Wu Gang

“China’s wind power industry, once failing to keep up with its international peers, today has become a worldwide leader. China has built wind turbines at home that have now gone global,” Wu Gang, Chairman of China’s largest wind turbine manufacturer Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology Co. Ltd., told Beijing Review. 

As an industry veteran, Wu has witnessed the evolution of China’s wind power prospects. In 1987, he quit his job as a college lecturer in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and became chief of the Dayancheng Wind Farm located some 50km from Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. At that time, the wind farm was a field for testing new technologies as China’s wind energy industry had just started taking shape. 

According to Wu, large-scale wind turbine installation was not yet possible in China in the 1980s. The country built its first wind farm in 1986 by importing turbines from Denmark. “Back then, we could only execute such a project through international cooperation,” he explained. 

China’s wind power industry took off in the 1990s, with the Dabancheng Wind Farm growing into the largest of its kind in China and Asia at that time. Today, the farm features thousands of wind turbines, with a total installed capacity of 125,000 kW. 

In 1998, Wu and his partners established a company, Goldwind’s predecessor, and embarked on the independent research and development of wind turbines. Their efforts soon increased the proportion of a 600-kW wind turbine’s made-in-China components from 33.4 percent to 78 percent. 

The company took the name Goldwind in 2001. In 2005, it produced the first home-grown 1.2-MW wind turbine. In January 2021, the China Beijing Environmental Exchange issued the country’s first renewable energy carbon neutrality certificate to Goldwind’s industrial park in Beijing.  

The company has a global installed capacity of more than 89 GW. Its wind turbines are sold in 38 countries, including many participants of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. According to Wu, Goldwind’s development echoes the growth of China’s wind power industry. 

And the industry has reached new levels in recent years. In 2021, China’s grid-connected wind power capacity exceeded 300 million kW, the National Energy Administration said. 

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon   

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