Lard, My guess is they gonna be involved in a push in almost all power sectors, nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, various alternatives like solar, wind, biomass etc.
the article below talks about the potential for Hydro.
They have a massive number of dams already which are starting to give the inevitable environmental problems, so I am not sure how much credibility to place on this article.
07.06.2004 09:46:00 GMT Hydroelectric plant construction should be China's energy priority
Beijing. (Interfax-China) - The construction of hydroelectric plants should become a priority area of China's energy sector, experts with the Chinese energy company Yangtze Electric Power said in a report published last week in the Chinese newspaper Shanghai Zhengquan Bao (Shanghai Securities News).
"As the coal prices grow and the environmental requirements become tougher, the cost of building thermal plants constantly increases. For this reason, the advantages of hydroelectric plants are becoming more and more obvious," says the report. Although hydroelectric plants are more expensive to build that thermal plants, the cost the electricity produced by them in China is from RMB 0.04-0.09 (USD 0.0048-USD 0.01) per kWh, which is 50% less than the cost of electricity produced by thermal plants, the document says.
The potential of China's hydroelectric power sector is not being used to the full, the document says. Theoretically, it is possible to produce 378 mln kWh of electrical power, but the total capacity of all of China's hydroelectric plants reached only 84.55 mln kWh as of late 2002.
Hydroelectric power plants produce some 16% of the electrical power produced in China. The effectiveness of the use of hydro resources in China currently reaches just a little over 20%, while in developed countries this figure varies form 50% to 80%, says the document.
The Chinese government has set a goal of increasing the total capacity of the country's hydroelectric plants to 150 mln kWh in the nearest future and to 220 mln kWh by 2020. This will help China become a world leader in hydroelectric power production, says the report.
