(RCH) THE FUTURE OF WIND TURBINES IS IN CHINESE HANDS

For the past 15 months, wind turbine original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in Western Europe and the Americas have seen thinning profit margins.

With the industry becoming more capital efficient and OEMs incurring higher commodities costs, several Western European OEMs have seen profits trounced.

This has resulted in layoffs and shifting patterns in production venues to markets such as Brazil, Turkey and China which have a more favorable currency trade than the US, Denmark, Germany, Spain or Italy.

The challenge of the energy transition has always been the dichotomy between power generation costs and power sales prices for the independent power producers (IPPs) and utilities. Higher prices in a spot market, or a regulatory environment that does not mandate the switch to renewables, provides IPPs and utilities an opportunity to maintain coal, natural gas or oil sources for power generation in spite of the fact that renewables are cheaper.

While the switch to renewable based power generation sources would provide the IPPs and utilities more spread, i.e., larger window between power generation costs and power sales prices to companies, consumers, etc, this also comes at a price. They would spend significantly more capital on installing a new power generation source rather than the cost to continue operating with a dirty power source.

The power generation costs for wind turbine OEMs are often governed by the cost of raw materials and production/ labour rates. The total cost to produce a wind turbine and tower is referred to as the Ex Works cost, or the cost which is incurred before wind turbine parts are shipped from one, or several factories to a single project site. This cost is often used as a benchmark, normalized in $ per MW of rated power of the turbine, between the production of different OEMs and the cost to produce wind turbine components in different parts of the world.

Onshore wind turbine ExWorks costs for most of the Western OEMs have been hovering around $650,000–800,000 per MW depending on the market. The sale prices for those turbines has varied anywhere from $680,000–1,200,000 per MW over the past few years.

However, the Chinese OEMs have seen unprecedented low costs, partly due to labour rates and raw material availability, with wind turbine ExWorks costs at an eye wateringly low range of 2,027-2,618 yuan/kW ($342,328-411,107/MW). This is almost half the cost of the Western companies. Recharge - link - Philip Totaro - link - more like this (China) - link - more like this (turbines) - link

(ALJ) CHINA TARGETS 200,000 TE GREEN H2 PER YEAR

China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases [File: David Gray/Reuters]

China’s top economic planner has announced a target to produce up to 200,000 tonnes per year of green hydrogen, a zero-carbon fuel generated from renewable energy sources.

The country aims to produce 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year and have about 50,000 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles by 2025, envisaging more widespread use over the long term, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Wednesday in a statement.

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been striving to balance energy security and achieve its climate change goals and is focusing on hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions from its transportation and industrial sectors.

Green hydrogen is gas produced by breaking down water in electrolysis using renewable energy sources, reducing the amount of carbon emissions released during the process compared with hydrogen created from natural gas or coal.

“Development of hydrogen is an important move for energy transition and a great support for China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals,” said Wang Xiang, deputy director of the High Technology Department at the NDRC, at a press briefing.

China currently produces 33 million tonnes of hydrogen a year, with about 80 percent of hydrogen coming from coal and natural gas, and the rest mainly a by-product from industrial sectors, according to the government.

Data from the China Hydrogen Alliance, an industrial association, shows the country produced 500,000 tonnes of hydrogen from water electrolysis in 2019. Aljazeera - link - David Gray - link - more like this (China) - link - more like this (green H2) - link

(NAT) CHINA'S 1.2 TERAWATT PLEDGE

The Gobi desert is already home to vast solar and wind resources, but China has renewable expansion plans totaling nearly half a terawatt in the works
Depositphotos

China already dominates renewable energy production. Its installed capacity of around 895 GW in 2020 was more than the European Union, the USA and Australia combined. 

And while the world in general is accelerating its transition to renewable power, China is growing its capacity faster than anyone else as well.

Now, according to Reuters, it's got a series of mammoth solar and wind projects in the pipeline that will expand its current capacity by nearly half a terawatt.

