Chinese Interest In Wind Power Grows, But Installed Capacity Tiny - AFP

With a steady wind blowing from the north, Yang Xuhua looks out at his wind turbines on the rolling plains of Zhangbei county and waxes optimistic over China's potential for clean energy.

The blades on the wind mill over there will be 77 meters (254 feet) long, the biggest in China," Yang, deputy general manager of the Zhangbei Guotou Wind Power Plant in Hebei province, told AFP. "We have abundant wind energy potential, if we can tap this in a big way it will reduce a lot of the bad pollution that comes from coal burning."

After repeated trips to Europe and the United States to inspect the latest wind technology, Yang speaks with the enthusiasm of an environmentalist who is riding the wave of the next big thing. "More and more people in China are becoming convinced that we must make use of our wind resources because it is cheap to exploit, clean, renewable, abundant and does not cause global warming," Yang said. "The problem for China right now is that we don't have the equipment to realize our goals."

According to Chinese studies, the nation has the potential to tap over one million megawatts of wind power resources, of which 250,000 megawatts are land based and the rest could be tapped in offshore wind farms. Yet China only had 760 megawatts of installed wind power from 43 wind farms at the end of 2004, a fraction of one percent of total national electricity production.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_looks_to_harness_wind_power.html

I don't know how much natural gas China uses, or how exactly they meet peak loads. I suspect that it is mostly through the use of hydroelectricity.

Only 3% of China's energy currently involves the use of natural gas. This may limit the suitability of wind projects in China, which in any case, has a highly fragmented electricity infrastructure.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/china.html#gas

One of the world's great energy disasters in history, killing hundreds of thousands of people was the serial collapse of many Chinese dams after the failure of the Banquio dam in 1975.

This is one of the most under-reported environmental catastrophes of all time. It dwarfs all other energy related disasters of modern times, even probably the Iraq war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

quickly.

Thus if you have a load and suddenly the wind starts blowing, you can't shut your coal plants (economically) and you can't shut your nuclear plants, but you can shut down your gas (and to the extent they exist) any diesel capacity you have running.

You can also shut down turbines on dams - which is what I'm going to guess the Chinese would do with any wind capacity they might develop.

Wind power in China will have very little effect on the big problem in China, coal fired plants. Note though that wind might forestall any desire on the part of the Chinese to get too enthusiastic for coal gasification.

The Chinese are going to go for Fisher-Tropsch syn fuel oils - that is clear. This is frightening, but they also are leading the world in developing nuclear hydrogen. I also see some pretty good biomass papers out of Chinese laboratories - but with desertification and a huge population to feed, one cannot be too hopeful here.

It's a very difficult problem, China. It's a demographic crisis to be sure. On one hand one cannot just tell more than a billion people to live in poverty. On the other hand, one hopes they will not be as twisted as we are.