The world's leading company in the production of photovoltaic panels Sungrow Power Supply Co, announced a few days ago the installation of the world's largest floating solar plant in Huainan, in Anhui province, in China.
The facility was built on an artificial lagoon between 4 and 10 meters deep, which was formed by the extraction of coal - one of the fossil fuels more pollutants- in a neighboring mine.
This floating solar plant has the capacity to generate up to 40 megawatts per day, a sufficient amount of energy to supply almost 30 thousand people.
The floating solar plant has several advantages: its position on the water on the one hand reduces evaporation, while on the other the cooler environment improves the performance of the panels and makes their maintenance easier.
In China, one of the most polluted countries in the world, authorities are taking action to phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energies, such as the imaginative "floating solar plant" solution. The government promised to increase them by 20% in the coming years.
China urgently needs to modify its energy policy if it wishes to definitively solve the environmental problems going through. A report prepared by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, in collaboration with the UN, estimates that 90% of the watercourses in urban areas of the country they are contaminated and that air pollution contributes to the premature death of 1,2 million people a year.
According to data from Greenpeace East Asia in the country about 200 million people are subject to extremely dangerous levels of pollution.
For this reason, China, the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases, adopted a new pollution tax, although, however, it does not include carbon dioxide emissions (CO2).
The National Energy Administration in China (NEA) does not want their country to continue depending on the coal, and its goal is to invest more than 300 billion euros in green energy projects by 2020 (solar, photovoltaic, ...).
According to the United Nations, despite China's rapid advance towards a more environmentally friendly economy, the country still faces significant challenges in achieving its sustainable development goals.
Another way to reduce pollution, in addition to floating solar plants, wind farms among other proposals, is the massive boost in the use of electric cars
Electric cars
En China already sold more electric cars than in all the rest of the world combined. This was reported by the Reuters agency, which also focuses on the type of vehicle that triumphs and in their reasons.
Unlike other markets, such as America or Northern Europe, in the asian country the models that are driving this technology They are Chinese brands and with less scope of autonomy than other foreign manufacturers such as Tesla or Nissan.
With this aggressive policy launched by Beijing, with major grants to the purchase, last year they enrolled between electric cars and plug-in hybrids (or plug-in) more than half a million vehicles, which is a increase of over 60 percent over the previous year.
By 2020, the country has set itself the goal that until 5 million cars of this type circulate on its roads, and for this it is investing billions of dollars in subsidies to local companies such as BYD or BAIC to produce them on a large scale. In addition to boosting sustainable mobility in other public transport such as taxi or bus.
Another keys to explain the boom that these cheap electric cars are experiencing in China lies, again, in the subsidy policy. And it is that, for a foreign manufacturer, it is difficult to access the type of subsidies, since it is only possible that they receive it if they operate through joint ventures with local partners. It is the case of Denza, which supports the German group Daimler.
Still, even with help, your price is still well above local manufacturers. The reduction of costs in Chinese brands, according to all reports, are constant ... without addressing in most cases a continuous loss of product quality. Something that does not happen in companies with foreign capital.