Recently, the National Energy Administration released the fifth batch of wind power project approval plans for the 12th Five Year Plan, with a planned project scale of 34 million kilowatts, exceeding industry expectations.
Since 2011, China has issued four batches of wind power project approval plans, with a total installed capacity of 26.83 million kilowatts, 25.28 million kilowatts, 27.97 million kilowatts, and 27.6 million kilowatts, respectively. In terms of installed capacity, the fifth batch of "plans" is the largest batch of wind power approved project plans during the 12th Five Year Plan period. As of now, the approved scale of wind power projects has exceeded 140 million kilowatts since the 12th Five Year Plan period.
Expanding scale to drive energy structure adjustment
The proposed approved capacity of the fifth batch of 34 million kilowatts of wind power not only provides sufficient project reserves for subsequent wind power construction, but also once again reflects the determination of the country to continue promoting and strongly supporting the development of wind power, which will play a huge role in boosting confidence in the industry's development. Previously, national leaders promised on different occasions to achieve a proportion of non fossil fuels in primary energy consumption of around 15% by 2020 and an increase to around 20% by 2030. Therefore, China needs to further increase the development of wind power. Based on the development level of wind power technology, market conditions, and the above energy-saving and emission reduction goals, it is imperative that China's wind power installation in the 13th Five Year Plan should reach over 200 million kilowatts, and the annual average development scale of wind power projects in the next five years should be maintained at least 20 million kilowatts.
The fifth batch of "plans" has laid the foundation for achieving the above goals, and is of great significance in increasing the adjustment of energy structure and ensuring the achievement of the 15% target of non fossil fuels by 2020.
As a technology intensive strategic emerging industry, wind power is a powerful support for China's construction of high-end manufacturing industry. At the same time, wind power involves numerous related industries and has a long industrial chain, which has a particularly prominent driving effect on the social economy. Against the backdrop of significant economic downward pressure, maintaining large-scale growth in the wind power market can quickly and effectively expand domestic demand, digest production capacity, and boost the economy. In order to expand domestic demand and promote economic growth, the State Council has proposed clear measures and guidance. The stable and rapid development of the wind power industry is not only a sustainable and effective way to expand domestic demand, stabilize growth, and adjust the structure through "strengthening ecological environment construction, accelerating independent innovation, and structural adjustment", but also without any subsequent side effects. According to experts' estimation, if the fifth batch of "plan" projects are fully implemented, they can achieve the fixed assets investment of 270 billion yuan, increase the wind power generation capacity of 68 billion kilowatt hours, save 20 million tons of standard coal and reduce 50 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which will produce huge social and economic benefits.
Optimizing the layout and guiding the orderly development of industries
The national energy regulatory department regards the utilization level of wind power as a prerequisite for the layout and scale of the fifth batch of "plans". For provinces (regions, cities) with good consumption conditions and no wind and electricity restrictions, the approval plan will be completely relaxed. In this "plan", the development scale included in the East China, Central China, and South China regions is 4.8 million kilowatts, 8.27 million kilowatts, and 8.65 million kilowatts, respectively. The total amount of electricity in the central and southern regions reached 21.72 million kilowatts, accounting for 65% of all approved plans. Compared with the fourth batch of "plans", the planned scale of the above-mentioned regions has increased by 7.88 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 57%. Therefore, low wind speed areas where the issue of wind curtailment and power limitation is not obvious have become one of the main markets for new wind power installations in China in the future. With the rapid progress of low wind speed wind power technology in China, wind power in these regions has entered large-scale development. It is expected that during the 13th Five Year Plan period, wind power will play an important role in the economic development and energy consumption structure adjustment of these regions.
For provinces and regions with limited consumption in local areas, the competent authorities have arranged moderate project plans in areas with low wind abandonment rates. For example, except for Dali Prefecture in Yunnan Province, Shanxi Province, except for the northern Shanxi region, includes Baotou, Alxa League, and Chifeng regions in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
For some provinces and regions with high wind abandonment rates, no projects have been arranged in this plan, mainly including Xinjiang (Corps), Liaoning, and Jilin. According to national wind power industry monitoring data, in the first quarter of 2015, the wind abandonment rates in the above-mentioned provinces and regions reached 26%, 48%, and 65.4%, respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 7.6 percentage points, 17.8 percentage points, and 21 percentage points.
In addition, the notice further clarifies the implementation of preliminary work for projects in various regions as a necessary condition for new projects to be included in the annual plan. The project approval work required to be included in the fifth batch of "plans" must be completed within 2015, otherwise the approval plan for the project will be cancelled. For Qinghai and Fujian, where the completion rate of previous plans was too low, measures have been taken to temporarily not arrange the fifth batch of annual "plans". Remind all regions to accelerate the implementation of project implementation and carefully supervise the completion of the project.
Future healthy development requires stable policy support
The layout of the fifth batch of approved "plans" fully reflects the guiding ideology of the competent department to respect the actual development of the industry and ensure the rational layout of the wind power industry. As early as 2011, in the first batch of wind power project plans to be approved, it was clear that grid access conditions were an important basis for project inclusion in the plan. Subsequently, the continuous implementation of multiple batches of "plans" effectively promoted the resolution of the problem of wind power grid connection and consumption to a certain extent. While the scale of wind power development continued to increase, the relative stability of abandoned wind power was maintained, resulting in continuous optimization of China's wind power layout. This is just a measure launched by China's energy regulatory authorities to promote the development of the wind power industry. During the 12th Five Year Plan period, relevant government departments have introduced a large number of effective policies to guide the healthy and stable development of the wind power industry from multiple aspects such as planning orientation, market regulation, grid connected consumption, electricity price subsidies, offshore wind power, technical service system, and internationalization. According to data released by the National Energy Administration, as of March 2015, the cumulative grid connected capacity of wind power in China has exceeded 101 million kilowatts, meeting the goals of the 12th Five Year Plan for wind power ahead of schedule.
Although the development of China's wind power industry has achieved phased results, there is still a long way to go to look ahead to the goals of the 13th Five Year Plan. This still requires further guidance and support from government regulatory departments through stable policies to ensure that China's wind energy industry achieves a qualitative leap forward as soon as possible based on the achievements of the 12th Five Year Plan, and to build the wind power industry into a highly competitive and value-added high-end international industry.
(The author is the Secretary General of the Wind Energy Professional Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society)