■ US becomes top producer of wind power

　　The United States has become the world's leading wind power producer and is expected to see rapid growth in places like Texas, the Great Plains and California, according to figures released on Saturday.

　　The U.S. wind industry now tops Germany in terms of how much energy is being produced from wind, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said.

　　Germany still has more installed capacity -- 22,000 megawatts vs. 17,000 in the United States at the end of 2007. But the average wind speed is stronger in the United States, which means more energy is being generated, the group said.

　　This year, Germany will add only about 1,600 megawatts of wind energy, while the United States will add more than 6,000 megawatts, said Randy Swisher, executive director of the association.

■ Huaneng's project set up in Inner Mongolia

　　According to the China Wind Power Network (http://www.cnwee.com): Reporters learned from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government that, China Huaneng Group’s wind power project of installed capacity of 500,000 kilowatts recently set up a formal signing in Tongliao City of Inner Mongolia.

　　Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where wind energy reserves head the list in China, has amount of 150,000,000 kilowatts on the exploitable wind energy resources technology by preliminary estimates. Tongliao City of Inner Mongolia is located in north-eastern region, which has rich wind energy and better developing conditions, but just started in recent years.

　　According to the agreement between China Huaneng and the government of Tongliao, new planned wind power project would be located in Naiman Banner, Tongliao City, and 5,000,000,000 yuan would be invested to build wind turbine with installed capacity of 500,000 kilowatts.

　　Reporters learned that the large-scale wind power project would be carried out step by step. A project would invest 500,000,000 yuan to build wind turbine with installed capacity of 50,000 kilowatts, and it would be started by the end of 2009, put into operation in 2010.

　　Prior to that, Huaneng has signed a number of wind power projects with Inner Mongolia. Coupled with this project, only in Tongliao City, Huaneng Group’s installed capacity of wind power had reached a total capacity of 1,000,000 kilowatts.

■ China aims for 100 GW of wind power by 2020

　　China's top economic planning body has unveiled an ambitious target to expand the country's wind power generating capacity to 100,000 megawatts (MW) by 2020, according to reports on Tuesday. The plan from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is five times the previous target, the report in Shanghai Daily said. Global wind power currently stands at 94 gigawatts (94,000MW).

　　 "The NDRC has just recently completed an internal meeting to discuss the possibility of increasing wind power capacity to 100,000MW," Shi Pengfei, vice president of Chinese Wind Energy Association, was quoted as saying. "It's not 20,000MW or 30,000MW as previously targeted."

　　China hopes to have 15% of its electricity generation coming from renewable sources by 2020. Most of this is expected to come from hydropower and wind.