Last week, the House of Representatives passed legislation that took some important first steps toward requiring power companies to generate more electricity from renewable sources. When does China plan do this? How about two years ago! According to a story that ran in the business section of The New York Times last Friday, China is poised to go from a coal-belching steam engine to a green energy superpower.
Based on The Times’s figures, China will surpass the U.S. as the largest market for wind turbines worldwide in 2009. Moreover, China has doubled its wind power capacity each year for the last four years. These guys mean business!
According to The Times, there are six humongous wind farms being built around China at this very moment. Each has a capacity that exceeds 16 coal-fired plants. Not only that but each one dwarfs any other project anywhere on earth.
HSBC predicts that China will invest more money in renewable energy and nuclear power between now and 2020 than in coal-fired and oil-fired electricity.
And, in a final note, the different state-owned power companies in China are now competing amongst themselves on another related project: to build power plants that run on solar energy.
Read the entire article here.
– The Pickens Team