New | China Longyuan Power plans more expansion in both wind and coal power
Wind power major China Longyuan plans more wind farms expansion, but has no plan to get out of ‘dirty’ coal power business
China Longyuan Power Group aims to grow its wind farms capacity by 13 to 16 per cent this year to meet rising demand for clean energy, but it has no plan to cut back or sell its coal-fired plants despite regulatory headwinds.
The firm, Asia’s largest wind power producer and a unit of China Guodian Group, one of the nation’s five largest state-owned power generators, is aiming to install 1.8 to 2.2 giga-watts (GW) of wind farms this year.
It installed 1.58 GWs last year, raising total capacity to 13.54 GWs at the end of last year, or 14 per cent of the national total and enough to meet annual power demand of around four million mainland households.
“Despite last year’s weak wind resource, we managed to grow output by 5.3 per cent thanks to better projects construction management so that projects were commissioned earlier than targeted and more output could be sold to the grid,” president Li Enyi told reporters on Wednesday.
China Longyuan posted a 24.7 per cent rise in net profit to 2.56 billion yuan last year from 2013, despite revenue falling 4.9 per cent to 18.2 billion yuan due to a 12.9 per cent drop in output of its coal-fired plants amid weak demand.