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Wind farms are surreal

On a weekend in June, Greenpeace China took two bus loads of supporters to visit Guanting Wind Farm – the closest wind farm to Beijing.

Each turbine stands like a giant white helicopter on a stick with no fuselage.

If you stand directly under one in the midday sun, the blades thud like a giant’s heartbeat above your head. They are both mysterious and majestic.

Wind farms are beautiful

The beauty of wind energy is that it is so clean.

It just harnesses what has been there for ever – the wind. Your source of energy doesn’t cost a penny and it doesn’t pollute.

It is very common for newly weds to get their portraits snapped, the bride in white, the groom in a tux, embracing in front of a turbine.

That's how sexy wind farms are.

The closest wind farm to Beijing

Guanting Wind Farm is about 70 km, or a 90-minute drive from the capital and just a stone’s throw away from the Badaling section of the Great Wall.

There are 47 white wind turbines in Guanting scattered around farmland – cabbages, corn and scrubby orchards -- in a giant sweep and next to Guanting Lake, a beautiful turquoise splash of water.

Another 53 are planned, so there’ll be 100 turbines in total in the wind farm when it’s finished by next year.

It’s a scenic spot. There are horses for hire and tourists gallop around the lake for pleasure while others splash about in canoes.

The wind farm is just incidental.

So on the surface wind farms are beautiful, they're surreal and they make a good backdrop to wedding photos. But what are the practicalities? Are they worth it? What do they give us?

Each wind turbine in Guanting wind farm is 1.5MW (that’s about enough for at least 2,000 homes).

So on a windy day, Beijing’s Guanting wind farm’s 47 turbines are producing enough energy to power 94,000 homes.

Each turbine costs RMB10 million (that’s about US$1.4 million).

They don't need much land, they can just be "planted" like these ones in bare bits of farmers' fields so farmers can make a bit of cash by renting the area out.

Why are wind farms expensive?

Well, they are not expensive if you compare them to coal which is a top greenhouse polluter and a major source of lung-clogging air pollution.

Greenpeace China's The True Cost of Coal report concluded that coal cost China about 7 percent of its GDP in 2007, that's RMB1.7 trillion.

Wind power doesn't pollute and it is only going to get cheaper.

The most expensive part of a wind turbine is its gear box.

The gear box means that even when the blades are turning slowly, the generator spins fast to generate a lot of power.

Wind turbines are also designed so those big blades (about 30 metres long) turn slowly.

That way they are quieter.

Guanting Wind Farm’s turbines make a noise something between a whistle and a hum.

It’s very hypnotic and relaxing.

Most experts agree that most countries can comfortably generate between 20 and 30 percent of their energy with wind farms.

Think how clean that would be!

And how much choice that would give newly weds for their honeymoon photo album!

China and wind energy

Best spots for wind farms: Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

How fast is wind energy growing in China? Wind energy installed capacity has doubled every year for the past four years (2004 to 2008).

So how much wind energy does China have now? A little more than 12 GW at the end of 2008

Who’s top of the wind farms? The US with 25 GW at the end of 2008.

China’s target: 150 GW by 2020.

What does Greenpeace think? In its Global Wind Energy Outlook 2008, we said China had the potential to have 200 GW by 2020.

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