Is China serious about renewable energy?

Hat tip to Geoffrey Lean’s blog for the report that China is about to build the world’s biggest solar power station. It makes sense; they’re building it in Inner Mongolia, where there are hundreds of miles of bugger all in which to do so, and where there’s plenty of sun when the snow isn’t ten feet deep.

Does this mean that the Chinese are taking renewable energy seriously, though? Aren’t they happy just to carry on with blasting the atmosphere full of coal dust and then blaming the West for doing it first? Or perhaps they’ve cottoned on to the idea that there may be a real future in renewables, and that they may be best placed to cash in – it’s not just that they’ve got the millions of acres of bare grassland, but they’re also quick on the draw; if they really decide to build something, it gets built pronto, which gives them a major advantage compared to our horrendous lead times.

It’s a mistake to assume, from their posturing on climate change, that the Chinese don’t care about pollution. True, they’re not terribly green in the Porritt/Monbiot sense. But they’re sensible enough to know that air pollution is making a significant difference to the economy and public health.

And they have the same concerns over energy security and diversity as we have. Coal they still have a-plenty, but gas has largely to come from Russia, and the possibilities of regional tension in the North-East have to be kept in mind. And a really fast expansion of their nuclear network would give some pretty terrifying hostages to fortune, given the local penchant for jerrybuilding and exchanging blind eyes for brown envelopes. So why not try renewables? The idea of the Inner Mongolia project is to make the solar station the nucleus of a huge renewable energy park. There’s no shortage of wind up there either: every spring it takes half the Gobi Desert on an excursion to Beijing. This could be quite exciting; and at least we’ll be able to learn something from it.