In the 20th century, the industrialcivilization has grown by leap andbounds with fuels like coal, petro-leum, and natural gas as its power. Hu-man beings, however, are plagued withtwo big problems - energy exhaustionand environmental pollution - whenenjoying the excellent material lifethanks to the modern civilization. Theyare gradually developing and adoptingnew energy with the hopes of solvingthe two problems and achieve a sustain-able economic growth.
For the moment, the whole worldis undergoing an energy revolution, inwhich the key points included the shiftfrom irrecyclable fossil fuels to newand recyclable energy, the increase ofenergy effectiveness in all walks oflife, and energy saving. Today, new andrecyclable energy being studied anddeveloped include solar energy, windpower, terrestrial heat, biomass energy,ocean energy, hydrogen energy and soon.
China boasts of rich new and reey-clable energy. It has exploitable waterpower of 400 million kilowatts, 14%of which is in service nowadays. It hasbiomass energy of 2.6 million tonnes ofcoal equivalent (TCE), which can pro-vide 70% of the energy consumption inrural areas. The solar energy amounts to600,000 joules per square centimeter onabout two-thirds of the country's land,which indicates huge scope for develop-~uent. The country owns exploitablewind power of approximately 1 billionkilowatts and territorial heat of roughly250 billion TCE. Out of its abundantocean energy, the exploitable tide en-ergy outnumbers 20 million kilowatts.
China has made headway in theutilization of various new energy. It hasmade the best use of small-sized hydro-power with totally commercialization.The country has become the world'sbiggest solar water heater producer withmore than 500 professional companies,with production value of over RMB Ibillion yuan and a combined turnoutequal to the total by other countries.
According to the actual conditions,the country mainly focuses on mini- andsmall-sized wind power generating sets.Its wind power generating sets below 1kilowatts rank first worldwide by num-ber and yearly production.
In rural areas, biomass energy con-sumption makes up over 50 percent ofthe total 22.6 million households havingadopted methane. With more than 2,000medium- and large-sized methane proj-ects, the country ranks first around theglobe by methane utilization.
Despite of the sale in some fields,China is undergoing preliminary growthin new energy generally and falls farbehind some other countries. Its fairlyscattered companies, usually small insize, feature iess advanced technolo-gies, unstable products quality, and lowefficiency. It is a long way for them tomake commercialized production withadvanced technologies.
China has made big progresses inresearch of new technologies, but it hashad not strong competitiveness. The gapis widening between China and otherbigger players in the world. Comparedwith rivals, China has not invesed enoughmoney into new and recyclable energyindustry, which has led to insufficient re-search and development.
As for the fragmented products bynew and recyclable energy, they are notstable in quality due to lack of necessaryquality standards and supervision systems,and exhaust the patient of customers. Itis a must to establish such standards andsystems to speed up the standardization ofnew energy products.