Anping County, in Hebei Province, cut electricity to homes, factories and public buildings for 22 hours every three days in a radical move that has highlighted both the serious last-minute effort that China is making to achieve environmental goals and the immense long-term difficulty of shifting away from a dirty, wasteful model of economic growth.

There are less than four months left until the end of China’s current five-year plan, during which the economy is supposed to have become 20% more energy efficient. That target (which measures energy use relative to GDP growth) is crucial for a nation that wants to move up the economic value chain and prove to the world that it is making a significant contribution toward tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

Progress towards this goal was initially good, with a 14.4% gain in efficiency until last year. But it was tilted off track in the first three months of 2010 by huge infrastructure spending – largely on energy-intensive steel and cement projects – aimed at warding off the worst effects of the global economic downturn.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy conservation, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese officials have invited Taiwanese companies to supply selected mainland cities with ultra-bright, energy-saving LED lights, the latest in a series of big business deals between the rivals.

At a two-day conference that ended Wednesday, Chinese delegates asked leading Taiwanese light-emitting diode makers to participate in a mainland project to light up 10 cities with cutting-edge LED street lights.

Wu Qing, an official of Heilongjiang Province, said Taiwanese makers can supply the lights in Harbin, capital of the northeast Chinese province known for its long winter nights.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy conservation, Taiwan economy, Taiwan relations
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China’s economic boom has fueled a flurry of real estate construction, but the growth has also exacerbated the nation’s growing energy crisis. While millions of Chinese have seen their standard of living increase, if the government fails to enforce building and energy efficiency standards, China will soon be unable to power itself as a nation. Despite some progress made between 1980 and 2000, energy intensity, a measure for the energy efficiency of a nation’s economy, has dropped dramatically.

The Chinese government has responded by setting a five-year plan to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010. The plan calls for buildings in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin to implement energy savings by about 65 percent. Despite such government support, improvement has been slow. Nevertheless, experts agree China may be on the cusp of a green building boom due to a growing number of private energy service companies (ESCOS) nationwide.

Sohota Electric, an energy savings company in Zhuhai, Guangdong is one of those firms. Twelve years ago, company President Chen Xiaogang began selling energy efficient appliances and products, though demand for them was nowhere near it is today. He remembers trying to pitch the idea of energy retrofitting to oil refineries and other state-owned enterprises. Nobody bought it. Now, a decade later, Chen’s clientele includes state television broadcaster CCTV, whose energy bill Sohota has cut by 16 percent.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy conservation, global warming, green building, sustainable development
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

After Saturday’s sputtering end of the U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland, it’s clearer than ever that the fate of the post-Kyoto negotiations will depend on whether China can be coaxed to adopt some sort of carbon emissions limits. But as this tug of war plays out in the next year and beyond, what’s most important is not what China says on the diplomatic front but what it does on the home front.

The news on that score is mixed at best. On Friday, the central government admitted that the country is sliding backward in its crucial benchmark for its campaign to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy. The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s super-cabinet agency for economic policy, announced that energy consumption per unit of GDP (what the Chinese call “energy intensity”) fell 3.46 percent over the first three quarters. That’s well below the goal of a 20 percent reduction from 2006 to 2010, which would require 4 percent annual reduction. In fact, 2008 will be the third successive year to fail to reach the benchmark. (The figures for 2006 and 2007 were 1.79 percent and 3.66 percent respectively.) Even worse, the pace of improvement slackened notably during this year’s third quarter, with energy intensity falling only 0.58 percent.

All of this is especially bad news because the energy intensity campaign has been the Chinese government’s single most prominent initiative related to global warming.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy conservation, energy demand, global warming, sustainable development
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

On November 9th the Chinese government approved a US $586 billion stimulus plan focused on large-scale investment in low-income housing, water, rural infrastructure and electricity in China. Though the primary purpose of this initiative is to spur economic growth at a time when exports are falling, as the Chinese stock market is in the doldrums and GDP growth is flagging, a secondary effect of this stimulus plan may be increased investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency in China.

This effort would include accelerating efforts to achieve the goal of reducing China’s energy consumption per unit of GDP by a cumulative 20% by 2010. One very promising approach for China to build energy conservation into its infrastructure is the construction of a “smart grid.”

The “smart grid” is the merging of electricity infrastructure with information technology. The purpose is to add monitoring, analysis, control and communication capabilities to any national electrical delivery system to maximize efficiency while reducing energy consumption. Creating a unified power grid and upgrading aging power systems will increase productivity, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase national security.

The detail of the Smart Grid project is described on Joint US-China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE)’s website. This project was discussed in JUCCCE‘s recent convention in Beijing on November 10-11.

