Environmental issues of China[环境问题]

[wigo]

Then you will have plants closed, people laid off and their income lost........
Many times, the logic of the reality is twisted, and there is a good reason for "first development , then cleaning-up".
But, sigh for those pollution victims.

[superchan7]

China is experiencing an industralization on a scale far beyond what humans have achieved before. The country's people are still relatively poor and this whole system is still in a "trial and error" phase. And when the business and the officials are corrupt then the problem will last longer.

[didu]

Originally Posted by wigo

Then you will have plants closed, people laid off and their income lost........
Many times, the logic of the reality is twisted, and there is a good reason for "first development , then cleaning-up".
But, sigh for those pollution victims.

there will be more people who suffer from pollution than people who would lose
income for being laid off. a village has at least a few hundred people. a small
factory can only employ dozens of people.

people will lose more money on their illness than being laid off.

people who have cancer are much worse off than health people who have no jobs.

this is not about trade-offs between development and environment, this is about
greediness and totaly lack of respect for human lives.

[didu]

Originally Posted by superchan7

And when the business and the officials are corrupt then the problem will last longer.

I generally give stability very very high priorities, but this is one of the few cases
that I think the villagers should just rise up and burn every single fucking pollution
producing factory to the ground.

[Pax Sinica]

Reminds me the riots after the spread of Minamata disease in Japan.

[hkskyline]

Worst sandstorm in two decades hits western China, killing 1, stranding thousands
11 April 2006

BEIJING (AP) - China's far west has been hit by the worst sandstorm in decades with one person killed and thousands stranded after sand blanketed railways and high winds smashed train and car windows, the government said Tuesday.

The storm Saturday hit many parts of far western China's Xinjiang region, with wind speeds in the popular tourist towns of Hami and Turpan reaching 183 kilometers per hour (113 mph), the official Xinhua News Agency said.

One person died and another was injured when several houses collapsed in Toksun county, Xinhua said.

Each spring, sandstorms fed by the deserts of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia blow southeast toward Beijing and the eastern seaboard. The pale yellow dust blows out across the Pacific, clouding the skies of South Korea and occasionally drifting as far as Arizona.

Xinhua said in Turpan, 36 trains stopped service and 130 scheduled bus trips had to be canceled because of the storm -- the worst in Xinjiang since 1984.

At a toll booth along the region's 312 National Highway, some 50 cars were stranded after the storm smashed their windshields, it said. Xinhua said that the more than 200 passengers who left their cars were sheltered by local police and transport officials near the toll booth.

It was not clear whether transport lines had returned to normal by Tuesday or how many people were still stranded.

In neighboring Gansu province, which was hit by the storm on Sunday, the sand haze limited visibility in five cities to less than 100 meters (330 feet) and forced people to turn on house lights in the middle of the day in order to see, it said.

[Pangu]

Geez... sandstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis... there is no safe place on Earth.

[Handsome]

大西北沙漠太多了，不过沙漠里有石油和天然气。

[Handsome]

1,000 companies take action to save energy
www.chinanews.cn 2006-04-15 11:18:09

Chinanews, Beijing, April 14 (reporter Yu Jingbo) - A large-scale energy-saving campaign will spread over the Chinese mainland. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) revealed on Thursday that this year, China will launch an energy-saving campaign which will involve 1,000 enterprises in nine high energy-consuming industries, including steel, nonferrous metal, coal and electric power. By means of this action, China will save 100 million tons of standard coal during the 11th five-year plan period (2006-2010).

According to statistics, the overall energy consumption of these 1,000 enterprises reached 670 million tons of standard coal in 2004, taking up 33% of China's total consumption and constituting 47% of gross industrial energy consumption. Besides those engaged in production of steel, nonferrous metal, coal and electric power, enterprises of the petrochemical, chemical, building materials, textile and paper making industries will also participate in the campaign.

In order to perfect tracking and checking of this action, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council suggested that centrally-controlled enterprises regard periodic energy saving achievements as part of their performance assessment. NDRC and the National Bureau of Statistics will jointly publish the status of energy utilization of the 1,000 enterprises during the previous year annually.

China will increase support for transformation projects for the purpose of energy saving, and adopt fiscal and taxation policies that emphasize energy saving in an effort to propel those 1,000 enterprises to carry on the campaign.

