Rarely a day passes without a headline like Al Gore praised China and Japan on their climate leadership, which touts all that is great about China’s commitment to green, and how China’s leadership should serve as a model for others.
It was a recent topic of conversation between myself and an old friend who has been working with some of Europe’s leading brands in the space in fact, and our concern was simply that China was getting a pass by throwing out large investment numbers.. and little else. That while there was certainly a lot of positive progress occurring, that progress was largely overshadowed by the narrow band of reports focused on massive cleantech investments.
.. and this recent article by Caijing largely confirms what we have all be hearing. that while large investments are being made, and the equipment is going in, that these investments are performing well under their targets.. and at times are little more than show pieces.
The turbines were forced to shut down not because the Mongolian wind was too strong, or for mechanical reasons, but because the system for distributing power from Xilin Gol and other wind farms built in recent years in northern China is simply too weak.
When cold weather arrives, wind farms have to compete for transmission space on a power distribution grid buzzing with electricity generated by the region’s coal-fired thermal heating plants, which fire up in winter to supply heating for local residents as well as electricity.
According to EPIA, Inner Mongolia’s installed wind power capacity approaches 3.5 gigawatts, and currently nearly one-third of that is sitting idle. The remaining two-thirds capacity is supplied by turbines that run erratically, shutting off and on according to demand.
So, my question is. Should we be expecting more than the above before lauding the efforts, and handing out “green leader” labels? Or is this what the standards have come to?
.. and it this is what we have come to, what does this mean going forward for sustainability? Will we continue to applaud model projects, or should we expect to see where a form of international competition (or local) drives real programs to reap real returns?
The problem with inadequate transmission capacity is hardly surprising. It happens in the U.S. and other countries as well for wind power. A company may be able to install a huge amount of wind power in a short period of time but unless the local utility had made adequate investments in transmission capacity (installing hundreds of kilometers of UHV transmission lines can take a long time and lots of fights will local authorities over rights of way). These comments also apply to the huge amounts of central station solar, etc. that have been announced.