China plans renewable energy center

BEIJING, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- China announced plans Tuesday to build a national renewable energy center aimed at supporting development of the sector.

The center will be responsible for policymaking, key project and program management, market and industrial operations, database and information platform establishment and international exchange program coordination, said Han Wenke, director general of China's Energy Research Institute, China Daily reports.

The establishment of the center is still in the preliminary planning stages, Han said during the launch of the Sino-Danish Renewable Energy Development Program.

The Danish government will invest $18.5 in the program, which is slated to continue until 2013.

"The project is set to combine the advantages of the two countries and promote renewable energy development fast and well in China," said Danish Minister of Climate Change and Energy Lykke Friis.

A number of Danish companies have already made a green energy footprint in China, most recently Vestas, a world leader in wind power equipment manufacturing. Last year Vestas said its investment in China would exceed $440 million by the end of 2009. It recently erected the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex in northeastern China.

"You have to move fast with the market," Jens Tommerup, president of Vestas China, told The New York Times. "Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market," he said, referring to China.

China has become the third-largest producer of wind power in the world and is responsible for some 40 percent of the output of the world's solar photovoltaics.

Renewable energy accounted for 7.5 percent of the country's primary energy consumption in 2009, or the equivalent of 230 million tons of coal, said Liu Qi, vice director of the National Energy Administration, China Daily reports.

"No matter what happens with international climate change negotiations, reducing fossil fuel consumption and developing renewable energy will be the best way to ensure a secure energy supply," said Liu. "The target of reducing carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent in 2020, based on 2005 emissions, will depend more on the development of renewable energy."

And China's renewable industries are fueling new jobs, totaling 1.12 million in 2008 and rising by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, The New York Times reports.

China aims for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. Coal will still account for two-thirds of China's capacity in 2020, with nuclear and hydropower most of the rest, the Times said.