China: Wind Power for 1.3B People

From: http://seekingalpha.com/article/99955-china-wind-power-for-1-3b-people

In a recent trip to China, I experienced the "China Speed" in developing their new mega cities all over the country. The magnitude is beyond my imagination. Anything in this country is "big". 1.3B population, yes it is a "B", and let me tell you this, the population of children under age 10 is the same as the whole population of Canada: 40 Million. The China's biggest city Shanghai is twice the size of New York. The high speed train of Shanghai is two times faster than US, that is half the speed of an airplane.

Then you will ask, where does China get all the energy it needs? The answer is simple, China does not have enough energy to sustain such a magnitude of growth, and it imports crude from every single corner of the earth. And it is planning big for its next generation of energy: Wind power.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, China's installed wind energy capacity could reach 122GW by 2020. China's exploitable wind resource is estimated around 1000GW. In Inner Mongolia of Northern China, massive wind projects have been deployed over the last couple of years, the estimated capacity has reached over 1GW. In West China, provinces such as Gansu, and Qinghai, are also developing their own wind power projects to meet local energy demand. The central government has chosen wind power as an important alternative energy to combat green house emission and secure energy supply.

The wind energy booming in China has attracted many worldwide wind turbine manufacturers invest in China, such as GE (GE), Gamesa (GCTAF.PK) and Vestas (VWDRY.PK). There are also many domestic manufacturers including A Power Energy Generation (APWR), Nantong CASC, REpower North, Nordex, Hunan Hara XEMC Windpower. Among these companies, only GE, Vestas, and APWR are listed in North America, and recently APWR signed 50 of 2.7MW wind turbine contract, and has total annual production capacity of 1.1GW by 2009.