The focus of the research, conducted by Aldo Santalco and published in the Journal Energy Policy, is concerned with the new 12th China National Development Plan 2011-2015 and in particular on the renewable energy targets set by the Government. The three sources of green energy on which China is investing a lot are hydro, wind and solar. For all of them, the visionary National Government has set very important objectives for 2015 in terms of GW of installed capacity, respectively 260 GW for hydro, 100 GW for wind and 10GW for solar.
Despite western perceptions of China often being limited to crowded and polluted cities with a very high coal consumption, China has also, and actually with increasing importance, invested in its green sector. Investments on renewable energies have been very massive starting from the previous 11th National Plan and they were targeted to specific technology in selected areas with a very enviable forward-looking strategic vision.
China can leverage very important competitive advantages that can bring strong economic power with the aim of becoming the global leader on the renewable energy industry, and the paper argues that the country is actually very close to becoming just that. Such competitive advantages are namely a very strong network of big national companies able to take huge investments and receive favourable loans, a big supply of natural resources like wind, water and sun and finally a low cost manufacturing industry.
Acknowledging these three competitive advantages and starting from the current situation in terms of already installed capacity for hydro, solar and wind, the study tries to forecast when China will be able to exceed its renewable energy deployment targets. In doing this, it develops four scenarios for each of the three energy technologies and makes reasonable forecasts regarding just when the respective targets will be met.
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