------ Fährt ein Auto durch Windenergieanlagen in einem Windpark in der Stadt Zhangjiakou, North China Provinz Hebei, 3. Mai 2016. China hält den Rekord als Wor
--FILE--A car passes by wind turbines at a wind farm in Zhangjiakou city, north China's Hebei province, 3 May 2016. China holds the record as the world's top wind installer, accounting for about a third of the total global installed wind capacity. The United States trails in second place, accounting for just more than 17 percent. But despite its higher total capacity, China still isn't putting out as much wind-generated electricity as the United States. In other words, it has built the technology, but it just is not able to use it to the max. New research, published Monday (23 May 2016) in the journal Nature Energy by researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing, Harvard University and other U.S. and Chinese universities, examines a handful of factors thought to be responsible for the discrepancy, using a mathematical approach to evaluate the relative importance of each. Wind turbines can produce only as much energy as the wind provides, so the researchers were interested in whether differences in wind flow could account for some of China's problems. But they found that these differences played a relatively small role. Although the United States tends to get superior winds nationwide, the researchers point out that China has approached this issue by promoting more development in the regions with the best wind resources, mostly to its north and northeast.
