Blow by blow...sheep graze near China's Dabancheng Wind Power Plant. Chinese investment in green power is growing.
Blow by blow...sheep graze near China's Dabancheng Wind Power Plant. Chinese investment in green power is growing. Photo: Reuters
China WindPower Group, Iberdrola and Duke Energy will lead development of an estimated $US65 billion ($71 billion) of wind-power plants this year that let utilities reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
The estimate from Bloomberg New Energy Finance assumes a 9 per cent increase in global installations of wind turbines this year, adding as much as 41 gigawatts of generation capacity. That's the equivalent of 34 new nuclear power stations.
Utilities that built natural gas-fired generators during the last decade are increasingly erecting turbines and buying wind power from competitors, tapping a renewable-energy source as governments consider ways to penalize carbon-based fuels.
``Wind development is moving fast,'' James Rogers, chairman of Duke, which owns utilities in the US Southeast and Midwest, said in London.