The Smart Grid Program’s initial goals: stimulate interest in Smart Grid planning, in China, and identify a few key Chinese leaders. Smart Grid will involve bringing in a series of international experts to China, over time. These discussions will help disparate groups begin to define Smart Grid in the context of China—as JUCCCE investigates case studies on return on investment (ROI). Smart Grid will outline a set of necessary early decisions, in China, so as not to make later implementation unnecessarily expensive.

The Smart Grid Program’s secondary goal: create a feasibility study of the financial, policy and technical requirements of a Smart Grid in China.

The Smart Grid Program’s third goal: catalyze a regional pilot for Smart Grid.

Follow CDT’s alternative energy and energy conservation tags to see what other technologies China is pursuing to meet its growing energy demand.

© Xiao Niu for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: electricity, energy conservation, information technology
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

This past winter was particularly cozy for residents at No. 12 West Huixin Street in Beijing. “In the past, it was so cold in winter that we would need to wear heavy sweaters and even coats at home,” said an elderly man surnamed Wang, who has lived in the building more than 10 years. “Now, a sweater should be enough.”

Wang’s 20-year-old apartment building was included in a Beijing pilot project for energy-saving reconstruction. A project manager said the once-chilly building was refurbished with heat-trapping thermal insulation in the walls, boosting energy savings to levels substantially above government standards.

Building residents told Caijing they are satisfied with the renovation results. But the results did not come easily. And a variety of other challenges lie ahead as China sets an ambitious course for energy conservation.

…According to the construction ministry, China aims to annually save 120 million tons of coal through building improvements nationwide by 2010. In addition to applying energy-saving techniques to new construction, projects that involve existing buildings in Beijing and Tangshan are widely considered as potential contributors toward the government’s goal.

However, financing issues and a lack of information about energy consumption in existing buildings pose challenges. The current plan calls for the Ministry of Finance, local governments and building residents to share expenses. Meanwhile, Xu told Caijing that a lack of proven, detailed energy information about individual residential buildings makes it difficult to accurately estimate their renovation costs and energy-saving capacities.

For background on green building efforts in China, see Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s “Building Green for China’s Future” (on Olympics-related environmental planning), and the Christian Science Monitor’s “A ‘green’ building rises amid Beijing smog” (a profile of the first building in Beijing to achieve LEED certification.)

© Zhaohua Li for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, energy conservation, green building
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Xiongcai aims to solve some very real problems: how can China make use of its current stock of 4.8 million coal-burning boilers? How can the country cleanly and efficiently burn coal and biomass fuels like chaff, sawdust, leaves and household waste? How can the country utilise commonly discarded low-grade coal such as lignite, coal slurry and gangue, and coal that has not been fully burnt the first time round? These have long been important questions for China’s energy and environmental sectors.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alternative energy, coal emissions, energy conservation
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Due to its efforts in governmental programs and incentives for local partners, BASF was named one of the top global companies in CSR (corporate social responsibility) performance in China in 2007. The award was given late last month by the magazine Foreign Investment in China, which operates under the guidance of the Ministry of Commerce.

BASF and SEPA also co-sponsored a gasoline engine testing lab in 2005. In the new diesel lab, BASF supports the project financially and is providing technology and R&D expertise.

The two entities are working together at the lab to study and identify selected industries to undergo what is known as “eco-efficiency analysis” developed by BASF that looks at a product not in isolation but in the context of how it is used and in comparison with alternative products. [Full Text]

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corporate responsibility, energy conservation, green building
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China said Thursday it was making progress in its efforts to improve the nation’s energy efficiency and cut pollution emissions, but acknowledged that not enough was being done.

“The results of our energy consumption and emission reduction (efforts) are starting to show,” Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the National Development Reform Commission, told a press briefing.

“But the situation is still grave… we have not yet completely reached our targets and if this trend doesn’t reverse, it will have a great impact on our… goals.” [Full Text]

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, emissions, energy conservation
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Adopting sustainable architecture will bring China great environmental gains with little effort, writes Pan Jiahua. If the country really wants to build a “frugal society”, this is how.

Sustainable architecture also provides potential savings in energy consumed by heating and air conditioning. Only 10% to 15% of buildings constructed in China in recent years meet national energy-saving targets. Of the 40 billion square metres of urban buildings, 95% are classified as high energy consumers. Tests carried out in the city of Tianjin showed that residential compounds whose buildings met national standards could reduce energy used for heating by up to 30%. [Full Text]

Pan Jiahua is the vice-principal of the Center for Urban Development and Environment, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: energy conservation, sustainable architecture
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall