Renewable and alternative energy sources are now being used
widely throughout some of China's most remote areas.
Until last year, E'erdun Batu, an ordinary herdsman in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, had to use a
tallow oil lamp for lighting and burn cattle manure for cooking or
indoor heating.
That was his way of life and that of his neighbours who have
been living in the region's Xilin Gol League in Inner Mongolia for
generations.
However, their lives were radically changed when a new way of
energy came to them with the use of electricity by wind power.
Today, small-scale wind-driven generators, part of China's
efforts to promote the use of such renewable energy, are now dotted
throughout the open land of the league.
So far this new form of alternative energy using wind power has
helped put more than 130,000 sets of small-scale generators into
operation in pastures throughout Inner Mongolia with electricity
supply secured for more than 600,000 herdsmen.
And now Inner Mongolia can boast being at the front ranks for
renewable energy in China and has the biggest output for this form
of energy in the nation.
Renewable energy experts are now stressing that because of
China's growing economy, the country can now reduce its heavy
dependence on energies based on fossil fuels such as oil and coal
through developing various renewable energies on a large scale.
Projects such as the one in Inner Mongolia, they maintain, will
help ease China's growing shortage of power supply and boost the
environment by curbing pollution.
With China's rapid economic growth, more and more local
authorities and enterprises are attaching great importance to the
exploitation of "green energies" including wind, solar, biomass,
geothermal and ocean powers.
Within 30 years stocks of China's renewable energies will equal
800 million tons of standard coal, or half of China's existing
annual output of standard coal, experts predict.
Local government authorities believe this would provide enormous
potential energy for China to tap into for its development in the
years ahead.
China is rich in wind power resources. Reserves of the energy
have been estimated at 3.2 billion kilowatts with about one-third
of this power available for an installed capacity of 253 million
kilowatts.
China's wind power reserves and available capacity have been
ranked the first of its type in the world.
The country's existing installed capacity of wind power totals
760,000 kilowatts, statistics show.
With the development of wind power supply in some areas, the use
of solar energy has progressed in some other provinces of
China.
The annual radiant energy China gets from the sun is equivalent
to power supplied by burning 2.4 trillion tons of standard coal,
statistics indicate.
At present, about 800 solar power stations have been built
across the country with an installed capacity of 19,600
kilowatts.
Meanwhile, marsh gas tanks used across China's rural areas have
also benefited 13 million residents.
Last year China pooled 1 billion yuan (US$123.3 million) worth
of national debt as investment into further promotion of biogas
projects throughout its rural areas.
The use of biomass for energy supplies in rural areas, mostly
biogas power generation, has already exceeded 250 million tons of
standard coal or about half of the total consumed energy of rural
residents in their daily life.
In Jinzhong and Jincheng prefectures of north China's Shanxi Province, marsh gas has become a key
energy source of indoor winter heating.
China is also using tidal energy and geoheat in its eastern
coastal areas and southwest provinces including Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou.
(China Daily April 27, 2006)