China - '70% homemade' rule for wind turbines dropped

The Chinese government dropped a rule stipulating that more than 70 percent of the wind turbines in use in China must be produced domestically. The policy change will spur foreign investment in China's wind-turbine industry and intensify competition among overseas and domestic suppliers.

Overseas companies have lost out on wind-energy projects as bidding criteria make it impossible for them to compete with domestic developers, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in May last year. The NDRC, the top economic planner, said in 2005 that 70 percent of the wind-power equipment used in China should be produced domestically, whether by foreign or local manufacturers. The Chinese government indicated last year that it would scrap the ruling on the percentage of equipment made in China, said Andrew Hilton, a spokesman for Vestas Wind Systems A/S in China, the world's biggest producer of wind turbines. Samantha Ko, executive director at Hong Kong-listed China WindPower Group Ltd., said she was unaware of the policy change.

The world's second-biggest energy-consuming nation aims to increase its capacity to produce power from wind fivefold by 2020 to help combat climate change, the government has said. China's wind-power capacity will rise to 100,000 megawatts by then from at least 20,000 megawatts in 2010, National Energy Administration head Zhang Guobao said. The country has 70 wind-turbine makers with a capacity of about 15,000 megawatts a year, Dave Dai, a Hong Kong-based analyst at CLSA Research, said.

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net