China's Multi-Billion Dollar Renewable Energy Program Set for Launch Soon

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

China is reportedly planning to produce 15% of its electricity from low-carbon technology by 2020, and to reduce it’s carbon intensity by 40-45% from the 2005 level.

[social_buttons]

Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, told the government-owned newspaper China Daily this last week that a national program consisting of billions of dollars of investment in wind, solar and nuclear power would be launched sometime soon.

Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!

Zhang said that this program will stimulate fast and dramatic action in the renewable energy sector over the next five years.

“Power projects take a long time to get up and running, and we are basically allowed five years to complete them although it is a 10-year programme,” he told the paper. “Otherwise, the facilities cannot be put into use by 2020.”

Beyond this major plus for renewable energy and renewable energy investors in China, China’s top legislature — the National People’s Congress — also recently changed its renewable energy law to require that power grid companies buy 100% of the electricity produced from renewable energy generators.

A key to making use of these renewable energy sources is a smarter grid, of course. Noticing the great advancement of renewable energy and smart grids in China, IBM just recently announced the opening of a new $40 million “Energy & Utilities Solutions Lab” in Beijing.

Brad Gammons, vice president of IBM’s Global Energy & Utilities Industry, said that their interest in the Chinese market is due to that fact that China is “pursuing smart grids as aggressively or more aggressively than any other country in the world right now.”

As I’ve discussed previously on CleanTechnica, Obama is aware that “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” but he is not the sole person in charge of bringing the US to the top (he needs some help from the media and Congress, at least) and China seems to be off to a quick lead with some very big plans for the coming years.

via BusinessGreen, China Daily & Reuters

Image Credit: J. YANG via flickr under a CC license


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7317 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan