By Geoff Dyer
Published: March 29 2010 00:32 | Last updated: March 29 2010 00:32
At the Copenhagen climate change conference in December, China found itself labelled in many quarters as the villain.
Ed Miliband, the UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, blamed it for blocking several of the main potential agreements, while US officials fumed at some of the tactics of the delegation, including one official who was involved in a finger-pointing exchange with President Barack Obama.
Yet away from the drama of Copenhagen, China has been putting in place a strategy for investing in renewable energy that is winning more envy than criticism from overseas.
David Miliband, the UK secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs and brother of the climate secretary, was full of praise for the country’s advances and ambition when he visited the solar research facilities at ENN, an energy company, in mid-March. “The rapid advances China is making are very impressive,” he says.
And in the US Congress the easiest way to gain attention for any prospective investment in green energy is to warn that China will quickly take the lead if Washington does not.
China has yet to agree to overall targets for reducing emissions but has signed up to aggressive targets for reducing “carbon intensity” – the amount of carbon emitted for each unit of economic output – by 40-45 per cent by 2020. A big part of that reduction will be achieved through increasing the amount of energy from renewable sources.
Government planners hope that by 2020, renewables will account for 15 per cent of energy needs.
Zhang Guobao, deputy head of the country’s main planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said recently that the government was about to unveil details of its plan to reach the target, which would involve billions of dollars of investment in solar, wind and biomass plants.
Many of the building blocks are already in place. For the past two years, China has been the leading manufacturer of solar panels and the industry has been expanding at a rapid rate.
Several cities and provinces have been able to invest in the sector thanks to easy credit available over the past year through the country’s stimulus programme.
Suntech, the largest national solar panel manufacturer, has announced plans to build a plant in Arizona, as part of a strategy of building a leading position in the US market.
Last year, China also became the biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, again with the stimulus package accelerating an already rapid expansion in investment in the sector.
There are also signs that research into renewables is beginning to grow rapidly.
In one potentially ominous sign for the industry in the US, Applied Materials, the Silicon Valley company that is one of the biggest suppliers of equipment for both semiconductors and solar panels, recently opened a large research lab in Xian, central China, just as it is pushing through layoffs in the US and Europe.
The lab will work on developing improved manufacturing processes. Meanwhile, ENN, the company David Miliband visited in March, is trying to develop a technology that would turn green algae into energy.
Yet for all the bold plans and ambition, there are still plenty of obstacles facing the Chinese renewables sector.
Take wind power. Many of the best regions of the country for wind farms are in the north and north-west, far from the main population and industrial centres in the east and south.
That means that to transport the energy to where it is needed, substantial investment would be required in the transmission network.
These have not yet been forthcoming.
Indeed, industry executives say that, at the moment, anything between a third and a half of the wind turbines that have been constructed in recent years are standing idle because they have not been connected to the network.
Despite the rapid expansion in manufacturing of panels, the use of solar power in the country’s energy network remains modest – about 1 per cent – also in part due to transmission problems.
Officials say the government is about to step up investment in a so-called “smart grid”, which can absorb the more irregular power supply from solar and wind plants.
Most importantly, the overall impact on emissions from investment in renewables could turn out to be much less than meets the eye.
The reason is that for several decades to come, China will remain very dependent on coal, because this is the one raw material it has in abundance.
Even with all the investments in solar, wind and biomass, China will still get nearly two-thirds of its energy from coal in two decades time.
As a result, for many observers, it is cleaner coal technologies – rather than renewables – that could provide the biggest benefits in terms of limiting the growth in emissions.
On this front, there are already signs of progress. A recent report by Chatham House, the think-tank in London, examined thousands of green energy-related patents and clean coal was the only area where China had marked out a strong presence.
Moreover Future Fuels, a US company, has recently signed a deal that will allow it to apply a Chinese clean coal technology at a new plant in the US.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec4fb8cc-3866-11df-aabd-00144feabdc0.html
Published: March 29 2010 00:32 | Last updated: March 29 2010 00:32
At the Copenhagen climate change conference in December, China found itself labelled in many quarters as the villain.
