The Chinese climb

At the end of last week, Emerging Energy released a report highlighting that Chinese developers continue to climb the ranks of plant and project owners.

Longyuan is the Chinese winner to date, having overtaken Acciona to claim fourth spot in terms of international installed capacity. Putting that in context, that places Longyuan behind Spain’s Iberdrola, the US-based NextEra Energy Resources and Portugal’s EDP Renovavels.

Impressive stuff. Perhaps even more so given that Datang and Huaneng claimed sixth and seventh, respectively.

In fact, out of the top 25 global players, eight of the firms were Chinese – a figure that underlines the Chinese government’s ongoing support for multi giga-watt international initiatives.

However, the rapid expansion of the Chinese market hasn’t given everyone reason for cheer. When US-based component manufacturer AMSC announced a rather miserable set of results last week, the senior team was quick to point the finger – blaming ongoing business and contractual issues with Sinovel.

Clearly it’s difficult for the likes of AMSC to discuss such issues in objective terms, and it is impossible not to deny the Chinese their success to date. However, if China is going to continue to climb the ranks and enter western markets, then its focus on supplier and customer relationships will also have to shift.