China's wind market expansion unfazed by global slowdown

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

China's plans to reach 100GW of installed wind power generation capacity by 2020 are unlikely to be derailed-or even side-tracked-by the current global financial crisis, according to a recent study of China's towering wind power market.

In a new assessment, China Wind Power Markets and Strategies, 2008-2020, Emerging Energy Research (EER) reports that despite inevitable slowdowns in markets elsewhere, China's wind initiatives are so large in scale and so well supported by the government, that the country's new renewable energy goals are likely be met well before the 2020 target. China is on track to become the single largest market for wind power by 2011. In just two years, China will account for more than 17% of the world's installed wind generation capacity, financed by an investment of more than US$ 20 billion. EER's new study was completed following three months of in-market, primary research and interviews by EER's Asia research team with dozens of Chinese independent power producers (IPPs), utilities, component and turbine manufacturers, and government and provincial ministries. As part of the study, three forecasts (conservative, baseline, and aggressive) for China's wind market were developed, detailing wind energy capacity additions through 2020.