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JAKARTA – China is starting to build its largest offshore wind farm, as part of the final step in the process of accelerating the transfer of Asia to solar and wind power and to Other renewable sources of energy.
Work began at the end of October on the facility located off Nanpeng Isle in Guangdong Province in southern China. The project has an expected capacity of 400,000 kilowatts and its developer, China General Nuclear Power Corporation, expects to generate about 1.46 billion kwh per year when commissioned in 2020.
Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm, sees the region's wind capacity multiplied by 20 over the next decade, fueled by Beijing's plans for a 15-fold expansion. Guangdong plans to build 23 offshore wind farms by 2030, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
At the same time, Asia's solar power generation capacity is expected to decline this year for the first time since 2001, as countries such as China cut back on subsidies.
Demand for solar energy will fall by 18% in 2018 due to reduced facilities in China, India and Japan, according to an estimate by Wood Mackenzie. Beijing has already achieved its 2020 target for photovoltaic (PV) installations, which has led to a reduction in solar energy subsidies.
"These are the policy changes in the major solar markets that are causing the decline, rather than the expansion of wind energy," said Robert Liew of Wood Mackenzie. "That said, competition is growing, with wind and solar competing for network availability before building new high-voltage lines."
Reduced demand in Japan will also undermine regional solar prospects, according to Masaru Yarime, an badociate professor at the City of Hong Kong's School of Energy and Environment. Changes in pricing policy "encourage a change in [photovoltaic] to other types of renewable energies such as biombad, coupled with uncertainties about the connection to the grid, "he said.
Asia accounted for nearly two-thirds of the global increase in renewable energy production capacity last year and about 18% of the total energy supply of the region came from renewable sources in 2014, according to a United Nations report from last year. This places Asia above the international average, which means that changes in major markets such as China, India and Japan greatly affect the global outlook for clean energy.
India, in particular, offers significant opportunities for clean energy providers. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that 80 million of the country's 250 million households "have no or little access to electricity".
But more traditional sources, such as coal, remain in common use in India and throughout the region. Ineffective and obsolete infrastructure also hampers the potential growth of solar and wind energy, which means that dirty fuels are likely to remain popular.
"The network system can not handle the large influx of variable energy sources such as renewables," Liew said.
Cheap coal and obsolete infrastructure will likely hinder the growth of clean energy until costs fall and technology becomes more widely available.
It's a similar story across Asia, with a large number of new coal-fired power plants in operation or under construction. Coal – based electricity production in China increased 4% last year due to growing demand for electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. In India, it increased by 13%.
"Countries such as India will continue to depend on coal for the foreseeable future," said Yarime, of the City University. "At the same time, we are witnessing a significant decrease in the cost of solar and wind installations in recent years, so these renewable energy sources will soon be able to compete with conventional sources of energy such as coal."
Yongping Zhai, head of the Energy Sector Group of the Asian Development Bank, said the lower cost of photovoltaic panels meant "that it is likely that the network parity [ in costs] will be achieved earlier than expected so that solar PV can compete with conventional energy without subsidies. "
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