Energy

China has begun damming the Jinsha River (a major tributary of the Yangtze River) to build the Xiluodu Hydropower Plant, the second largest of its type next to only the massive Three Gorges Project. With a designed installed capacity of 12.6 million kilowatts, it will be the third-largest of its type in the world. When complete, the dam will be 278 meters high with a reservoir containing 11.57 billion cubic meters of water. The project, being built with an investment of 50.34 billion yuan (6.76 billion US dollars), started construction in 2005 and is expected to be operational in 2015. It is also a subsidiary project to the Three Gorges Project in terms of flood control.

Construction began on the world's largest production base for magnetic levitation (maglev) wind-power generators in central China. The Guangzhou-based Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology Co., Ltd., invested 400 million yuan in building the base for the generators that can utilize winds with starting speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second. The frictionless maglev generator would cut the operational expenses of wind farms by up to half, keeping the overall cost of wind power under 0.4 yuan per kilowatt-hour. The base will produce a series of maglev wind-power generators with capacities ranging from 400 to 5,000 watts in the first half of 2008.

PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, replaced Exxon Mobil as the world's largest listed company by market value on Monday as its share price surged 163 percent to close at 43.96 yuan on its first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company's market value on the Shanghai bourse swelled to above the one-trillion-dollar mark, surging past Exxon Mobil, valued at 487.7 billion US dollars. It is the first time a company has been valued at one trillion dollars.

China has made a substantial move to advance the development of automobiles powered by new energies amidst concerns about energy conservation and environmental protection. A new regulation regarding the qualifications of manufacturers for automobiles powered by new energies was promulgated by the country's top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), after seven months of public discussion. New-energy automobiles were defined by the regulation as hybrid cars: battery electric vehicles (BEV), fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEV), hydrogen-fueled vehicles, and vehicles powered by other new types of fuel.