WB
offers loan to China's energy project
Thursday, February 09, 2006 |
The World Bank has approved an 86.33 million US dollar loan
to scale up China's use of renewable energy as the country's demand
for power increases, the bank said Wednesday.
The bank said the overall renewable energy scale-up program aims to
develop the Chinese commercial market for energy suppliers to provide
renewable energy to the electricity grid on a large scale in an efficient
and cost-effective way. Renewable energy sources like wind power,
solar power, and biomass have up to now been produced only in small-scale,
pilot programs, outside the main electricity supply.s
Noureddine Berrah, lead energy specialist, said, "China's energy
demands and its need to decrease air pollution make large-scale renewable
energy development an important goal."
As China's gross domestic product quadrupled from 1980 to 2000, its
energy consumption more than doubled to about 1.3 billion tons of
coal equivalent.
Projections for energy consumption indicate that fuel consumption
could double or almost triple by 2020, even if energy efficiency efforts
were increased, the bank said.
A total of 67 million US dollars of the bank's investment would go
to the development of the 100 million watts at Huitengxile Wind Farm
in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which is currently home to
approximately 70 million watts of wind generation capacity. An additional
19.33 million US dollars would finance the rehabilitation and development
of selected small hydropower projects (not exceeding 10 million watts)
in Zhejiang Province.
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