China cuts Wind subsidies
China’s top economic planning agency has proposed a 3-8 per cent cut in subsidies to wind-power generators, but the plan faces opposition from the country’s big state-owned power companies, newspaper China Business News (CBN) said on Monday.
China has become the world’s biggest wind power generator over the past few years, helped by a government feed-in tariff system offering generators between 0.51 and 0.61 yuan (8-10 US cents) per kilowatt hour generated.
But earlier this year parliament approved a strategic plan put forward by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to reduce tariff levels, in a move to cut state spending while recognising that the wind power industry was strong enough to rely less on subsidies
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The NDRC has now proposed cutting the subsidy to a range of 0.47 to 0.59 yuan per kwh, a drop of 3 to 8 per cent depending on which province generators are based in.