User:Gabegrossman/sandbox

Underutilization:

If all of Gansu’s wind turbines were up and running and used to their full capacity, the wind farm would generate enough energy to power a small country. However, currently, Gansu is far from full capacity and the wind farm is producing less than half of its full potential. The two main reasons why this is happening is that Gansu is located far from the major Chinese cities and that there is a lack of demand for wind energy in China.

The Gansu wind farm sits along the Gobi desert where there are extremely high winds. However, this location is about a thousand miles from China’s high density, port cities that would serve as the biggest consumer of this energy. This makes transferring energy from the wind farm to cities difficult and time consuming, which plays a role in the underutilization of the farm. There is also a lack of infrastructure and transmission lines that would allow the energy to flow into the cities. The isolated location and lack of infrastructure has made the Gansu wind farm obsolete.

There is still also a little demand for wind power in China compared to coal. Although China’s central government is actively trying to reduce its emissions and build its clean energy sector, the local governments still push coal on its local industries because it creates more economic output and because the coal is mined locally, as opposed to buying wind energy from far away, which helps local coal companies. It is hard to institute wind energy when the local governments incentivize coal, especially when coal power has been the norm in China for several years.

The Future of Gansu:

The future success of Gansu will depend on the Chinese government’s input and aid. The government will need to create policies to deter people from using coal and giving subsidies for wind energy. Further, the government will need to green-light infrastructure projects that will allow energy to be transported to the cities. The strong winds of the Gobi desert are an untapped energy source that could be vital to powering China and instituting renewable energy technologies. Some people have proposed creating wind farms closer to the cities in the East, but the wind there is far less powerful and would generate significantly less energy compared to the Gansu wind farm in the Gobi desert.

The Gansu wind farm has enormous potential to be a sustainable source of energy for all of China. The biggest challenges are the transportation of the energy to the main cities. Once the infrastructure and transmission lines are built, Gansu will be one of the largest contributors to Chinese energy.