China's Renewal
Hungry for fuel, it emerges as a leader in alternative energy
In a country that is still largely agrarian, one obvious strategy is making biofuels and biogas out of the vast amount of agricultural and animal wastes, which can be used as a substitute for imported oil. In the past, farmers would burn corn or rice stalks directly, or decompose them into a gas that could be used as a substitute for natural gas in boilers or generators. Now China is looking at industrial-scale production of biogas, using agricultural, forestry, and municipal wastes. One biogas project on the outskirts of Beijing takes the waste from the 60,000 pigs on a farm and converts it into methane by adding anaerobic bacteria. Alcohol factories that once made China's famous fiery rice wine, or baijiu, are now shifting to making ethanol for use in cars.
China's ambitious renewable-energy projects are about to gain a higher profile. The Summer Olympics, to be held in Beijing in 2008, are on track to be the greenest games ever. The main venue, Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium, will be fitted with a 130-kilowatt solar energy system installed by Suntech Power, a Chinese solar company that listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December. The Beijing government has also pledged to build 160 geothermal wells in the city by 2008 to provide space heating for the games, and at least 20 percent of the electricity needs of Olympic Park will be supplied by wind power.
Off the grid. In the most remote areas, the government has harnessed wind and solar energy for the Township Electrification Project, which aims to provide electricity to tens of millions who live in the 29,000 villages that are not hooked up to the national grid. The plan is to build a huge solar photovoltaic station in the desert as well as smaller stations.
Across the plains of Inner Mongolia, new wind farms dot the landscape. Though the country currently ranks behind the United States and Europe in using wind energy, the only other developing country that uses more is India.
An important benefit to using renewables instead of coal-fired power is that it increases employment by relying on manufacturing rather than China's notoriously dangerous mines. China is on track to be the world leader in making and exporting renewable-energy equipment, making wind turbines, solar cells, solar water heaters, and hydro turbines.
Still, as in the West, renewable energy costs more in China than traditional energy sources do. In Germany, Japan, and the United States, government subsidies have helped make renewable energy affordable, through tax credits and favorable pricing for users of renewable power. China's new law follows suit by requiring utilities to purchase power from approved renewable-energy facilities at a set price and spreads the cost differential across all grid customers. It also offers tax incentives and discounted loans for developing renewable-energy projects and imposes penalties for failing to meet production targets.
Back at the Tian Pu factory, engineer Cao shows a visitor the wall of converters that enable the solar power to be connected to the city's power grid. Cao used to work on control systems for computers, but in the past few years he changed jobs to focus on solar photovoltaic systems. "I thought it was a better career move," he says. "After all, this is the wave of the future!"
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