At the same time that it is playing host to the international sporting community, China has been included in the top five attractive countries for investment in renewable energy. This is according to the latest Ernst & Young renewable energy country attractiveness indices, which was published on August 19.
The report (PDF) tracks and scores global investment in renewable energy for six months. The list saw the UK drop from fourth to sixth spot, allowing China to take joint fourth spot, along with Spain. The United States, Germany took out the top three spots.
As many as 80% of Chinese think protecting the environment should be made a priority, even if this results in slower growth and a potential loss of jobs. The new data suggest the Chinese people may be struggling with some of the consequences of economic growth.
Michael Phelps’ seven eight gold medals are impressive. But with an Olympic gold medal’s actual value at around $220, he would have to win 1,204,545,448 (7) more of them to raise the money China will need to meet its aggressive alternative energy goals of 137 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2020. Or, put another way, if China were to pay for clean energy with Olympic gold medals, they’d need another 172,077,922 Michael Phelps on their side.
By 2020, China’s bill for ramping up renewables to 16% of the nation’s total energy will come to $265 billion USD (2 trillion yuan). Then again, with the second largest economy in the world, China should have little trouble funding this investment — even without the mighty efforts of Phelps.
No, not that… rather, the Chinese are experiencing American-style SUV mania with their low gas prices. Also in this edition:Find out how walk-able your neighborhood is, and People Cube helps offices become sustainable.
In the race to implement new energy sources, farms have an advantage: lots of manure. A large chicken farm north of Beijing is taking advantage of this fact by using its chicken manure to generate power and heat. And this isn’t just a small-time farm—the 3 million chickens on the farm produce 220 tons of manure and 170 tons of wastewater each day.
The Deqingyuan Chicken Farm Waste Utilization Plant, which is replacing a coal-fired plant, will reduce CO2 emissions by 95,000 tons a year. It will also provide 14,600 MWh of electricity each year.
Many thanks to our friends at ZapRoot for featuring Sam Aola Ooko’s post on Chinese importation of African ivory on their latest show (above). We’re bigfans… no one does indepth coverage with a healthy dose of humor better. Keep an eye out for more from ZapRoot on Thursdays: we’re going to start featuring them regularly on the GO Media blog network.
In May of 2006, I had the chance to attend the China-US Climate Change Forum hosted by the University of California at Berkeley. To an eco-geek, the list of speakers was star-studded with Nobel laureates, professors from top universities, famous innovators, and leaders from the business communities in China and the United States. The conference opened with the premier of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, just before it hit theaters. Before a university worker’s strike altered plans, Al Gore himself was slated to join the stage.
But it was a random guy in the audience who stole the show with a single insightful comment in the closing moments.
As the date for the 2008 Games rapidly approaches, Beijing struggles to improve air quality for the “green games.” By closing factories, limiting vehicle use, and halting all construction projects, Chinese authorities are trying to make last-minute improvements that rely on wide-spread compliance. Athletic performance, health, and China’s reputation could suffer if the smog doesn’t clear.
China has implemented a variety of emergency measures to tame the haze, which will have a significant impact on all levels of society. Personal vehicle use is limited from July 20 to September 20. Drivers in Beijing can only drive on alternating days and high emissions vehicles are banned completely. Meanwhile, mass transit is being expanded and work hours staggered to help ease transportation woes.
Will last-ditch efforts help alleviate Beijing’s air pollution problem?
There have been serious concerns about air quality in the Chinese capital of Beijing ever since it was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001. Since then, the Chinese government has spent an estimated $15 billion dollars to address the air pollution problem in Beijing. The cash has been spent on shutting down factories, unleashing cloud seeders to encourage rain, and now, on paying people to not drive their cars.
Beginning today in Beijing, cars with license plates that end in an odd number are banned from the roads every other day, alternating with cars that have even-numbered plates. It is estimated that there are about 3.5 million vehicles on the roads in Beijing and the ban will reduce the numbers of cars on the road by about one million per day. Drivers will be compensated by not having to pay road and vehicle taxes for three months.
Beijing officials claim to have significantly improved air quality, with just over two-thirds of the days last year meeting national health guidelines, up from only 20% a decade earlier. But some question the validity of the data. An article in the Wall St. Journalsuggests that pollution standards may have been loosened, air-quality-monitoring stations moved and data possibly manipulated with to show better results.
Certainly it may not have helped in the furore that followed a UN CITES decision to allow Chinese access to Africa’s ivory that two Chinese women were caught in Kenya, a country opposed to the deal, trying to smuggle more that 36 pieces of ivory worth millions of dollars.
Stinking or controversial as it may have been, China now has the wonderful opportunity to stock “legally obtained” African ivory in the mix of those acquired illegally in a superbly coordinated international ring that continues to deplete Africa of its wildlife resources.
Chinese nationals have been implicated in illegal ivory seizures in more than 20 African nations in the last few years.
What’s worse, the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a 173-nation agreement charged with ensuring a sustainable international trade in wild animals and plants, has sanctioned it all.
Universities and academic institutions are developing new technologies aimed at solving the world’s energy and climate change challenges at a truly amazing pace. Some of the most exciting and promising cleantech ventures are being developed at universities around the world right now, yet barriers to commercialization prevent most from being realized.
While many top U.S. universities have tech transfer specialists on staff and departments dedicated to the commercialization of research, many others, especially in developing economies such as Brazil, India and China, don’t have readily available access to investors and industry.
Several years ago I was invited by the Danish Prime Minister to attend a globalization council meeting on the commercialization of university research. We found that although there are 7,500 universities and more than 10,000 research institutions worldwide (twice the size of the global automotive industry), there is no annual forum for academic researchers to convene and exhibit their latest research and innovation to industry.
At the same time that it is playing host to the international sporting community, China has been included in the top five attractive countries for investment in renewable energy. This is according to the latest Ernst & Young renewable energy country attractiveness indices, which was published on August 19.
