Preference for coal likely explains China’s wind energy shortfall
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029851
IEEE Spectrum : In 2015 China invested $102.9 billion in wind and solar power and ended the year with almost twice the installed wind capacity as the US. However, China generated less wind energy for the year than the US did. Michael McEvoy of Harvard University and Xi Lu of Tsinghua University and their colleagues suggest that the gap in production is roughly equally distributed between delays in connecting wind farms to the larger grid, low-quality equipment, and intentional favoring of coal power over wind by grid operators. The researchers offer the caveat that their data are from 2012. Both grid connection and wind farm technology have improved since then, which suggests that the favoring of coal plants is the primary cause of last year’s production shortfall.
