Nation plans major drive to expand wind capacity

The world's largest offshore wind station under construction in Rudong, Jiangsu province. China aims to expand its installed capacity for wind power this year, with an emphasis on offshore facilities. Xu Congjun / for China Daily

Offshore facilities will be given highest priority by policymakers

China plans a big push to increase the installed capacity of wind power this year, with offshore facilities getting top priority, a senior energy official said.

"We will continue to work actively on the offshore wind sector this year by accelerating the establishment of a benchmark feed-in tariff for offshore projects," said Shi Lishan, deputy director of the new energy department of the National Energy Administration.

Feed-in tariffs are guaranteed payments that act as production-based incentives to power suppliers.

"For offshore wind developers, it is very important to have a pricing mechanism so that they can have a clear picture of how they can generate profits."

As pollution lingers over many major cities, the government is speeding up the pace of offshore wind power development after years of stagnation, Shi said.

China aims to expand its offshore wind power installed capacity to 5 million kilowatts by 2015 and 30 million kW by 2020, but those targets seem ambitious.

In 2012, the world's largest wind power market had installed only 389,600 kW of offshore wind capacity. Even though this put China third after the United Kingdom and Denmark, it was still far short of the targets for 2015 and 2030.

But China, the world's biggest energy user, made progress in connecting idle wind farms to the grid last year.

Thanks to improved grid construction and dispatching and enhanced equipment performance, wind turbines' average time in service increased 9.7 percent to 207.4 hours from the previous year, the NEA said.

The industry added installed wind capacity of 14.49 million kW last year, 23 percent more than in the previous year, bringing the total (on- and offshore) to 77.16 million kW, according to the NEA.

China relies on coal for about 70 percent of its energy. The government has been moving to restructure the nation's energy consumption as it strives to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of total consumption by 2020 to cut air pollution.

According to the Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index, China was just behind the United States, which was at the top of the ranking for the fourth quarter.

After China came Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The index, released by EY (a member firm of Ernst & Young Global Ltd), scored 40 countries on the attractiveness of their renewable energy markets, energy infrastructure and the suitability for individual technologies.

China scored 73.1 out of 100 in the fourth quarter, up from 71.6 in the third. The US slipped to 74.4 from 74.7, EY said in an e-mailed report to Bloomberg.

"China has remained a dominant market in the index, reflecting an unprecedented pace of deployment backed by substantial targets and continued high growth in energy demand," said Klair White, editor of the report.