All the five wind power stations are to be under construction in 2007 in Shandong's Rongcheng, Dongying, Zhanhua, Shouguang and Weihai. They are expected to cost 2.5 billion yuan in total and provide 297 megawatts in power-generating capacity, according to the provincial development and reform commission.

In the first few years of the 2000s, Shandong managed to rise as the second industrial power in the country, next only to Guangdong, the southern province that shares its border with Hong Kong.

Shandong's GDP was 854.24 billion yuan in 2000, compared with Guangdong's 966.22 billion yuan. In 2006, Shandong's GDP hit 2,184.67 billion yuan, up 156 percent over 2000, while Guangdong's was 2,596.86 billion yuan, up 169 percent, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

But as a province in the Yellow River Valley, which is traditionally dense with heavy industries, Shandong's business structure is vastly different from Guangdong's.

It is littered with petrochemical plants and machine mills, while its southern counterpart is dominated by processing plants with investment from Hong Kong and rest of the world.

So in an environmental analysis, the economy of Shandong carries much more metal - rather than plastic and electronic components - than does Guangdong's, and therefore has a much greater demand for energy.

Hence the crisis in the last couple of years, when the province had to close all the small thermo-power stations run by local industries, as mandated by the central government's anti-pollution policy. That was a heavy price to pay, altogether 4,000 megawatts, or some 17 percent of the province's annual power demand, which totaled 22,720 megawatts in 2006.

In the meantime, local officials thought about wind power - the least expensive type of alternative energy.

They claim that the province boasts 67,000 megawatts of wind power resources, equivalent to more than three times the capacity of the Three Gorges hydropower station on the Yangtze River. Local engineers believe that there can be at least large 38 wind farms in the province. In comparison the five wind power projects that Shandong is now undertaking are only the beginning.

"Shandong's wind power boom is part of the national shift in energy focus," says Zhang Zehua, a provincial planning official. A huge market has been opened, he says, since small thermal power plants were shut down.

Officials explain that each kilowatt of wind power capacity would cost from 8,000 to 10,000 yuan, as compared to 4,000 yuan in power plants using coal or other conventional energy - although it will only be a matter of time for the government to raise the cost for old-fashioned and polluting industrial processes.

The returns from wind power are expected to be stable in the long run, if not increase from more government preferential treatment.

Despite its large initial investment, the maintenance and management costs that wind power requires are so low that some local engineers even compare windmills to automatic teller machines.

According to the provincial government's plan, in 2010 Shandong's wind power capacity will reach 1,000 megawatts and by 2020, 3,000 megawatts, and hopefully provide 10 to 15 percent of the nation's total wind power capacity.

So much progress, if achieved as it is planned, will no longer be called just a beginning. It will by then have given rise to an entirely new industry in China.