China, known for its environmental struggles, is looking to have a success story in wind power. “China’s wind energy market is unrecognizable from two years ago,” says Steve Sawyer of the Global Wind Energy Council. “It is huge, huge, huge. But it is not realized yet in the outside world.” China’s wind generation has increased by more than 100 percent per year since 2005, and the country may have already beat out the U.S. as the world’s biggest turbine manufacturer. Policymakers originally had ambitions of generating 5 gigawatts of wind by 2010, but met that goal in 2007; they’ve revised the 2010 goal to 10 gigawatts, but very well may hit 20 gigawatts. Granted, coal still supplies 70 percent of China’s energy needs, and is currently half as cheap as wind generation. But that doesn’t faze Junfeng Li of the China Renewable Energy Industries Association, who wrote in a recent paper, “It is widely believed that wind power will be able to compete with coal generation by as early as 2015.”
