Asia's top solar base begins operations ( 2003-12-22 09:47) (China Daily by Tang Min)
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 come 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 bucket 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.
