Huaneng Power to Invest $271 Million in Two Energy Projects

Huaneng Power International Inc. plans to invest 1.66 billion yuan ($271 million) in a gas-power project and a wind farm in China as the nation seeks to reduce carbon-emissions from fuels such as coal.

The listed unit of China’s biggest electricity producer plans to use bank loans and internal funds to pay for a 1.21 billion yuan gas-fired distributed power plant in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region with generating capacity of as much as 237 megawatts, the Beijing-based company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange today.

China, the world’s largest emitter of atmospheric pollutants, plans to raise the proportion of power it gets from natural gas to at least 7.5 percent in 2015 from 4.7 percent in 2012 to help pare emissions.

Huaneng also plans to spend 445 million yuan on a wind project in Hunan province, which will have an installed capacity of 48 megawatts, it said. Funding will come from bank loans and internal resources, it said.

Wind power installations around the world will drop by almost a quarter this year to their lowest level since 2008 because of policies in Europe and the U.S., according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Cumulative wind capacity was almost three times that of solar power at the end of 2012, with 278,000 megawatts of turbines operating compared with about 104,000 megawatts of panels, BNEF data show.