China is drafting a plan to speed up its development of small hydropower stations with their generating capacity to increase by 6 million kilowatts in five years, a senior water official said.
Jing Zhengshu, vice-minister of the Water Resources, said Tuesday that the development of small hydropower stations has greatly increased the economic growth in poor areas, especially in the middle and western mountainous areas, where there are rich water resources.
Meanwhile, the building of the stations, whose water reserve capacity totaling over 100 billion cubic meters, has helped check thousands of flood-prone rivers in the country, he said.
Statistics indicate that one-third of China's counties and one-fourth of its population use electricity generated by the small stations, and in 1999, the operational income of the stations reached more than 34 billion yuan.
Last year, the small stations generated over 72 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, saving 9 million cubic meters of timber and reducing the use of coal by more than 40 million tons.
(Xinhua 12/06/2000)
