China, known worldwide for its smog-choked cities and rising status as global-superpolluter, may be cleaning up its act.
The country that has let coal-belching power plants fuel its economic miracle is now eyeing a cleaner, more benign form of electricity: wind power.
According to the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council, China added nearly 1350 megawatts of wind-generated electricity in 2006, doubling its wind capacity.
While that's still less than 1 percent of China's total annual electricity usage, and half of what the U.S. installed over the same period, China was still fifth worldwide when it came to the amount of wind power installed in 2006.
"[The wind-power business] is going gangbusters," said Greg Yurek, chief executive of American Superconductor, a company with $51 million in 2006 sales that, among other things, licenses wind turbine designs to Chinese firms. "They need electricity, and wind is a nice way to do it."
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Driving the push to wind power is a 2006 declaration by the government that the country should invest more in renewable energy, and should eventually have 30,000 megawatts of wind power installed by 2020. (The U.S. is projected to have 50,000 megawatts installed by then, up from 11,000 megawatts currently.)
China is not a party to the Kyoto treaty, but its leaders have recognized that its heavy reliance on a single energy source - coal - is both dirty and dangerous.
Pollution in Chinese cities, partly caused by the burning of coal, is leading to serious public health concerns and an international image problem ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
"They think it's urgent to correct some of the monumental mistakes they have made so far" in energy policy, said Yingling Liu, China program manager at the Washington-based research institute Worldwatch.
While the Chinese government doesn't say how its 30,000 megawatt target should be met, the very fact that the central Chinese government has set this target at all has prompted local officials to invest in the sector either directly with the government or through state-run corporations.
"That means a lot in China. Regional leaders are trying to please the government," said Liu. "It's not like a market mechanism, it's more like a command mechanism."
Command or not, it's creating a big market in China for wind-related equipment.
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