China, world's largest CO2 emitter, now pushing ahead on wind, solar, other alt fuels
Last year China's carbon dioxide emissions jumped ahead of the emissions levels from the United States, long the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. China's booming population growth and its embrace of coal and other fossil fuels for power supply seemed to guarantee that those numbers would continue to rise dramatically, even as visibility continued to decline in smog-shrouded Beijing.
But this year, according to today's New York Times, "China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up."
It turns out the threat of climate change "is driving Beijing to take a series of initiatives to restrain the country's greenhouse gas emissions by power plants," reports Reuters.
"China is set to raise its wind power capacity to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, eight times its current level and more than Britain's entire current power capacity, as part of a stimulus package aimed at boosting renewable energy," the wire service says.
The Times notes that right now China is building six immense wind power projects, "each with the capacity of more than 16 large coal-fired power plants. Each of the six projects 'totally dwarfs anything else, anywhere else in the world,' said Steve Sawyer, the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group in Brussels."
[AP photo: Smog in Beijing just before 2008 Olympics]
Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
*



Recent Comments