Should we all be more Chinese?

Last weekend I returned from a brief trip to Beijing, where I used to be a regular visitor. The Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association had kindly invited me to join them in celebrating 50 years of Chinese wind energy. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of old Chinese friends. The two longest standing are Shi Pengfei – the father of Chinese wind energy and Wu Gang – the Chair of Goldwind.  

Shi Pengfei and I first met in 1987. Here is a picture of Shi Pengfei and me with my partner, Unsal Hassan and Toby Harrison from the Overseas Development Agency. We were helping Shi Pengfei to erect a British, 60 kW Windharvester on Gong Dong Island.

We next met when I was chair of the First International Wind Energy Conference in Beijing in 1989, the forerunner of last week’s meeting that attracted 100,000 delegates. In 1989 there were only three electricity-producing wind turbines in the whole of China and no cars!

Last week we met again, 36 years after our first meeting. In the picture we are being supported by Feng Zhao, a member of the next generation of wind energy enthusiasts!

Now China has half of the world’s installed wind capacity and far too many cars! It is also the home of the world’s biggest turbine manufacturer - Goldwind. Last Thursday night I had dinner with Goldwind’s Chairman and CTO, Wu Gang. When I first met him 30 years ago, he came to Bristol to buy a copy of Garrad Hassan’s Bladed software. He was very short of cash, and he shared a room in the Bristol Youth Hostel with 5 other people. We spent a whole day negotiating the sale – for £10,000.   Here we are together on the 50 year panel in Beijing. Do you like my tie?

On Thursday night, in Beijing, I had a tour of the Goldwind campus before dinner. Wu Gang told me that he now employs 10,000 people and chairs the world’s biggest manufacturer, making the world’s biggest turbine. What a transition! As an engineer myself, I am very interested to note that he is  still the CTO. 

I also visited Qin Haiyan, CEO of China General Certification Centre.  We worked very closely with him and helped him to set up CGCC some 25 years ago again, initially, with the sale of Bladed with associated training  and other cooperation. He now runs a 150m blade test facility. He is building a 180m version alongside a 40MW drive train test facility. All the biggest in the world – of course!

We all know that we must do more to reach zero carbon, but it is worthwhile to stop for a day or two and reflect on what we have achieved. What China has achieved  is gob-smacking!  Shi Pengfei should be delighted. I am proud to say that Garrad Hassan played an active role in the Chinese development. At last week’s celebrations I happily took the credit which was really due to my three erstwhile colleagues David Quarton , Steve Gilkes and Jiangtao Wei, who did much to pioneer the Chinese designs.  In parallel with their efforts, Bladed proved to be the main stay of Chinese wind turbine dynamic analysis and, hence,   allowed the rapid increase in turbine size to take place. I was pleased to learn that it is still widely used there today, but I hope that nothing that I wrote back in 1984 is still included!

I count myself very lucky to have been able to enter the wind industry so near the beginning, and to have seen the extraordinary strides that it has made, all over the world, and to have played my own small part in them.

I had not been to China for 8 years and much has changed. Credit cards, as well as cash, are things of the past. You cannot pay for anything there without the WeChat app – so beware. There has been a transition in the cash economy to rival that in the wind industry. Huge and rapid transition is an everyday occurrence in China. In wind energy we can expect a great deal more from China – and we need everything that we can get!

Is Western wind energy too complacent? Why are we so slow? Just imagine what we could achieve if  the rest of the world adopted the Chinese pace and scale to fulfill our climate obligations! Should we all be more Chinese?

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