Coal-fired Power plants | Music | 00:00 |
| MCDONNELL: China has become the world's factory: A factory which needs a mega-load of electricity. | 00:06 |
| The Chinese use coal to produce most of their energy and there are hundreds of new coal fired power stations in production. The resulting pollution is dire and the Government knows it. | 00:15 |
Wind turbine by sea | Sustainable development is the government's new catchcry and its pouring resources into renewable energy. | 00:29 |
Wind turbines | Music | 00:35 |
Kelleher. Super: | KELLEHER: We've been able to achieve in about 18 months, six wind farms, about 300 mega watts of power, that's about 250 wind turbines, and that's producing enough electricity to do something like 300,000 to 500,000 homes in China. | 00:44 |
Signing ceremony |
| 01:03 |
| MCDONNELL: Mark Kelleher is the Managing Director of Tasmanian company, Roaring Forties. | 01:07 |
| Two years ago, Australian Government support for wind farms diminished, the company put projects on hold and took its business to China where wind power is booming. | 01:14 |
| KELLEHER: Wind energy is the major deployable renewable energy source at the moment worldwide. | 01:25 |
Kelleher | It's growing about 28% a year - wind energy -- and China's going to be the biggest wind market within perhaps, you know, five to eight years. | 01:33 |
Wind turbines | Music | 01:44 |
Shuangliao | MCDONNELL: Shuangliao in North Eastern Jilin province is a good example of the rural China which has missed out on the prosperity of the major cities. | 01:50 |
| Music | 01:58 |
| MCDONNELL: Roaring Forties operates a wind farm here in partnership with Datang Corporation - | 02:02 |
Kelleher and McDonnell in car | one of the country's biggest power companies. Like the China's other traditional power suppliers - it's now investing in renewable energy. | 02:08 |
| MCDONNELL: How's the wind around here? KELLEHER: Well, China has pretty good resource worldwide. | 02:15 |
| There are four very good regions within China and this is one of those areas. | 02:20 |
Wind turbines | Music | 02:25 |
| MCDONNELL: Although wind power costs almost twice as much to produce as coal fired power, in China the Australians have found generous incentives to make it a profitable investment. | 02:32 |
| There are tax breaks from the Chinese government, and because China, unlike Australia, is a signatory to the Kyoto protocol, there's international funding as well. | 02:45 |
Kelleher and McDonnell get out of car |
| 02:54 |
Kelleher and McDonnell at wind farm | MCDONNELL: So how big can the wind business get for your company here in China? | 03:05 |
| KELLEHER: Well it's just fantastic opportunities here. | 03:09 |
| For wind alone it's setting a target the equivalent of Australia's total generation system just from wind. | 03:12 |
Wind turbine | MCDONNELL: How long will it take to get to that stage? KELLEHER: That's for a target for 2020, | 03:18 |
| but they're already running ahead of their plans for that, so we are very confident that in fact that will be even bigger target than that. | 03:23 |
Village | MCDONNELL: Here 21st Century technology sits side by side with 19th Century rural production. There's little motorisation and running water is still a way off. | 03:31 |
Vox Pops with villagers | MCDONNELL: Hello. What do you think of the wind farm? | 03:45 |
| VILLAGER: This wind farm? It's good. This area has really developed since the power station was built. | 03:49 |
| VILLAGER 2: It's all good. When the wind power station came, local people got jobs and now make money to feed their families. Secondly, they've paved the road for us. | 03:58 |
| MCDONNELL: Not everyone agrees the wind farm's been a positive development. | 04:17 |
| VILLAGER 3: The base of a turbine is close to us. At night we can hear the "wung wung" sound. | 04:21 |
Mark and others walk into main building | MCDONNELL: This wind farm took a year to build and started generating electricity in October last year. | 04:31 |
| The 58 turbines at Shuangliao produce 103 gigawatt hours of electricity every year -- enough to power 96,000 households. | 04:40 |
Kelleher with wind farm workers | Kelleher: Does this pattern happen everyday? | 04:50 |
| KELLEHER: I think anything China says it's going to do - it puts the resource effort in, it's able to, it marshals the resources, it puts the transmission infrastructure in. | 04:53 |
Kelleher. Super: | It's going to be probably the world's number one renewable energy country, I would think, over the next 10 years to 15 years. | 05:03 |
Weihai | Music | 05:13 |
