhaps hint at how the Chinese wind sector has developed. With 94% of the country’s population living in its eastern third – and many clinging closely to the fertile and prosperous coasts – it makes sense that energy companies would build where the people are. That’s shadowed, moreover, by far better infrastructure from inland sites. There was a time, Barla explains, that operators struggled to get electricity from remote farms in, say, Inner Mongolia, to seaside cities like Shanghai. But in the time since 2014, Beijing invested billions in high- voltage lines, which Barla calls “best-in-class” and now encompass a dense web of electric connectivity. That’s shadowed by regional support. In Guangdong province, for example, officials are offering energy firms subsidies up to ¥1,500 ($218) for every kilowatt of capacity they build. At the same time, developers have been promised that they’ll be able to sell electricity at the same price as traditional energy providers – ensuring wind can compete with coal or nuclear power. Not that China’s burgeoning wind sector has always got its own way. Especially in provinces with strong coal mining constituencies, officials have sometimes been accused of discouraging the transition to cleaner alternatives. In 2017, to give one example, wind enthusiasts in Gansu accused the local government of cutting production quotas for wind farms, ensuring that coal stations could keep ahead. And given China’s coal sectors tend to be found in remote inland regions of the country anyway, bureaucrats will inevitably have to contend with the
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social costs of deindustrialisation when wind finally does take the top spot. “Once it all gets shut down,” says Mazzocco of China’s coal industry, “these areas might become even more impoverished”.
Impact on the rest of the world That’s shadowed by broader questions too. Particularly in light of the more rigorous industrial strategies being floated in Washington and Brussels, Mazzocco says it’s unclear how China’s wind turbine manufacturers might ultimately be affected. But if a lack of European expertise and investment would surely dampen China’s wind-built dynamism, a trade war could be equally damaging to Beijing’s enemies too, not least given Chinese factories now pump out generators and blades vital to wind turbines everywhere. “That creates a very high dependence on the supply chain,” Mazzocco explains. “It does put some of those component manufacturers in Europe and elsewhere at a disadvantage.” With the prospect of mutually assured destruction forestalling any sudden break for the moment, Barla is confident that China’s wind sector boom will only continue. With both central and regional governments “proactively imposing” energy targets, he adds that the authoritarian nature of the Chinese state can also get things done in a way democratic politicians can only dream about. Where residents in France or Britain can drag prospective projects through the judicial ringer, Barla points out that the average Chinese citizen is not “a big barrier” to new wind development. Considering the country’s wind sector is predicted to reach 1,000GW by the middle of this century, that if anything feels like an understatement. ●
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
DreamArchitect/Shutterstock
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