China wants to work hand in hand with Russia and other countries to accelerate the development of renewable energy. This was announced on June 28 at the International Oil and Gas Forum in Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East, by the Consul General of the People’s Republic of China, Piao Yangfan. “We are ready to intensify coordination and exchanges with Russia in the renewable energy sector in order to ensure the sustainable development of China and Russia with our joint commitment,” the Chinese consul emphasized.
China and Russia are developing many new technologies to reduce the environmental impact of their super-energy production. According to data released on May 28 by the state group Rosneft, in the period 2020-2022, the implementation of the program “Rosneft 2030: Secure Energy and Global Energy Transition” enabled this major Russian oil producer to cut the greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere by 11%.
Over the past decade, China has accelerated the transition of the economy to the production of low-carbon “green” energy. An impetus has been given to the development of renewable energy sources. “As a result, the generating capacity of the green energy sector has exceeded one billion kilowatts,” Consul Piao Yangfan said.
In fact, China’s renewable energy production is growing like a weed. This sector concentrates many new technologies, from electronics to sophisticated composite materials. Last year, the world’s first deep-sea floating wind turbine designed and certified to withstand typhoons, a meteorological phenomenon that is certainly not uncommon in these parts of the country, went into operation in southern China’s Guangdong province. The project named Sanxia Yinling Hao is a floating platform equipped with a Fuyao series turbine capable of generating 6.2 megawatts of electricity.
The turbine was designed by China Three Gorges and MingYang Smart Energy, a leading wind turbine manufacturer in China. Japanese giant Hitachi Energy participated in this unique project, designing and building the first dry-type Vacuum-Cast-Coil (VCC) transformer specifically designed for floating offshore wind turbines.
“This wind turbine is a giant step forward for the renewable energy industry,” said Jianhua Zhang, head of the Chinese power transformer sector of Hitachi Energy.
The Sanxia Yinling Hao project is just the first step – again, MingYang Smart Energy is now putting together the largest offshore wind turbine ever built. The colossus is called MySE 16.0-242 and is a 242-meter-tall offshore wind turbine that alone could power 20,000 homes for 25 years. According to Greenreport experts, “one MySE 16.0-242 turbine will produce 80 million kWh of electricity per year.” When the giant windmill is up and running, its three 118-meter-long blades will rotate over an area of 46,000 square meters, the equivalent of six football fields. During its existence, only one of these turbines “could eliminate more than 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”.
Earlier, China Three Gorges Group built the largest floating solar power plant in the eastern province of Anhui. The solar array built in a lake that got formed in a crater after the collapse of an old coal mine is capable of generating up to 150 megawatts of electricity. The construction of the solar power plant costs $151 million. At present, the share of renewable energy in China’s national electricity generation structure has exceeded 45%, an increase of about 12% compared to the results registered at the end of 2015. China’s “green transition” includes hydroelectric power plants that are about to reach the production level of 400 gigawatts of electricity. In second place are wind farms with a generated power of more than 305 gigawatts, and in third place are solar power plants with a designed capacity of about 300 gigawatts. According to China’s National Energy Department, the country ranks first in the world for all these types of eco-friendly electricity.
The Beijing “green transition” strategy was presented in a document titled “White Paper on Reacting to Climate Change: China’s policies and actions.” The country guarantees sustainable economic and industrial development due to continuous improvement of renewable and non-fossil energy sources. Over the past three years, “the transformation of China’s energy industry on the basis of low carbon emissions principle” has accelerated.
According to the White Paper, China is contributing to global energy conservation and CO2 emission reductions by improving energy industry’s efficiency: from 2011 to 2022, China’s energy intensity calculated as the energy consumption per unit of GDP fell by about 30 percent.