China's wind power plans turn on coal
In Jiuquan, new coal-fired power plants with 13.6 million kilowatts of installed capacity - the same amount of energy generated by Chile in 2009 - will be added by 2020. The need to add baseload coal-fired power plants has the effect of reducing the clean benefits of wind power. But the local economic planner, Wang Jianxin, chairman of the Jiuquan Development and Reform Commission, says adding more polluting coal-fired power plants is unavoidable if you want to be green. "There's no such thing as a free lunch."