COPENHAGEN - Sino-Danish cooperation in promoting environmental protection and green growth in China and Denmark has been fruitful in recent years and is promising in the years to come.

Strengthening cooperation in these areas is at the forefront of issues to be discussed by leaders of both countries, which share goals for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and boosting the share of renewable power in their economies.

Cooperation was launched in earnest on Jan 12, 1996, when the Chinese and Danish governments signed an agreement on environmental protection, which has since formed the base for their common efforts in this field.

Joining hands in renewable energy has been a key area in Sino-Danish green growth cooperation as Denmark has been a world leader in raising economic output while maintaining low-levels of energy consumption.

Denmark, which was highly dependent on imported oil in the early 1970s, began to invest in the renewable power sector and take energy efficiency measures after being hurt by the oil crisis that broke out in the same decade.

Over the past forty years, Denmark has doubled the size of gross domestic product while total energy consumption has remained almost unchanged. The share of renewable energy in its total energy consumption has risen to nearly 20 percent, with wind power contributing 25 percent of its generated electric power.

The Scandian country installed and vigorously promoted wind-power capacity in the 1990s.

Wind power, renewable energy

In 2005, the Danish and Chinese governments forged a wind-energy development partnership and launched a year later the Danish-Chinese Wind Energy Development program, the first Sino-Danish cooperative project in this sector.

Taking three provinces in Northeast China as a testing ground, the project was designed to investigate wind power resources, assess the feasibility of integration with the national electricity grid and carry out industrial training and education.

It achieved remarkable results, which were presented at the Shanghai World Expo in October 2010.

Bilateral cooperation in renewable energy was advanced by the Renewable Energy Development Program, which was launched in February 2010 to help China develop renewable energy, enhance energy supply security, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution resulted from the use of fossil fuels in the energy and transport sectors.

Furthermore, the Chinese government wishes to establish an enabling environment for research and development activities in the renewable energy sector to help generate cutting-edge technologies.

Denmark has granted 100 million Danish kroner ($170 million) to the Renewable Energy Development Program, which covers two components.

The first relates to the development of the Chinese government's strategic planning institutions in the renewable energy sector. A Chinese National Renewable Energy Center was established at the end of 2011 and officially opened in February 2012.

The second component focuses on bilateral cooperation on research and development of renewable energy technologies through a support scheme launched on Feb 23, 2012.

The scheme is open to proposals from Chinese and Danish research institutions, universities and enterprises on innovative technologies in renewable energy such as wind, bio and solar energy.

It has a funding pool of 30 million kroner earmarked for small research projects and larger demonstration projects.