"China is going to build the biggest scale of solar and wind power generation capacity on the Gobi and desert in history, at 450 GW," said He Lifeng, director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing on Saturday.

About 100 GW of this new capacity is already under construction, adding to 306 GW of solar capacity and 328 GW of wind capacity that were already installed by the end of 2021.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has pledged to get wind and solar capacity over 1.2 terawatts by 2030, as part of the country's plan to see its carbon emissions peak and begin to decline around the same time.

Coal will continue to support China's energy grids for the time being. While some 43.5 percent of the country's total installed capacity – or more than a terawatt by last October – is now renewable, intermittency issues and capacity factors have kept the percentage of actual power that's generated by renewables closer to 26 percent, with most of the rest being coal-fired.

Still, this compares favorably to other major economies, and it'll continue to grow steadily as these enormous planned resources come online. New Atlas - link - Muyu Xu - link - David Stanway - link - more like this (China) - link - more like this (pv) - link

(GUA) CHINA SETS 2060 FOSSIL FUEL TARGET

Steam billows from cooling towers at a coal-fired power plant in Nanjing, in China’s east. China plans to cut fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060. Photograph: AP

China is targeting a clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media.

The cabinet document, released on Sunday, follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later.

But the country has been criticised for pushing ahead with opening dozens of new coal-fired power plants. Authorities have also been wanting to ramp up production, with coal prices surging and supplies running low, both factors behind recent power outages.
The guidelines come as countries gear up for a new round of climate talks in Glasgow starting on 31 October, from which Xi will be conspicuously absent.

China faces a struggle to wean itself off coal, which fuels nearly 60% of its energy-hungry economy.

But on Sunday guidelines published by China’s official Xinhua news agency laid out a host of targets in its path towards carbon neutrality.

Among them was the proportion of non-fossil fuel consumption reaching about 25% of total energy use by 2030 – when the nation targets peak emissions - The Guardian - link - Agence France-Presse (AFP) - link - more like this - link

(RED) VESTAS SECURES ORDERS FOR 301MW IN CHINA

Vestas has secured multiple turbine orders in China totalling 301MW as the first quarter of the year draws to a close.

The Danish wind turbine maker announced a 202MW order for an undisclosed project that includes supply of 56 V136-3.45MW turbines delivered in 3.6MW power optimised mode, as well as a two-year active output management service agreement.

Deliveries are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2020, with commissioning planned for the same quarter.

Vestas also secured a 99MW order for two projects in Jiangsu Province.


Both projects will feature a mixed site configuration consisting of V155-3.3MW and V110-2.2MW turbines.

The order, also to an undisclosed customer, includes supply of 16 V155-3.3MW and 21 V110-2.2MW turbines, as well as a 20-year Active Output Management 4000 service agreement.

This is the second order of V155-3.3MW turbines – Vestas’ latest 4 MW platform variant designed for low wind condition – since its introduction in China in June 2019.

The order also features a 20-year service agreement, a first for Vestas in China - link - more like this - link

(F24) CHINA TO TEST GREENER NUCLEAR REACTOR

China is poised to test a thorium-powered nuclear reactor in September, the world’s first since 1969.

The theory is that this new molten-salt technology will be “safer” and “greener” than regular uranium reactors, and so could help Beijing meet its climate goals. Yet is the country's investment in this also geostrategic?

A new page in the history of nuclear energy could be written this September, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, in the north of China. At the end of August, Beijing announced that it had completed the construction of its first thorium-fuelled molten-salt nuclear reactor, with plans to begin the first tests of this alternative technology to current nuclear reactors within the next two weeks.

Built not far from the northern city of Wuwei, the low-powered prototype can as yet only produce energy for around 1,000 homes, according to the scientific journal Nature.

But if the upcoming tests succeed, Chinese authorities will start a programme to build another reactor capable of generating electricity for over 100,000 homes. Beijing could then become an exporter of a reactor technology that has been the subject of much discussion for over 40 years, according to French financial newspaper Les Echos - link - Sebastian Seibt - link - picture - link - more like this - link