China has the dubious honours of being both the world's biggest polluter and the largest investor in green technology. It's a country that was, therefore, bound to be much in the spotlight at the climate conference in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, many Dutch companies have been hoping and trying to, and - in some cases - succeeding in, benefiting from China's green ambitions. Take the windmill company EWT. Together with its Chinese partner, EWT is building a windmill park on one of the steppes in Inner Mongolia.
Wind energy is experiencing explosive growth in China. In the last six years alone capacity has doubled each year and is forecast to go on doing so in the years to come. Windmill manufacturers all over the world have been trying to gain a foothold in this growth market. EWT is one of them. It's created a joint venture with CALT, a state-owned Chinese company which started out in the defence industry, but now wants to conquer the wind-energy market.
Together, these two companies are now building their first windmill park on one of Inner Mongolia's steppes. The total number of windmills is 55, all of them being built at the joint venture's own factory just 50 kilometres from their final location. EWT's man in Asia, Peter Pronk, expects the windmills will actually start to produce energy as soon as January 2010.
But the wind energy industry in China is not without risk. Firstly, government agencies are having trouble getting the country's electricity grid to grow as fast as the windmill parks. This is why some parks have ended up being completed, but are not connected to the electricity networks. On top of this, the market is an incredibly competitive one. Chinese businesses are growing fast and are able to produce at much cheaper rates than competitors from the West. So, although EWT-CALT have been able to collaborate most successfully so far, the question remains as to whether Dutch know-how in this field will also remain in demand in the future.
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