When I think of China's energy's future, I usually think coal. Or Three Gorges. Or both. But as this article in the NYT (via Balloon Juice) highlights, China is positioning itself as a global leader in renewable energy.
Green Power Takes Root in the Chinese Desert
This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines
— after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years.
State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar
plants fastest, though these projects are 
much smaller than the wind
projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to
generate electricity, are sprouting up….
….But in March of last year, as power companies began accelerating construction of wind turbines, the government issued a forecast that 10,000 megawatts would actually be installed by the end of next year. And now, just 15 months later, with construction of coal-fired plants having slowed to one a week and still falling, it appears that China will have 30,000 megawatts of wind energy by the end of next year — which was previously the target for 2020, Mr. Li said.
30,000 MW! By way of comparison, Canada's installed capacity is expected to reach 3000 MW by the end of 2009.
China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.
iBiome 