Ed Miliband, the UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, blamed it for blocking several of the main potential agreements, while US officials fumed at some of the tactics of the delegation, including one official who was involved in a finger-pointing exchange with President Barack Obama.
Yet away from the drama of Copenhagen, China has been putting in place a strategy for investing in renewable energy that is winning more envy than criticism from overseas.
David Miliband, the UK secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs and brother of the climate secretary, was full of praise for the country’s advances and ambition when he visited the solar research facilities at ENN, an energy company, in mid-March. “The rapid advances China is making are very impressive,” he says.
And in the US Congress the easiest way to gain attention for any prospective investment in green energy is to warn that China will quickly take the lead if Washington does not.
China has yet to agree to overall targets for reducing emissions but has signed up to aggressive targets for reducing “carbon intensity” – the amount of carbon emitted for each unit of economic output – by 40-45 per cent by 2020. A big part of that reduction will be achieved through increasing the amount of energy from renewable sources.
Government planners hope that by 2020, renewables will account for 15 per cent of energy needs.
Zhang Guobao, deputy head of the country’s main planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said recently that the government was about to unveil details of its plan to reach the target, which would involve billions of dollars of investment in solar, wind and biomass plants.
Many of the building blocks are already in place. For the past two years, China has been the leading manufacturer of solar panels and the industry has been expanding at a rapid rate.
Several cities and provinces have been able to invest in the sector thanks to easy credit available over the past year through the country’s stimulus programme.
Suntech, the largest national solar panel manufacturer, has announced plans to build a plant in Arizona, as part of a strategy of building a leading position in the US market.
Last year, China also became the biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, again with the stimulus package accelerating an already rapid expansion in investment in the sector.
There are also signs that research into renewables is beginning to grow rapidly.
In one potentially ominous sign for the industry in the US, Applied Materials, the Silicon Valley company that is one of the biggest suppliers of equipment for both semiconductors and solar panels, recently opened a large research lab in Xian, central China, just as it is pushing through layoffs in the US and Europe.
The lab will work on developing improved manufacturing processes. Meanwhile, ENN, the company David Miliband visited in March, is trying to develop a technology that would turn green algae into energy.
Yet for all the bold plans and ambition, there are still plenty of obstacles facing the Chinese renewables sector.
Take wind power. Many of the best regions of the country for wind farms are in the north and north-west, far from the main population and industrial centres in the east and south.
That means that to transport the energy to where it is needed, substantial investment would be required in the transmission network.
These have not yet been forthcoming.
Indeed, industry executives say that, at the moment, anything between a third and a half of the wind turbines that have been constructed in recent years are standing idle because they have not been connected to the network.
Despite the rapid expansion in manufacturing of panels, the use of solar power in the country’s energy network remains modest – about 1 per cent – also in part due to transmission problems.
Officials say the government is about to step up investment in a so-called “smart grid”, which can absorb the more irregular power supply from solar and wind plants.
Most importantly, the overall impact on emissions from investment in renewables could turn out to be much less than meets the eye.
The reason is that for several decades to come, China will remain very dependent on coal, because this is the one raw material it has in abundance.
Even with all the investments in solar, wind and biomass, China will still get nearly two-thirds of its energy from coal in two decades time.
As a result, for many observers, it is cleaner coal technologies – rather than renewables – that could provide the biggest benefits in terms of limiting the growth in emissions.
On this front, there are already signs of progress. A recent report by Chatham House, the think-tank in London, examined thousands of green energy-related patents and clean coal was the only area where China had marked out a strong presence.
Moreover Future Fuels, a US company, has recently signed a deal that will allow it to apply a Chinese clean coal technology at a new plant in the US.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec4fb8cc-3866-11df-aabd-00144feabdc0.html
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