Green energy part of Beijing-Zhangjiakou bid

The Chinese bid involves two cities, Beijing and Zhangjiakou, which is about 150 kilometers away from the Chinese capital, in neighboring Hebei province. And Zhangjiakou hopes that its initiative to use green energywill help sway voters, but also make a difference to rural residente.

In Qijiazhuang village of Zhangjiakou city, 30 households can now use power generated by solar panels. This is a new measure aiming to provide clean energy to rural areas in the city.

"We installed two-thousand kilowatt solar power panels on each household for free. The power they generate can be used, or sold to the State Grid company at the price of 0.2 yuan a kilo-watt," said Jain Xiaochen, project manager.

This is part of a project called the Photovoltaic corridor, which aims to build solar power stations along the highway from Beijing to Zhangjiakou.

Barren slopes are turning into solar power stations; the power this station generates in a year could cut coal consumption by 15 thousand tons. This is just one of the promises China has made.

Zhangjiakou city has ideal natural conditions for developing green energies. It has perennial Northwest blowing wind and is now a major base of wind power generation in North China. Abundant sunshine also makes it an ideal place to build solar power stations.

Basic solar power infrastructure is also being tested. Inside the highway service zone, a solar powered charging station for mobile phones is in use.

"Up here are two solar panels, and these are the light boxes for advertising. Back here we have charging plugs for major brand mobile phones and also a USB plug. The battery is down here, and people can sit here while charging their cellphone," said Liu Shunqiang, Yingli Solar project manager.

More such projects are expected to be announced as part of China's bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, including biomass power generation and clean coal projects.