China: Wind farm expansion to cost $13bn

China's expanding their wind farms

China is one of the world's leading producer of solar energy, buy it appears that they are now attempting to corner the wind power market by investing US$13 billion into wind farms.

Longyuan Power Group, already currently China's biggest wind power producer, has revealed that they intend to invest US$13 billion into developing even more clean, renewable energy over the next five years and they aim to this by installing at least 16GW of wind turbines in China and overseas by 2015.

Speaking to Bloomberg, company president Xie Changjun said, "China so far has used only about one percent of its total estimated wind power resources and there is vast potential for future growth."

He also said that the company was planning on looking at opportunities in South Africa, the US, Australia and Europe.

While the firm is China's biggest wind power producer, it is only the fifth largest producer of wind power capacity globally, but its new plans will see it clinch third place by 2012.

China's wind surge

Longyuan's expansion plans come on the back of news that will see the introduction of new legislation, which will introduce a feed in tariff for wind power and set a target for 15 percent of the country's energy to be generated from low carbon sources by 2015.

As such, Chinese wind turbine manufacturers are now expanding rapidly to meet the anticipated increase in demand. Production capacity increases are expected to bring down costs by up to 10 percent.

Longyuan is on a bit of a run at the moment, following ambitious solar expansion plans, where the company stated it planned to build 1.74GW of solar projects over the next few years. Solar power is expected to account for more than a quarter of the company's energy generation, but they're not stopping there - they have plans for a large scale solar array and geothermal project in Tibet.

Clearly Longyuan feel that when it comes to renewable energy, diversifying is the key.

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Timon Singh

Timon Singh is a graduate of Liverpool University where he received a degree in Social and Economic History. He has previously worked for BBC Magazines on BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, the publication for the popular genealogy show.

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