(Yicai Global) Sept. 23 -- Yangjiang, a coastal city in southern Guangdong province that is most known for its famous knives and scissors, is planning to turn itself into a wind energy industrial base of global standing that will support the building of a giant offshore wind power station with half the capacity of the world's biggest hydroelectric facility, the Three Gorges Dam.

The wind power plant will have a capacity of 10 million kilowatts and should be ready by 2025, Yicai Global has learned. It costs around CNY16,000 (USD2,250) to construct one kilowatt of offshore wind energy, according to the National Energy Administration, meaning that the new wind farm could cost CNY160 billion (USD22.5 billion) to build.

Yangjiang plans to inject over CNY30 billion (USD4.2 billion) into the offshore wind power sector this year, which is almost one-fifth of the city’s gross domestic product last year, according to the municipal government’s 2022 work report.

With a lengthy coastline that stretches 458.6 kilometers and accounts for one-tenth of Guangdong’s sea front, Yangjiang is already the top offshore wind energy generator in the province, and third in the country behind Nantong and Yancheng in eastern Jiangsu province, with a combined installed capacity of 3.2 million kilowatts as of the end of last year.

Unlike other cities, Yangjiang has surplus electricity and 80 percent of its power is sold to other municipalities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Last year alone, Yangjiang earned tens of billions of Chinese yuan, equivalent to billions of US dollars, through selling electricity.

As of March, the city had 30 wind power projects underway with investment tallying CNY41.1 billion (USD5.8 billion) and an annual output value worth CNY83.4 billion (USD11.7 billion). Twenty-seven manufacturers of wind power generation equipment have set up shop in the city.

Yangjiang is most known for its knives and scissors that it has been producing for hundreds of years. Seven out of the country’s 10 biggest knife makers are based in the city, and 80 percent of the country’s exported knives come from here. Its renown is such that even German knife maker Zwilling J. A. Henckels has set up an original equipment manufacturing foundry in Yangjiang.

However, Yangjiang is determined to move with the times and back in 2017 it said it would construct a wind-power industrial base in Guangdong. In the government work report for the year it said it would “initiate offshore wind power projects, exchange resources with leading corporations such as China Three Gorges Renewables Group and Mingyang Wind Power Group and introduce wind turbine-making companies and manufacturers of supporting devices.”

Guangdong’s energy supply is dominated by coal, oil and fossil fuels which are heavily reliant on imports, an insider at a nuclear power company told Yicai Global. And there are few suitable sites left along the coast for the building of nuclear power plants.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Kim Taylor