December 13, 2007 (Bloomberg) – Goldwind Science & Technology Co., China’s largest wind power equipment maker, plans to raise 1.8 billion yuan ($244 million) in an initial public offering to gain from the country’s efforts to counter climate change. Goldwind will sell 50 million shares at 36 yuan apiece, the Xinjiang-based company said in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
Chinese officials at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Indonesia are showcasing their government’s efforts to curb emissions of gases that cause global warming. The share sale will help fund Goldwind’s plan to spend about 1.9 billion yuan to expand capacity and on research and development, according to a Dec. 6 share sale document.
“China is already the world’s factory,” Yang Ailun, climate change program manager at Greenpeace China, said in an interview in Bali, Indonesia on Dec. 11. “It could be and should be the manufacturing hub of clean technology for the world as well.”
The nation burns coal for almost 80 percent of the electricity used in the world’s fastest-growing economy, which generated a record $238 billion trade surplus in the first 11 months of this year.
`First Mover Advantage’
“As China’s wind power sector takes off, we think Goldwind is well-positioned to become a major beneficiary, thanks to its strong brand and first-mover advantage,” KGI Securities analyst Steven Liao wrote in a Dec. 12 report. “We think Goldwind is an attractive investment target,” Taipei-based Liao said. Goldwind has a 33 percent share of China’s wind-power equipment market, according to KGI.
Investors can buy the stock today and tomorrow, and it will start trading “soon” after the sale, Goldwind said in a statement late yesterday dated Dec. 13.
China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, will use hydropower, nuclear energy, biomass fuels and natural gas to help cut 950 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, Ma Kai, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, its top economic planning body, said in June when he presented a National Climate Change Program.
The country may have total wind power capacity of 8,000 megawatts by 2010, exceeding the government target of 5,000 megawatts, Li Junfeng, secretary-general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, said in January.
Three Gorges
A megawatt of wind power generating capacity produces about as much electricity as 225 to 300 U.S. households use in a year, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
China may have installed wind power generation capacity of 120 gigawatts by 2020, given state backing for such projects, Greenpeace’s Yang said.
“The power generated from the wind generation units will be the equivalent of five Three Gorges projects,” Yang said. The Three Gorges Dam, on China’s Yangtze River, is the world’s largest hydropower venture, with planned capacity of 18,200 megawatts.
The project, in the central province of Hubei, can generate 84.7 million megawatt-hours of power annually, equal to 10 nuclear reactors, and is due for completion in 2009.
Environment ministers from more than 180 countries are meeting in Bali to discuss an agreement to succeed the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. China passed the U.S. last year to become the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide gas, from burning fossil fuels and producing cement, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
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