My Thoughts on the Obama China Global Climate Trip
Author: skibare11 Nov
Regardless of your political opinions, the world is going to be watching very closely as President Obama visits China and talks global climate changes. The Obama group and the Chinese have been talking behind the scenes so this whole photo op has already been scripted and debated and agreed on before hand and there will be no surprises except to those that have no clue of where this new global plan is headed.
China and USA must sign a new plan and become leaders in green energy for the worlds future or else we can just bend over and kiss our polluted behinds goodbye. The Obama team has ”partnered” with the Chinese and everyone in world is going to be surprised on this new global green energy partnership about to be unveiled and released by the Chinese with the USA president on China soil. Letting the Chinese announce this new initiative is one of the smartest and shrewdest political ideas ever an it takes a very smart team like the Obama Global Green Energy team to come up with this plan and idea.
China will announce new PPM for Carbon Dioxide and announce a brand new global initiative and push for wind and solar unprecedented in the history of mankind. China must build 284,000 new wind turbines by 2030 just to meet Chinas’ new numbers for minimum renewable energy targtets. China will also drop the current 70% Wind Power protectionism rules that prohibit foreign wind companies like GE and Vestas and Gamesa and Suzlon from fully going after the massive China wind power market. By dropping this 70% wind protectionism clause, China will open its borders to a multitude of foreign wind companies but GE and Vestas will be the main beneficiaries of this new policy. Jobs in Europe and USA will be created by this new open borders policy President Obama has worked long and hard for.
China will get its FIRST EVER Wind Turbine farm inside Texas and China banks will finance this new exported China wind turbine farm to USA. China will have open borders for rest of world and the main Wind Players in China….. Sinovel, Goldwind, and Dongfang will all prosper as China exports wind turbines to Asia and Africa and the USA. APWR , USREG, CIELO , and the Shenyang Power Alliance will announce this tradeoff allowing China Wind turbines inside USA and Texas.
The market for WIND POWER for 2030 is around 26 TRILLION globally and so as you can see, its a wide open wild west forming around the rush to push to China and build green. This meeting Nov 15th will announce all the new numbers and estimates going forward. When China does something, they do it very large and China motivated to clean up its air is going to be the driving force for the next 20 years time frame. More wind power will come online in the next 3 years inside China than the entire world added together!!! APWR , AMSC , and Vestas are going to be the main beneficiaries of this new Global Wind Treaty.
One Response for "My Thoughts on the Obama China Global Climate Trip"
Hello,
its easy to identify a protectionism clause of 70% local content as a culprit for low or no sales of windturbines to China. Some years ago this might have been a problem but today this is just a propaganda term for China-bashing.
In reality the reason is just price – foreign turbines are too expensive. Local turbines are at least 20% and some even 30% cheaper than world market prices. This has of course a reason:
those turbines are less efficient and inreliable. However, this does not matter in a non
existent real market where >90% of wind power investment is done by state owned companies with
the majority being power companies – most of them just doing it because they were ordered to
do so and in order to fullfill their share of non-fossil-fuel in their coal-fired-generation portfilio.
So it is irrelevant to loose 25% windfarm availability due to bad turbines (and grids) if this
only counts for 5% of their overall generation capacity, but still ensures the next construction permit for a highly efficient coal fired power station!
This is the real scandal !
So abolishment of the 70% rule will not change anything – there won’t be any sales of turbines
to China. Today’s local wind turbine manufacturing capacity is 12 GW annually – by end of next
year it will be 18 GW or more. Hence, there is no problem in meeting any new government targets of 100 or 150 GW or more. China will go into wind turbine export and FAIL.
Most of those turbines will never achieve the performance required for bankable projects (except in
the case where chinese banks do the due diligence…).
So, without a REAL change of Chinese government policy, which is looking at generated MWh and avoided tons of CO2 there will not be any new job in wind power outside China.
This is what Obama should be asking for!
However, would such a change really lead to export of turbines to China?
GE, Vestas, Nordex, Suzlon etc are all here and most of them have no problem meeting the 70% and some are achieving >90% local content and as they claim, without sacrifice on quality. A main activity here is qualifying the local component suppliers to meet their standards.
Not selling here for them, means export from China and therefore even less jobs abroad.
This is not a problem of the Chinese Government, but of excessive prices and costs in Europe and the US! (… Chinese turbines are not built with slave labour either…).
For the climate it does not matter where the turbines are coming from. We just need good turbines, running at high availability and feeding ALL their power into the grid. The world wind market is big enough for everyone and production and job creation will take place in many
countries (the US should rather analyze why it has only 1 (or maybe 2) turbine manufacturers… this is not the Chinese’ fault).
This brings me to my last point:
The new fixed-feed-in price with 4 different regional prices based on wind resources (currently up for “public” discussion) is a good step. However, at the same time the rule that the grid company has to buy all the wind power would be abolished – Instead negotiations on the annually guaranteed amount of energy to be bought by the grid would be required.
The real reason for this rule is a lack of know-how in grid operation and planning taking into account
regionally large amounts of wind power. The dispatch-centers in some regions are in real wind power panic today – based on ignorance – and in order to ensure grid stability they just switch off wind power… (in 2008 >10% curtailment)
This negotiation of allowed MWh is potentially worse than the old concession bidding, as it would be even less transparent. No calculation on long-term return on investment would be possible. May be there are still chances to find a better way. This would require an overall assessment of chinese transmission grids, planning and operation as well as a large scale
training of engineers and decision makers.
Rgds, windyandy
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