The way forward

Tao is quite optimistic with China's wind power development. "In China, the electricity generated by wind power accounts for only 1 percent of the total while the percentage is more than 20 percent in Denmark and 15 percent in Germany," said Tao. "We still have a large room to develop in this industry."

According to China Wind Power Outlook 2010 published by CREIA, China's accumulative installed capacity of wind power will reach 230 million kw in 2020, equivalent to the capacity of 13 Three Gorges hydropower stations on the Yangtze River, the world's largest capacity hydroelectric power station.

The Outlook also pointed out one of the greatest challenges in China's wind power development. As wind turbines work strictly according to wind conditions, the power generation varies greatly when these conditions differ and turbines may stop working. The unstable power generation makes it difficult to be permanently supplying power to the grid. To solve the problem, China still needs to conquer some technical problems such as wind power output prediction, grid integration, allocation, and storage and power grid construction, according to the Outlook.

"Despite these challenges, China's wind power industry is developing continuously," said Tao.

The Next Five Years

March every year is always the busiest time in China's political scene, when deputies of the National People's Congress (NPC) and members of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) gather in Beijing to discuss issues related to China's future development and people's life.

Discussing and approving China's 12th Five-Year Plan was one of the most important tasks for the NPC session this year. On March 14, the NPC approved the blueprint for the country's development in the next five years from 2011-15.

"The plan sends out a strong signal of increasing people's sense of happiness by enabling them to enjoy the fruits of rapid economic development," said Bai Yansong, a news commentator of China Central TV in his program of News 1+1.

The plan sets out the expectation of China's annual GDP growth in the following five years at 7 percent, much lower than the average growth in the past five years from 2006-10, which was 11.2 percent. This means local governments will not be so pressurized to develop the economy and they can think more about how to make good use of the rapid economic development to improve people's livelihoods.

"In the next five years and even in the long term, we will take the transformation of China's economic development pattern as our priority task, so that we will be able to refocus China's economic development and scientific and technological advances onto a higher educational level of the labor force," said Premier Wen Jiaobao, while explaining the reason of reducing China's GDP growth expectation at the press conference after the two sessions. Improving people's livelihood relates to housing, employment, medical care, and narrowing down the development gap between the urban and rural areas. One of the main areas of focus is to develop clean energy as an alternative to traditional pollution producing energy sources.