Solar as Industrial RevolutionLi Hejun, Chairman of Hanergy Holding Group, on the Energy Source
By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOPNOV. 30, 2014

"Every important industrial revolution has actually been an energy revolution or
an energy substitution, first with coal for wood, then oil for coal and now
clean energy. Each revolution witnessed the rise of a great power, first the
United Kingdom, then the United States, and the third revolution could be led by
China. New kinds of clean energies are going to replace the previous ones, and
there are different options: wind, hydraulic, and solar.

With Hanergy, I
have had the opportunity of browsing all these alternatives, because we’ve
worked on hydropower projects as well as several wind farms, but I now believe
that for China, solar energy is the one that will replace traditional fossil
fuels, because you find the sun everywhere, or nearly everywhere, and it’s free.
Wind is currently the most cost-effective renewable resource, and in China, wind
power generation is more cost-competitive than oil or gas-fired generation. But
the distribution of wind resources is uneven, and wind strength varies
significantly by regions. There is a similar problem for hydroelectric energy. I
believe solar is the way forward.
What is interesting with this third revolution is that
it’s not about a competition for resources; it’s a competition of core
technologies."