China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation (CECIC), one of the country's flagship state-owned enterprises for alternative energy development, plans to invest at least 20 billion yuan (US$2.47 billion) over the next five years to build new projects across the nation.

These projects will generate electricity using alternative energy sources like wind, biomass and garbage treatment, said a senior official from the company.

"Almost a third of the total investment will come from our internal capital, with the rest financed by bank loans or other sources such as absorbing new strategic investors," said Wang Yi, a senior official from the Beijing-based company.

The company's ambitious target will benefit from China's first law to boost the use of renewable energy options like wind, solar and biomass, which will be enacted on Sunday.

"We see tremendous business opportunities from the new law," Wang said.

The new energy law orders the grid companies to charge all electricity generated by renewable energies at a price higher than the coal-fired plants.

The energy conservation company is building two wind farms at Zhangjiakou, North China's Hebei Province, and at Tuoli, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Wind power generation facilities with a capacity of 30-MW (megawatt) have been completed in Xinjiang and another 45-MW will be ready in Hebei next June, Wang said.

"By 2010, we have planned 300-MW for the two places using wind to produce electricity, which will involve a total investment of 3 billion yuan (US$369.9 million)," the company official said. The two farms have a capacity to install up to 600-MW wind power generation facilities.

A further 9 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) will go toward building new projects nationwide that will use biomass -- such as the stems of cut wheat -- to generate electricity.

In the company's medium-term investment blueprint, as many as 30 new biomass-fuelled power plants have been designed in the country's major agricultural provinces such as Hebei, Henan, Heilongjiang and Sichuan.

Each biomass power plant will incur an investment of 300 million yuan (US$39 million), said Wang.

These plants will use 6 million tons a year of biomass to generate power, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by 8.8 million tons a year.

China Energy Conservation announced it is now spending 600 million yuan (US$74 million) on two similar power projects in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

Each 300 million yuan (US$39 million) plant, with a generation capacity of 24 MW, will use 200,000 tons a year of biomass to produce power, it said. Both projects are expected to generate power from the end of next year, Wang said.

During the next five years, the State-owned company has budgeted another 9 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) to build new facilities to treat garbage or use steam generated from garbage and sewage treatments to produce power.

The company said the construction of such a power plant has started in Shaoxing, East China's Zhejiang Province, which will cost the company 500 million yuan (US$62 million).

The plant will generate 240 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year which will be sold at 0.53 yuan (6.5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, about 0.3 yuan (3.7 US cents) higher than the coal-fired plants prices.

The company expect the investment to be returned within 12 years, according to Wang.

"Ten more similar power plants using garbage to produce power have been put on our five-year investment schedule," Wang said.

Besides, the Beijing-based energy conservation project builder also plans to invest 3 to 4 billion yuan (US$370 to 493 million) for water treatment plant construction in major cities like Shenzhen in South China and Fuzhou in east China.

(China Daily December 28, 2005)