Chinese City’s latest power plan includes offshore wind energy and green hydrogen

Chaozhou’s municipal government has issued a new five-year energy development plan.

Located in China’s Guangdong Province, Chaozhou has plans to develop two offshore wind energy projects with a capacity totaling 43.3 GW. These renewable power projects are part of the city’s fourteenth energy development plan that will continue until 2025.

The area offshore the city has “unique” conditions for developing renewable wind power.

Chaozhou’s municipal government has issued the energy development plan to the county and district as well as other relevant governments that will work on implementing it from the local level.

According to the plan, the authorities responsible for implementing it will take advantage of the capabilities of the Chaozhou Port and the area offshore Choazhou’s – which has “unique” conditions for offshore wind energy development – to construct an “offshore wind power base” with 10 GW capacity.

The two offshore wind project sites are named Guangdong East Site 6 and Guangdong East Site 7. Both will be located in the south of Chaozhou City in the exclusive economic zone outside the territorial sea line. The 10.8 GW Guangdong East Site 6 will be installed first, offshore Chaozhou City and Shantou City. Second to be installed, the 32.5 GW Guangdong East Site 7 will be located to the southeast of Chaozhou City.

Beyond offshore wind energy development, green hydrogen is among other energy infrastructure being explored.

The new plan does not only include the development of offshore wind. The much broader objective is for local governments to explore the potential for additional clean infrastructure, including green hydrogen production, aquaculture farming, and an integrated energy island.

What’s more, the development plan includes exploring the creation of new R&D institutions dedicated to working on the development of key industrial technologies as well as innovative clean energy technologies, ranging from wind turbines and solar photovoltaic to hydrogen produced from offshore wind power.

Currently, China is home to 45% of the world’s installed offshore wind energy capacity. The 43.3 gigawatts of power that is expected to be produced by the two upcoming Guangdong offshore wind projects, alone, will generate more power than all the power plants in Norway combined.