[More than 92,000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour.]
By Javier C. Hernández
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Construction in 2013 near
a wind farm in the northwest province of Gansu.
More than 92,000 wind
turbines have been built across China, capable of
generating 145 gigawatts
of electricity. Credit Carlos Barria/Reuters
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JIUQUAN,
China — On the edge of the
Gobi Desert, the Jiuquan Wind Power Base stands as a symbol of China’s quest to
dominate the world’s renewable energy market. With more than 7,000 turbines
arranged in rows that stretch along the sandy horizon, it is one of the world’s
largest wind farms, capable of generating enough electricity to power a small
country.
But these days, the windmills loom like
scarecrows, idle and inert. The wind howls outside, but many turbines in
Jiuquan, a city of vast deserts and farms in the northwest province of Gansu,
have been shut off because of weak demand. Workers while away the hours
calculating how much power the turbines could have generated if there were more
buyers, and wondering if and when they will ever make a profit.
“There’s not much we can do right now,” said
Zhou Shenggang, a manager at a state-owned energy company who oversees 134
turbines here; about 60 percent of their capacity goes unused each year. “Only the
state can intervene.”
China, the world’s largest emitter of
greenhouse gases, has pointed to its embrace of wind and solar power and other
alternatives to coal to position itself at the forefront of the global effort
to combat climate change.
More than 92,000 wind turbines have been
built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity,
nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every
three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them
at a rate of more than one per hour.
But some of its most ambitious wind projects
are underused. Many are grappling with a nationwide economic slowdown that has
dampened demand for electricity. Others are stymied by persistent favoritism
toward the coal industry by local officials and a dearth of transmission lines
to carry electricity from rural areas in the north and west to China’s
fastest-growing cities.
That has left China unable to generate enough
renewable energy to make a serious dent in air pollution and carbon emissions,
despite the state-driven building spree. Even with its unmatched arsenal of
turbines, China still lags the United States. Wind power now accounts for 3.3
percent of electricity generation in China, according to the nation’s National
Energy Administration, compared with 4.7 percent in the United States.
Chinese officials have described the
challenges facing the wind sector as growing pains, and they say the
investments in renewable energy will pay off in the long term. The costs of
wind projects are falling rapidly with advances in technology and more
efficient construction, making them more competitive with plants powered by
fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.
And the government has vowed to continue
investing heavily in renewable energy. It said this month that it intended to
spend at least $360 billion through 2020 on developing renewable energy
sources.
Analysts said that China’s success would
depend on its ability to overcome both political and practical obstacles,
including resistance to renewable energy from local governments and a lack of
turbines near major cities.
“This is partly a political fight,” said
Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable energy division at the International Energy
Agency. “Still, it’s a very, very robust and solid trajectory.”
Sebastian Meyer, research and advisory
director at Azure International, a renewable-energy consulting firm in Beijing,
said China was “leapfrogging everybody” with its investments in renewable
energy but needed to push through painful policy decisions, such as allowing
more flexibility in setting energy prices.
“For years, they’ve been talking about
power-sector reform,” he said. “But really they need a different market
approach that incentivizes more use of renewables going forward.”
The Jiuquan Wind Power Base, approved by the
government in 2008, epitomized China’s ambition to become a global leader in
clean energy. The government vowed to invest $17.4 billion by 2020 and build a
vast farm capable of generating 20 gigawatts of power, more than the combined
wind capacity of several countries.
But the unfinished project has been slow to
take off, even as the government continues to build it out.
Part of the problem is the location. Gansu is
a barren, mountainous province, chosen for its strong winds and potential for
growth. But it is far from the booming cities of eastern China, making
transmission of electricity difficult.
Gansu now has some of the highest rates of
underutilization in the wind sector in China; in 2015, 39 percent of wind
capacity in the province was wasted, according to statistics compiled by the
National Energy Administration.
Mr. Frankl said inefficiency in Gansu was
“astronomically high” and underscored the need for China to build more
ultrahigh-voltage transmission lines to carry electricity long distances, and
to position new turbines closer to major metropolises.
In Gansu and elsewhere, the central
government has also run up against local resistance. Advocates for the wind
industry contend that local officials have reduced production quotas for wind
farms to give an advantage to coal companies.
The coal industry, a major driver of economic
growth in many provinces, wields significant influence in China. While the
government has pledged to curb the spread of coal plants as part of its plan to
make 20 percent of China’s energy renewable by 2030, it has continued to add
them in some places.
“The cake is only so big,” said Yan Jing, a
Greenpeace activist in Beijing who studies climate change and energy issues.
“It’s hard for new energy companies to take a slice from traditional players.”
Even if more transmission lines were
constructed, Ms. Yan said, the government would have trouble persuading
businesses along China’s heavily developed eastern coast to buy electricity
from faraway provinces.
“The authorities failed to consider the
demand factor, namely, ‘How can we get closer to buyers?’” she said. “There
should be more development of clean energy in eastern parts of China so
electricity can be absorbed locally.”
In introducing a new energy plan last week,
officials acknowledged that the focus on building turbines far from urban
centers had created imbalances. He Yongjian, an official at the National Energy
Administration, said the government would now build a majority of new turbines
in the east, partly to reduce the need to transmit power long distances.
But building wind farms in the east might be
difficult, given the preponderance of coal plants, a lack of strong winds and a
scarcity of undeveloped land.
The tepid demand for electricity in an
economic downturn has also exacerbated the troubles for renewable energy.
Demand for electricity grew by only 0.5 percent in 2015, the slowest rate of
growth since 1974, and it is expected to remain weak until consumer spending
picks up.
At the Jiuquan Wind Power Base, Mr. Zhou
oversees a small wind farm for a branch of China Resources Power Holdings, a
state-run energy company based in Shenzhen that operates two wind farms in
Gansu. He said the wind industry’s problems had hurt morale and productivity.
The branch in Jiuquan has made small cuts in salaries and benefits for its 32
employees because of its challenges in selling electricity. Other wind farms in
the area have resorted to layoffs, according to interviews with workers.
Outside the company’s offices, a walled
compound along a desert highway, trucks carrying coal rumbled down dusty roads.
Mr. Zhou, wearing a bumblebee-yellow uniform and fiddling with a pencil,
surveyed the vast stretch of immobile turbines from his desk.
“The only thing I can do is encourage my
employees to do a good job,” he said. “I assure them that over the long term,
the new energy sector is very promising. The difficulties right now are only
temporary.”
Follow Javier C. Hernández on Twitter
@HernandezJavier.
Owen Guo and Ryan McMorrow contributed
research.
