Huaneng to build China's largest wind farm

uk.reuters.com/
Mar 30, 2008

BEIJING, March 30 (Reuters) - China's Huaneng Group will start in June building the country's largest wind farm of 300 megawatts, a Chinese paper said, as the world's second-largest energy user seeks to grow its tiny renewables sector. The project, with a total of 200 turbines to be erected in a 100-square-kilometre area in Fuxin city of northeast Liaoning province, is slated to start generating power before end of the year, China Economic Herald reported on Saturday.

The wind farm will help cut carbon dioxide emission by 750,000 tonnes and sulphur dioxide by 4,000 tonnes a year, the paper cited the provincial environmental authority. The report did not provide an investment figure, but said the farm will produce 600 million kilowatts hour of electricity and 400 million yuan ($57 million) of revenue each year. Huaneng Group is the parent of Hong Kong-listed Huaneng Power International Inc, China's largest electricity producer.

China, keen to boost the use of clean energy and cut its heavy reliance on coal, earlier this month doubled its target for installed wind power capacity to 10 gigawatts by 2010 from its previous goal of 5 GW. As of late 2007 China had 4.03 GW of wind power capacity, which announced for less than 0.6 precent of the country's total power generation capacity. China relies on coal for nearly 80 percent of its electricity needs.