Political and institutional analysis of the successes and failures of China’s wind power policy

Sufang Zhang, Philip Andrews-Speed and Xiaoli Zhao

Energy Policy, 2013, vol. 56, issue C, 331-340

Abstract: This paper identifies and explains how political and institutional factors have determined the relative successes and failures of China’s wind power policy over the period 2005–2011. It finds that China has made significant progress in pursuing its wind power policy in terms of cumulative installed capacity, wind turbine manufacturing industry development and wind turbine cost, and argues that these achievements can be attributed to the political motives and institutional arrangements of the Chinese government as well as to institutional changes. On the other hand, the paper finds that there are two prominent policy failures, namely the low proportion of grid-connected capacity and the rising trend of wind turbine incidents. These have undermined the efficiency and effectiveness of China’s wind power program. The paper holds that the institutional sources for the first policy failure lies in the preference for setting wind power development targets in terms of installed capacity rather than generation and in coordination problems while the second policy failure lies in the lack of state technical codes for wind power integration and the unfair competition from the large state-owned power companies. The paper contributes to the academic literature on the political and institutional roles in China’s wind power policy.

Keywords: Institutions; Wind power Policy China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151201138X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:56:y:2013:i:c:p:331-340

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2012.12.071

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().