Slow progress for wind power industry
June 28, 2012 Category Alternative energy, Environment
“The second round of bidding for offshore concession projects, which had been scheduled to start in the first half of 2012, is likely to be put off due to significant delays in the first concession projects,” said Shi Pengfei, Vice President of the China Wind Energy Association. The second group of concession projects, totaling up to 2 GW, are to be built in Jiangsu, Hebei, Shandong, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. According to the National Energy Administration (NEA), China will build 5 GW of off-shore wind projects by 2015. But Shi said delays may mean missing the target. China’s installed off-shore wind power capacity was only 258 MW last year, statistics from the Global Wind Energy Council show, although China’s onshore wind power capacity is the world’s largest reaching almost 63 GW last year. In 2010, China awarded four contracts in the first round of bids to construct 1 GW of wind capacity in off-shore and intertidal (shoreline areas exposed at low tide) concession projects that were to be completed in four years. However, construction hasn’t started on the projects. “A lack of coordination among different government bodies” was one cause of the delays, said Liu Qi, Deputy General Manager of Shanghai Electric Wind Power Equipment Co, a wind turbine manufacturer. Industry participants also mention site changes, environmental issues and low feed-in tariffs as reasons for the lack of progress. Since China’s wind farm developers were competing for the first off-shore projects regardless of price to get a foothold in the market, the average feed-in-tariff was only about CNY0.7 per kilowatt hour, which barely covers costs. An economically viable off-shore feed-in tariff should be at least CNY0.8 per kWh, according to turbine makers and wind farm operators. China’s only offshore wind farm in commercial operation is the 102 MW Shanghai East Sea Bridge Off-shore Wind Farm, which went into operation in June 2010. The feed-in tariff for this project was CNY0.978 per kWh. “The government will review the first four off-shore projects and changes in the feed-in tariff are likely,” said Li Junfeng, President of the China Renewable Energy Industries Association.
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