Wind power - an important strategic choice to solve the shortage of China's electricity and energy

Great pressures are imposed to China's electricity supply, though the broiling summer has not come yet. In the first quarter of this year, there were 24 power grids shutting off the switches to limit the uses of electricity, which increased by 8 than the figure of the same period last year. Electricity and energy saving, though undoubtedly are ways to solve the shortage of power supply, is difficult to take effect in a short term since industrial structure needs to be adjusted correspondingly. China's electricity generation per capita accounts only one-thirteenth of the US, and one-eighth of Japan's. It is imperative for China to make great efforts on the development of energy supply. Then which road should China take, the conventional road of generating through coal and natural gas or the road of generating through renewable energy like wind and solar energy?

He Zuoxiu, the academician of the Institute of Theoretic Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Wang Yinan of Institute of Electrical Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences point out that efficiency, cleanness and diversification are the trends of energy development in the contemporary world. The European Union plans to increase the proportion of electricity generated by new energy from 13 percent to 22 percent by 2010. The UK expects to increase its proportion of electricity generated by renewable energy to 20 percent by 2020. However, in China's plan of electricity development by 2010, coal power, hydropower, gas power and nuclear power account for 80 percent, 15 percent, 4.8 percent, and 3.9 percent respectively, while renewable energy power like wind power accounts for only 0.4 percent, which deviates greatly from the mainstream of world energy consumption.

Can the utilization of conventional energy solve China's scarcity of energy and electricity? He Zuoxiu and Wang Yinan analyze that if China takes the road of developing coal power, there would be 1.4 to 1.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide emission by 2020, mounting to the world's number one in the light of pollution. China has 823 billion tons of coal reserves, but only 139 billion tons of recoverable reserves. Even counted by the coal consumption volume of last year, the mining could last for only 83 years. If the coal consumption volume is quadrupled, the mining could last scarcely for 20 years. Experts calculate that China's water energy that is available for exploitation is 390 million kilowatts. Even the complete exploitation and utilization can only double China's installed volume and annual electricity generation. It is not realistic to depend on hydropower to tackle the problem of power shortage. Therefore, He Zuoxiu and Wang Yinan indicate that combining the factors of resources, technologies, economy, and environment protection, wind power generation is the important strategic choice to settle China’s scarcity of electricity and energy.