The wind power, once used only by herdsmen for cooking and lighting, will spread from remote cottages to the vast countryside in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

An official of the regional government said on Monday that wind power installed capacity of Inner Mongolia will reach 5 million kilowatts by 2010.

"Wind power-installed capacity reached 3 million kilowatts in 2008 in the Inner Mongolia, accounting for one-third of that of the country's total," said Zhao Shuanglian, vice chairman of the autonomous region, at a ceremony for the region's first 850-kW wind power generator was successfully produced in Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia.

There are about 4,000 large, three-blade turbines that generate electricity in Inner Mongolia, said Ya Saning, director of the region's economic commission.

The official explained that the wind turbine is about 70 meters high and the blade is around 30 meters wide.

China's total wind power-installed capacity increased from 400,000 kilowatts in 2001, to the fifth highest in the world of 10 million kilowatts in 2008, according to a report of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Inner Mongolia, covering 1.18 million square kilometers of land, has boasted 100 million kilowatts of wind energy resources, with enormous white turbines standing high to capture the strong winds from the heartland of Mongolia and Siberia, according to Ya.

He said that the region is striving to construct wind power plants, the installed capacity of which will be more than 10 million kilowatts, almost half of that of the country's largest hydropower project at the Three Gorges.

North China's Hebei Province will also construct wind power plants with an installed capacity of more than 10 million kilowatts as of 2020, said Zhao Weidong, an official with the provincial Commission of Development and Reform, in March.

Inner Mongolia and Hebei will exploit wind energy earlier than other regions on the Chinese mainland.

"There are 16 companies producing wind power equipments in the Inner Mongolia, and five of them have started operation," said Zhao.

The total wind power-installed capacity of the Inner Mongolia increased from 170,000 kilowatts in 2005 to 3 million kilowatts in 2008.

Wind power has become a main force in China's new energy development cause, said Lin Li, deputy director of the regional Science and Technology Bureau.

China's total wind power-installed capacity was 10 million kilowatts, 1.5 percent of country's total installed electricity capacity as of 2008, when the country became the world's fourth-largest wind power market.

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2009)