[hkth]

News from Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK):
Air pollution has continued to worsen in Guangdong in past 5 years 2006-04-18 HKT 07:01

Air pollution has continued to worsen in Guangdong over the past five years, with the level of sulphur dioxide increasing by eight percent each year. That's according to the deputy director of the province's environmental protection bureau, Chen Guang-rong. He said desulphurisation measures had been more widely adopted. But so far, only eight percent of power generators in the province had been fitted with them.

[muchbetter]

A group of officials from Guangdong province in Delta hotel of Chicago bragged for more than 3 hours a few days ago, but I didn't hear them mention environmental pollution.

[ice787306]

与贫穷相比，我觉得污染还是可以忍受的

[didu]

贫穷你还能活, 污染不仅能把你搞病, 更能把你搞穷.

贫穷 >>>>> 污染

[ice787306]

像日本那样搞科技，国家让吗？

就为了那点税收把科技都让出去了，所以。。。。。。。。。。。。。

你都知道目前状况下中国没有可能富的，越来越穷是必然，所以污染必然越来越严重的。

the gov interfer the tech develop ,so we can not develop as japan

tax revenue increase but the tech fall behind
so China will become poorer and poorer ,it'e certainty ,,Worsening air pollution is also
hopeless to improve the condition!!!!!!!!!!!!!nothing i can do

[byoker]

Originally Posted by ice787306

像日本那样搞科技，国家让吗？

就为了那点税收把科技都让出去了，所以。。。。。。。。。。。。。

你都知道目前状况下中国没有可能富的，越来越穷是必然，所以污染必然越来越严重的。

the gov interfer the tech develop ,so we can not develop as japan

tax revenue increase but the tech fall behind
so China will become poorer and poorer ,it'e certainty ,,Worsening air pollution is also
hopeless to improve the condition!!!!!!!!!!!!!nothing i can do

为什么中国没有可能富,越来越穷? 我不知道.为了税收,是说什么,是高速铁路的事情么?

Why "China will become poorer and poorer ,it'e certainty ",What's about "tax revenue increase but the tech fall behind ",do you talking about "High speed railway"?

[davidwei01]

Originally Posted by ice787306

像日本那样搞科技，国家让吗？

就为了那点税收把科技都让出去了，所以。。。。。。。。。。。。。

你都知道目前状况下中国没有可能富的，越来越穷是必然，所以污染必然越来越严重的。

the gov interfer the tech develop ,so we can not develop as japan

tax revenue increase but the tech fall behind
so China will become poorer and poorer ,it'e certainty ,,Worsening air pollution is also
hopeless to improve the condition!!!!!!!!!!!!!nothing i can do

but I see China is stronger a...

[Rachmaninov]

China is sacrificing too much of its already bad side to create something that can compete with the western countries...

[cp1]

I think it is just a matter of time before the rest of the world suffers from the same amount of air pollution as china. Australia and the untited states will defiently be affected by this which iam sure will spread throughout the rest of the world over time.

[hkskyline]

Energy-hungry China warms to solar water heaters
By Emma Graham-Harrison
Sat Jun 3, 9:28 PM ET
Reuters

Dusty Dezhou was relegated to the footnotes of Chinese history for centuries, known mainly as the place where a Filipino king died.

Now, Huang Ming hopes hot water will help put it on the map.

His company has earned a fortune manufacturing solar heaters, relatively low-tech rooftop devices which capture the sun's energy to provide water for baths and washing and are at the forefront of a renewable energy drive.

At least 30 million Chinese households now have one and last year the country accounted for around 80 percent of the world market, said Eric Martinot, visiting scholar at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "We are at 15 to 20 percent annual growth and I don't see that slowing down."

Huang says his Dezhou-based firm, China Himin Solar Energy Group, is the largest in a fragmented and almost entirely Chinese market, with a share of around 14 percent.

And the mayor is using his heating success as the basis for a bid to follow British University town Oxford and Australia's Adelaide as host of an international solar congress.

Cheap and effective enough to make economic sense to middle-class urbanites, Huang's basic models start at around 1,500 yuan ($190), although for a luxury home this could rise to 18,000 yuan ($2,250).

With technology so efficient they can work at temperatures well below freezing and under cloudy or smog-choked skies, they soon pay for themselves, he says.

"Even in winter when the temperature is minus 20, and with this kind of pollution, they can produce hot water," Huang says, gesturing to the city's gray skies.

Demand from house-buyers is forcing many builders to include the heaters in new blocks, and a government pledge that all buildings in major cities will be revamped to make them more energy efficient by 2020 should mean further customers.

