Nordex to strengthen activities in Asia

"In Asia a superlative market for wind energy may come into being in the medium to long term if the right overall conditions are created today”, says Eberhard von Perfall, head of the Supervisory Board of turbine manufacturer Nordex AG. Von Perfall is a member of the German trade delegation accompanying Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on his journey to Asia (13. – 23. July 2004). In addition to upholding political contacts, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also plans to support partnerships in the field of energy and the environment on this 10-day tour.

For Nordex, the countries China and India have priority. The company has been active in these two countries for years and wishes to further intensify its work there in the future. Says von Perfall: “In view of the regressing business climate for wind energy in Germany we have to further increase our exports, which currently account for 60 per cent of overall business. The focus here is on Western Europe and Asia. We also have a good starting base for this in China in the form of our joint venture with the Chinese company Xi`an Aero Engine since 1998. As our next step we are planning to intensify our local added value for larger machines.”

At the beginning of July, Nordex opened its first wind farm in China, which consists almost entirely of megawatt-class turbines. A further recipe for success has proved to be the good working relationship with European banks, such as the KfW Group, which has financed around one third of past wind farms in China. Experts predict that in future Chinese investors will increasingly finance their wind farms from funds from the United Nations “Clean Development Mechanism”. “We are the first manufacturers with experience with such projects and are in a position to assist our customers in emission trading”, explains von Perfall.

Nordex is also looking to give new impetus to business with Asia in the form of partnerships in India. Up to the end of the 90s, the Indian BHEL Group produced Nordex machines under licence. Today some 260 turbines “designed by Nordex” are in operation across the country. Says Perfall: “At that time the boom was brought to a halt by long and complex approval processes, financing bottlenecks and low electricity tariffs. Thanks to the advent of deregulation resulting from the electricity law, demand has been picking up again since mid-2003.” Last year alone, some 400 megawatts of new capacity were added to the grid - more than in any other Asian country.

However, the market potential in neighbouring China is significantly higher although the People’s Republic is already the second-largest electricity producer in the world today. Consumption is expected to increase again by more than five per cent per annum up to 2020. With this in mind the government is planning to draw on coal as a domestic source of energy, and increasingly on wind power as well. Installed capacity is due to be increased by around fivefold in the coming six years. This is hardly surprising: the high proportion of thermal power plants results in the emission of enormous quantities of greenhouse gases (2002: 3,410 mn t). Furthermore, exploitable capacity is estimated to be in the region of 1 mn megawatts. Today some 39,000 wind turbines with a capacity of around 40,000 MW have been installed worldwide.