Winds of change a’blowing
Wind power will play a crucial role as China strives to improve the proportion of renewables in its energy consumption mix amid high emission-reduction goals, analysts say.
At the end of last year wind power accounted for 30% of the country’s renewable power capacity.
China’s National Energy Administration announced in January that about 71.7 gigawatts of new wind capacity was installed last year, more than double the country’s previous annual growth record.
Ben Backwell, chief executive of the Global Wind Energy Council, said:“Wind companies and industry watchers reacted to the figures with a combination of surprise and awe.
“When annual global wind installations totaled just 39 GW in 2010, it would have been unfathomable to see this volume contributed by a single market.”
The Chinese Wind Energy Association, a member of the Global Wind Energy Council, estimates that 26.3 GW of the wind power installed by the end of 2019 was gridconnected last year, and this capacity was included in the National Energy Administration’s figures for 2020.
Even if that is subtracted from the 71.7 GW total, it still leaves 45.4 GW, which Backwell said is still a “monumental achievement” considering it is nearly equivalent to the entire global capacity installed in 2018 — and would still be a record year for the Chinese wind market.
For China, wind power has become an integral part of its green energy mix and a key element in the country’s emissions goals.
In a virtual address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Xi Jinping announced that China would upgrade its nationally determined contributions by targeting peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 with the aim of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.
The Global Wind Energy Council said in its Global Wind Report 2021, published in March, that this pledge from the world’s secondlargest economy and a leading carbon-emitting nation formed one of the key global milestones to tackling climate change since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
China’s net-zero target has since been followed by a series of ambitious commitments to “scale up wind and renewable energy capacity, with various ministries and provincial-level bodies now undertaking strategic measures for planning and implementation”, it said.
China aims to increase wind and solar generation to 26% of power production by 2030. This could translate to about 1,600 GW of wind and solar capacity, exceeding the target of 1,200 GW by 2030 set in December.
By the end of last year China had 281.5 GW of wind power capacity and 253.4 GW of solar generation capacity, the National Energy Administration says.
The Global Wind Energy Council said in its report that both wind and solar “will be central to China’s power matrix”.
“Most top wind farm developers in China are State-owned companies, many of which have recently published goals for emissions peaking and renewable capacity.”
The report quoted Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the Chinese Wind Energy Association, as saying: “Although the COVID-19 pandemic impacted China’s wind industry early in 2020, the Chinese government took prompt and strong measures to effectively contain the virus.
“This allowed the sector to resume ‘business as usual’ manufacturing and installation activities as early as March 2020, which was crucial for the sector to complete projects with the looming subsidy deadline.”
To help smooth the way forward and play their part in helping achieve China’s netzero target, grid companies took various measures to overcome bottlenecks and connect as many projects as possible before the end of last year, Qin said.
More than 400 Chinese wind power companies signed what was called the Beijing Declaration at the end of last year. They committed to install more than 50 GW of new wind power capacity annually from this year to 2025, and more than 60 GW annually from 2026 to help the country reach its 2060 carbon neutrality target.
Li Xiaoyang, a consultant at Wood Mackenzie, a global energy and resources consultancy group in England, said wind power’s importance in China’s renewable energy mix cannot be underestimated.
Wind power now accounts for 30% of the country’s renewable energy capacity, she said.
“With such a significant achievement in the past decade, we expect wind power to play a more substantial role in the following decades.”
More than 2,000 GW of new wind capacity is needed from last year to 2060 to support China’s carbon-neutral target, Wood Mackenzie said.
In its latest wind power outlook report published in March it said it forecast that 408 GW of new capacity would be added from this year to 2030, including 73 GW of offshore wind capacity.
Li said China’s 25% nonfossil fuel energy consumption target by 2030 would require a 40% renewable contribution to the power market. This will fuel wind capacity growth over the next decade.
“With such a significant achievement in the past decade, we expect wind power to play a more substantial role in the following decades.”
LI XIAOYANG