China Announces World's Largest Investment in Green Energy - Triples Wind Target

[kgrandia]

China likes to do things big: The Great Wall. The Three Gorges Dam. And now renewable energy.

A massive new government stimulus plan with a strong focus on green energy is aimed at ending growth of coal power, and instead building reliance on renwables.

HSBC estimates that of China's roughly $586 billion package, $221 billion has green features, making it the largest green stimulus package in the world, followed by the US at $112 billion and South Korea at $31 billion.

Link: http://www.energyboom.com/china-announces-worlds-largest-green-energy-plan-triples-wind-target

[msongs]

1. meanwhile the USA fiddles while congress is bought by the oil/coal lobby nt

[madrchsod]

2. china does`t have to worry about....

the crazies who think windmills will drive them...CRAZY! and the birds will DIE!

they have held up a windmill farm near here for months...

[msongs]

4. yep the chinese govt just does what it wants and corporations can lump it nt

[kgrandia]

10. Overblown

Sorry for the pun, but the harmful effects of wind power are far outstripped by the harmful effects of other toxic energy sources like mercury emissions from coal plants.

[cap]

3. whatever happened to the USA being number one?

you know: USA, USA, USA!

[NickB79]

5. "ending growth of coal power". Pay attention to what they are actually saying

Their stated goal isn't so much replacing existing coal-derived electricity with wind, but keeping the massive coal infrastructure they currently have in place and powering FUTURE DEMAND with wind power.

Um, that might be a major problem, don't ya think?

On edit:

"Under the plan, China's wind power capacity will reach over 100 gigawatts by 2020, the report said, more than triple a goal of 30 gigawatts announced in 2007."

China was building 100 GW of coal and nat. gas infrastructure PER YEAR in 2007-2008 before the economic crash slowed things down. This plan won't even accomplish it's stated goal of replacing future coal growth unless the Chinese cut electricity demand massively in the years to come.

[Massacure]

6. As the proverb goes, Rome wasn't built in one night.

China has had close to double digit economic growth for the better part of the decade. Economic growth requires energy, but if they can cap their coal use at the current rate, that would be just dandy.

[NickB79]

7. If we capped coal use at current rates, we're still screwed

Our current rate of CO2 release is already melting the Arctic ice cap and initiating noticable methane release from the tundra. It's like driving into a brick wall at a steady 80 mph instead of accelerating up to 120 mph before impact; either way you're still dead.

And this current plan from the Chinese government doesn't even cap coal usage in the future. As I pointed out, they want to install the same amount of wind power over the next 11 years that they installed in coal in a little over 1 year. Either they need to install FAR more wind and other renewables than this plan calls for, or they have to seriously constrain economic growth. If not, it's more coal plants being built, I'm afraid.

[kgrandia]

12. They'll have to

The irony is that if China continues its current energy consumption trajectory and has to buy more and more energy on the international market, they will continue to drive up world energy costs.

[Canuckistanian]

8. At least China's realizing some inevitabilities

Unrestrained petroleum use is a dead end, both practically and ecologically.

Solar, electric cars, wind power... they're way ahead in implementing these technologies.

North America (Canada and the US) is going to be a technological backwater unless more R&D is IMMEDIATELY focused on alternative energy projects on this scale.

[Nathanael]

9. And missing out

On a lot of private equity funding that could stay in the United States.

[Canuckistanian]

11. .. or Canada

Welcome to DU!
:toast:
:hi:

[hatrack]

13. Yes, and they were also building the "Eco-City" of Dongtan. Until they didn't build it, that is . .

Three years ago, I crossed the world to see it: the site for the world's first eco-city. Shanghai, one of the fastest growing megacities on the planet, was setting aside a giant island in the Yangtze river to create an eco-city for half a million people. British eco-engineers and green-minded architects and town planners were designing the renewably powered, car-free, water-recycling city of Dongtan as a model for the world. And its first 25,000 citizens would be living the good life there in time for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, at which it would be by far the largest exhibit, reached by a new tunnel and bridge.

Well, it is now exactly a year until the start of the Expo. The tunnel and bridge are about to open. But of the eco-city there is nothing except half a dozen wind turbines and an organic farm. No houses, no water taxis, no sewage-recycling plant, no energy park. Nothing. And all mentioned of it has disappeared from the Expo website (slogan: "Better city; better life").

This week, Peter Head, the man behind the project at the London-based consulting engineers Arup, who drew up the master plan, told me his clients at the city's Shanghai Industrial Investment Company had "gone quiet. We just don't know if anything will happen or when. The project office is shut." There is a persistent rumour that the project has been a casualty of the political fallout from the conviction of the city boss Chen Liangyu, jailed last year for corruption. Not so, says Head. The problems are more fundamental.

"China does everything by the rules handed down from the top. There is a rule for everything. The width of roads, everything. That is how they have developed so fast, by being totally prescriptive. We wanted to change the rules in Dongtan, to do everything different. But when it comes to it, China cannot deliver that."

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/23/greenwash-dongtan-ecocity