Goldwind Science & Technology Co, China's largest wind power equipment maker, plans to raise 1.8 billion yuan ($244 million) in an initial public offering (IPO) to gain from the country's efforts to counter climate change.

Goldwind will sell 50 million shares at 36 yuan apiece, the Xinjiang-based company said in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Chinese officials at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Indonesia are showing the government's efforts to curb emissions of gases that cause global warming. The share sale will help fund Goldwind's plan to spend about 1.9 billion yuan to expand capacity and on research and development, according to a share sale document on December 6.

"China is already the world's factory," Yang Ailun, climate change program manager at Greenpeace China, said in an interview in Bali, Indonesia?Tuesday. "It could be and should be the manufacturing hub of clean technology for the world as well."

The nation burns coal for almost 80 percent of the electricity used in the world's fastest-growing economy, which generated a record $238 billion trade surplus in the first 11 months of this year.

"As China's wind power sector takes off, we think Goldwind is well-positioned to become a major beneficiary, thanks to its strong brand and first-mover advantage," KGI Securities analyst Steven Liao wrote in a?report. "We think Goldwind is an attractive investment target," Liao said. Goldwind has a 33 percent share of China's wind-power equipment market, according to KGI.

Investors can buy the stock today and tomorrow, and it will start trading "soon" after the sale, Goldwind said in a statement late yesterday dated December 13.

China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, will use hydropower, nuclear energy, biomass fuels and natural gas to help cut 950 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, Ma Kai, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in June when he presented a National Climate Change Program.

The country may have total wind power capacity of 8,000 megawatts by 2010, exceeding the government target of 5,000 megawatts, Li Junfeng, secretary-general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, said in January.

(China Daily December 13, 2007)