By Vera Eckert BONN, June 2 (Reuters) - China plans to boost renewable energy to provide 10 percent of the country's
electricity needs by 2010, in a move to reduce its reliance on polluting coal
for generation, a government official said on Wednesday. China wants to raise
its green power capacity to
By 2020, its renewable capacity would be double to 121,000 MW which would account for 12 percent of China's booming energy demand, the commission's vice chairman Zhang Guobao told delegates. "We will take these action plans forward...to promote the large-scale exploitation of renewables," Zhang Guobao said through an interpreter. China expects to have 50,000 MW of hydropower, 4,000 MW of wind power, 6,000 MW of biomass power generation and 450 MW of solar energy by 2010.
The country's wind farms have a capacity of just 468 megawatts, out of a total installed capacity of 356,000 megawatts. China has been slow to join the global wind power expansion but is keen to diversify its energy sources, whether by building the world's largest hydroelectric project in the Three Gorges Dam or by increasing nuclear and gas-fired power plants. China, the world's most populous nation, faces great environmental issues as its explosive economic expansion is due to potentially make it the largest producer of the so-called greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin told the meeting that China had delivered "major proposals which even if they stood alone would make the conference a success." China has recently adopted laws to subsidise green energy, guaranteeing purchase contracts and above-market prices for renewable energy, which were modelled on Germany's pioneering renewable energy law.
China is the second largest importer of oil while also being the world's largest producer and consumer of coal.