Asia's largest production base for photovoltaics, a type of
solar energy, began production on Friday, bringing Qu Geping, one
of the world's leading environmental scientists, a step closer to
his dream of seeing China's streets lit with clean energy.
The launch came as the country's top legislature is planning to
draft a special law to promote the use of clean energy, especially
more technically sophisticated solar energy.
"Our modest goal is to have the amount of clean energy used in
the country double by the year 2020," said Qu, former director of
the Sub-committee of Environment and Resources under the Standing
Committee of the National People's Congress and an advocate of
clean energy policies.
The Yingli production base for photovoltaics took eight years to
complete. Located in Baoding in north China's Hebei
Province, Yingli has a projected annual production capacity of
50 megawatts and could rank among the world's top 10 photovoltaic
producers.
The National Development and Reform Commission aims to have this
national demonstration project help promote the commercial
utilization of solar energy in the country.
Although 50 megawatts is but a drop in the ocean in light of the
huge gap between the country's supply and demand in electricity,
the establishment of the base is "one major score" on the country's
road to exploring its rich solar energy resources, said Zhao Yuwen,
vice president of the China Solar Energy Society.
"Yingli has changed forever the situation where almost all of
our photovoltaic cells/modules had to be imported," he said.
According to Qu, it is already an agreement among scholars and
officials that solar energy, along with other forms of clean energy
from sources like the wind and ocean tides, is important to help
further fuel China's fast growing economy and to relieve related
environmental problems.
Burning coal is still the way China produces most of its
electricity. The latest official statistics indicate the country
has burned 1.6 billion tons of coal for electricity this year.
In view of this year's large-scale electricity shortages in some
economically advanced regions, such as east China's Zhejiang
Province, the amount of burnt coal is expected to increase
further.
"Just imagine the heavy burden burning that huge amount of coal
places on the environment," said Qu.
(China Daily December 22, 2005)