China receives US$127 million to develop 20,000 MW of green power
WASHINGTON, DC, US, June 22, 2005 (Refocus Weekly)
The World Bank has approved a loan of US$87 million to the People’s Republic of China to promote renewable energies, which will be supplemented by a grant of US$40 million from the Global Environment Facility.
The objective of the ‘Renewable Energy Scale-up Program’ is to expand the
supply of green power “efficiently, cost effectively and on a large scale”
in China. The World Bank and GEF say it is the largest such project they have
supported in recent years and, over its lifetime, will induce 20 GW of capacity
from green power, while reducing carbon emissions by 800 megatonne and a similar
amount of total suspended particulate emissions, as well as 30 MT of sulfur
oxide and 6 MT of nitrogen oxide emissions.
The project will take place in four pilot provinces, involving a 100 MW windfarm
at Changjiang'ao, Pingtan Island, in Fujian Province and a 25 MW straw-fired
biomass power plant at Mabei Village in Rudong Province. It will also provide
funds to support government's efforts to develop projects and the transfer of
up-to-date wind and biomass technology from international suppliers.
“China is a world leader in the development of renewable energy resources,
especially small hydropower,” says the World Bank. “China’s abundant
undeveloped resources of small hydropower, wind, biomass, geothermal and solar
energy also could help the country reduce some of the environmental damage from
its overwhelming dependence on coal for large-scale, grid-based power
generation.”
“Such a reorientation of China’s renewable energy development faces a number
of technical, administrative and capacity constraints,” and the government has
devised a renewable energy strategy to obviate these constraints and to make
generation from renewable energy sources “competitive, on an economic basis,
with coal-fired power plants in supplying electricity to large-scale power
grids.”
There are three parts to the government’s new renewable energy strategy,
starting with the design and implementation of a legal and regulatory framework
that encourages the development of economic renewable energy resources in line
with power sector reforms. It will also provide potential power producers with
access to advanced technology and techniques to make green power more
competitive with fossil fuels, and the third part is to strengthen the capacity
of existing companies to “develop, finance, construct and operate renewable
energy projects for power generation on a large scale, and further open the
sector to private investors.”
“The project will support the implementation of a national policy framework
that would legally require a share of electricity supply to be met from
renewable resources,” says Noureddine Berrah of the World Bank. “It will
also support cost reduction of equipment to increase the competitiveness of high
potential renewable energy technologies over time through improvements to the
quality and performance of equipment and strengthening of the capability of the
service industries in China so to enable them to respond to the increased market
demand.”
The total project will cost $229 million, according to background documents, and
to run over 12 years.
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