Strategies of Sustainable Development in China’s Wind Power Industry

The global economic and social development is facing more and more challenges such as climate change, energy security, and environmental pollutions. Renewable energy is one of the most effective tools that we have in the fight against these problems. Wind energy and solar energy have experienced remarkable growth and huge cost improvements over the past decade with no signs of slowing down. Prices are declining rapidly, and renewable energy is becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuels all around the world. The growing renewable energy will largely accelerate the transition of our energy system and benefit the whole society. This chapter outlines the current key problems regarding global sustainable development and then introduces the actions that have taken to address these problems over the world. It shows developing wind energy along with other renewable energy will be one of the main strategies in coping with these challenges, and the Chinese government has made a master plan for a future with high penetration of wind power.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the development and utilization of renewable energy have become an important choice for global energy transformation. Wind energy is an important renewable energy source that can be continuously developed and utilized. This chapter introduces the development status of wind power in the world and China from five aspects: wind energy resources, wind energy market, wind energy industry, wind energy technology, and wind energy policy and analyzes the development trend of them.

The development of China’s wind power industry has always adhered to the principle of coordinated development of society and economy. That is to say, the development of China’s wind power industry should not only be subject to the needs of the country to achieve sustainable development and energy transition, but also take into account the development law of the industry itself, so as to achieve healthy and sustainable development of the industry itself. Firstly, combined with the overall requirements of the Chinese government to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, this chapter makes an in-depth analysis of the demand scale for energy, especially renewable energy, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period and a longer period in the future, and clarifies the external constraints of the future development of China’s wind power industry. Then, through the analysis of the scale, layout, transmission, and consumption conditions of wind power development in China during the 13th Five-Year Plan period and a longer period in the future, the specific content of onshore wind power development scale and layout in the Three North Regions, the central, eastern, and southern regions, as well as the offshore wind power, and the road map of future wind power development in China are comprehensively displayed, which will inevitably strengthen the confidence of all parties in the future development of China’s wind power and promote the sustainable development of the whole wind power industry.

Progress in China’s wind power research and development is presented in this chapter, followed by technical trends and key issues for sustainable development of China’s wind power industry. Supported by the national science and technology programs and pushed by huge wind power market, basic mechanical research is conducted and design and manufacturing techniques for large-scale wind turbines are developed. The basic studies mainly focus on aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, aeroelastics, hydromechanics, and structural dynamics. The wind turbines designed and manufactured domestically have been upgraded from megawatt class to multi-megawatt class. The techniques related to wind farm construction, operation and maintenance are gradually developed both onshore and offshore. The standards, testing, and certification technologies are also established. Driven by offshore wind energy exploitation and low-speed onshore wind farm development, the wind turbine size is continuously growing in China. Wind turbine designs are more customized for China’s wind resource, shifting from imported technology. Offshore wind power technology, smart wind turbine design, and intelligentization operation, as well as diversification of wind energy utilization are drawing more attention. To support sustainable development of China’s wind power industry, it is necessary to further enhance advanced large-scale wind turbine design and manufacturing techniques, information technology application, offshore wind power technologies, wind resource assessment and wind farm layout optimization, grid integration of wind power, testing facilities, and standards update.

The sustainable development of wind energy requires a well-established policy framework. However, the current strategy that the development of wind energy shall be given priority to the overall energy transformation has not been effectively implemented. In this chapter, we conclude recommendations that could support the development of industry such as regarding the development of wind energy as a strategic priority for energy development, perfecting the system of laws and regulations of green and low carbon energy transformation, strengthening integrated planning for energy transformation, and pushing forward the transformation of energy system and mechanism. This chapter further identifies the current problems regarding the wind energy policies. The corresponding measures to perfect these policies are then outlined in the following paragraphs, in terms of related supervision and service system, talent cultivation, and international exchanges.

This chapter intends to elucidate technical routes for sustainable development of wind power industry. However, the most prominent bottleneck for the target evidently comes from intermittent and stochastic source, which very likely causes extensive wind power curtailment. To cope with this challenging issue, the innovation technologies proposed in this chapter are generally divided into two categories: One is IT-based measures like integration operation (Sect. 6.1), intelligent wind farm (Sect. 6.2), and distributed and microgrid system (Sect. 6.3) to realize efficient and stable operation of wind power. Of course, diversified utilization such as heat supply, hydrogen production, and desalinization can also be regarded as one form of distributed utilization of wind power (Sect. 6.9). Another is associated with advanced design and manufacture technologies including design reliability (Sect. 6.4), turbine blade design and manufacture (Sect. 6.5), drive train system (Sect. 6.6), offshore wind power system (Sect. 6.7), and green manufacture (Sect. 6.8) so as to safe and clean utilization of wind power. All of these technical measures enable us to believe that it is possible to realize the utilization of wind power on a large scale to supply mankind with abundant green energy resources.