Jul 27 2010
A recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report indicates that during the second quarter of this year 2010 China has attracted more asset investment in its clean energy know-how than the combined asset financing of Europe and the USA during the same period.
The reason attributed for the change is a simple legislation enacted by the Chinese government six months back. The legislation made it mandatory for all the government utilities to purchase renewable energy power provided through the grid to avoid fines. The encouragement from the government, enthused the private investors to invest more on renewable energy sources. During the second quarter of this year China witnessed a growth of 72% in its external financing on renewable energy sources such as solar panels, wind turbines and low carbon technology with an investment of $11.5 billion. This investment represented nearly one third of the total global investment of $33.9 billion made on green energy in the form of asset finance, venture finance, share sales and private equity during the period.
During last year the private entrepreneurs utilized the incentive funding offered by the Chinese government and installed a number of wind turbines to achieve 14 GW of wind power. The new law enacted by the Chinese government has universal application similar to the law made by the government of Finland 10 years ago which enabled the country to achieve 30% of power production by utilizing the onsite heat generated by its paper mills. Similarly the feed in tariff announced by Spain and the Germany for energy produced by renewable energy sources took the world by storm.
The report also details the amount of heat energy currently go unused by paper mills, steel rolling mills and concrete production process and estimates power production potential as 7 quadrillion BTU.