| MCDONNELL: 700 kilometres away in Shandong province is the coastal city of Weihai. It's a clean, modern and funky city. | 05:24 |
Lu walks with colleagues | Music | 05:33 |
| MCDONNELL: With a strong and growing economy, local politicians like Lu Shaowei say they're keen to protect the environment. LU: We normally refuse projects that pollute. | 05:38 |
Lu | We welcome more environment-friendly projects, like wind farms, to our region. | 05:47 |
Construction site | Music | 05:56 |
Beach. Turbines in b/g | MCDONNELL: With the go-ahead from the local government, Roaring Forties is building a wind farm on the coast in partnership with another major Chinese power supplier. | 06:01 |
CU Turbine | Music | 06:10 |
McDonnell walks with Wang | MCDONNELL: How many wind turbines do you have here? WANG: Now there are 39 wind turbines. MCDONNELL: Wang Quangqun is Chairman of the | 06:14 |
Turbines | Guanghua Resourceful Wind Power Generation Company. | 06:23 |
Wang | WANG: When it comes to plant operation and other aspects of wind power electricity, Roaring Forties has rich experience. This is attractive to us. | 06:27 |
Long Lianzhu laying boards in boat | MCDONNELL: Wind power may be new for China's leading power companies, but Shandong's seafaring locals have been onto it for years. | 06:47 |
| Long Lianzhu grew up in the area and says wind powered electricity took off here in | 06:55 |
Turbine on boat | the 1980s. | 07:01 |
Long and McDonnell | LONG: We use it for working at sea. It generates electricity for fishing and lighting. | 07:05 |
Wind farm | MCDONNELL: What do you think of the huge wind turbines? | 07:13 |
Long and McDonnell | LONG: They're not operating yet, so I don't know how good they are. But they look good. | 07:18 |
Weihai fishing boats | MCDONNELL: Weihai has an environment worth protecting. So selling the concept of wind power is not a difficult task. | 07:28 |
Woman with sons | WOMAN: I'm really happy here because it's so beautiful. | 07:36 |
Woman | I especially like it when I ride my bike to work in the morning - it's so nice. | 07:40 |
Man | MAN: These days work is so busy. When you see the beautiful environment around here of course it makes you happy. | 07:45 |
Turbine production | Music | 07:53 |
| MCDONNELL: China has mandated that within 13 years 16% of all energy must come from renewable sources. A large portion of this will be from wind. | 08:01 |
| Music | 08:13 |
| MCDONNELL: Government regulations require that the greater part of wind technology be manufactured in China. | 08:16 |
| For the Tasmanian company it's been a fast ride to become a leading player in the Chinese wind power market in just a couple of years. | 08:27 |
Kelleher at banquet | Kelleher: Just a toast to thank everybody here for all their efforts. | 08:38 |
| MCDONNELL: Mark Kelleher has had to learn quickly how to do business in China and especially the delicate art of banqueting. | 08:43 |
| KELLEHER: It's a very important part of sharing a dinner together, there's a lot of toasting each other. | 08:54 |
Kelleher. Super: | That gets pretty hairy sometimes. There's a very strong Chinese spirit here that can knock your head off. | 09:01 |
Kelleher at banquet | MCDONNELL: Chinese executives genuinely believe that if you get drunk with somebody you will see their true side. | 09:14 |
| Even if you don't like drinking very much, there's really no avoiding it if you want to do business here. And in Mark Kelleher's case, his business relationships are paying off. KELLEHER: Ladies and gentlemen, | 09:25 |
Mark makes speech | it's a great pleasure to be here today in Changchun to sign with our great partner Datang Jilin, one of what's going to be the world's largest wind farms. | 09:39 |
Mark and Datang Jilin representative at signing ceremony | Music | 09:51 |
| MCDONNELL: He's just signed a deal to build a wind farm which will produce 1000 megawatts of electricity. At full capacity it could power two million homes. | 09:57 |
| KELLEHER: This has the potential to be the world's largest wind farm. | 10:12 |
Kelleher | I guess as the industry's growing a lot, by the time we've fully developed that, it may not be, but certainly a very significant wind farm in a world sense. | 10:15 |
Turbines | Music | 10:26 |
| MCDONNELL: China has enormous problems with air pollution - more than any other country. But this is the world's problem and maybe this company is making a killing in the place where it's most needed. | 10:33 |
Turbines at sunset | Music | 10:45 |
| Reporter: Stephen McDonell Camera: Rob Hill Research: Jiang Xin Editor: Garth Thomas Producer: Mary Ann Jolley Production Company: ABC Australia | 10:50 |