Wind power generation, or more familiar solar panels used to generate electricity, are expensive and usually need government subsidies to take off. The heaters have spread far faster.

HEAT IN COLDEST WEATHER

All have the same basic design, a row of sunlight-capturing glass pipes angled below an insulated water tank.

The key to the demand boom, even in the freezing northeast and chilly western deserts, is the vacuum separating the inner tube with its energy-trapping coating from an outer tube.

Sunlight travels freely through the glass tubes but the heat it generates is trapped inside the central one where it can be transmitted to water.

"The vacuum prevents molecules carrying heat away, as there is no direct contact between inner and outer tube," Huang said.

The heaters are also easier to produce than better known electricity-generating panels. Himin's workers making these wear white overalls and hair caps, in rooms sealed to visitors. But downstairs, water-heaters roll off a production line in open warehouses filled with the clanging of giant metal presses, the roar of painting machines and open flame of glass-handlers.

The relatively low-tech factory floor helps keep costs down to around $120 to $150 per square meter, well below the $700 to $800 charged for similar heaters in Europe.

The simplicity of the model has also encouraged a lot of small start-ups -- some, though, of dubious quality.

"It's a very fragmented industry, although they employ about 250,000 people, which is about an eighth of the total in all of China's renewable energy industry," said Martinot.

"We might start to see centralization into a few bigger players," he added, with stronger firms helping build up exports, which are currently negligible.

FROM OIL TO SOLAR

Himin will almost certainly be one of the new powerhouses. Huang says revenues will expand 80 to 100 percent this year, although he declined to give figures in yuan.

The trim 48-year-old, who is so committed to efficiency that an office rule bans workers from using the elevator to travel less than three floors, is also considering a listing on the Hong Kong stock market.

As a delegate to China's parliament, he helped draft a new renewable energy law that found favor in Beijing as official worries grow about reliance on imported oil and polluting coal.

Huang started on the other side of the energy industry, training as a petroleum engineer. But he took worries about "peak oil" -- the time when global production will peak, followed by a decline -- seriously enough to nurture a second career.

"One of my professors told me that petroleum resources would only be valid for 50 years, so I thought maybe this is a sunset field," he said with a grin.

He got a job at a petroleum institute in Dezhou, but poured all his spare time and cash into researching solar technology, even after selling a patent for oilfield equipment.

He worked as designer, engineer, porter, plumber and salesman, and to the concern of his ever-poorer wife, gave his first heaters away as gifts to family and colleagues.

The first big break came when a factory manager at a family wedding ordered heaters for all his workers, forcing Huang to build the factory he's been using ever since.

($1=8.002 Yuan)

[YelloPerilo]

Financial Times

China to promote ethanol to minimize pollution
By Enid Tsui in Hong Kong
Published: June 12 2006 01:46 | Last updated: June 12 2006 01:46

China is considering a change in its energy policy to encourage the wider use of ethanol, a clean fuel made from agricultural products, to target the nation’s worsening air quality, a leading trader of the commodity said.


Fabrizio Zichichi, head of ethanol at Noble Group, one of the world’s largest commodities traders, said he had been told by government policymakers on a recent trip to China that Beijing could set a target by the end of this year for the share of ethanol in the nation’s energy mix.

Such a move would indicate crucial political support for investment in the production, import and distribution of the biofuel in China and could have an impact on world ethanol prices, which experts say will soon peak on current consumption patterns.

“It makes sense for Beijing to look closely at ethanol. Not only will it help the country wean itself off its dependence on oil and coal but a large ethanol market in China could help spread wealth to the rural poor, as Brazil has shown,” he said.

China is already the third-largest ethanol producer in the world behind the US and Brazil, using mainly corn, cassava and sweet potatoes. Currently, eight of its provinces have made E10, a 10 per cent ethanol and petroleum blend, mandatory at local petrol pumps.

Mr Zichichi brushed off criticism that a programme to encourage farmers to sell their products to ethanol plants would cause food shortages.

“A higher profit margin could only encourage farmers to raise their yield,” he said. “And the benefits in Brazil have shown that there is little to fear.”

China’s central government, however, has had limited success in driving the use of more environmentally-friendly fuels. For years, it has tried to popularise the use of natural gas but its efforts have been curtailed by the difficulty of securing supplies and developing a substantial local market.

But analysts say it is easier to implement an ethanol policy in China by making E10 mandatory at petrol stations and by encouraging local production.

“There is talk of the National Development and Reform Commission introducing E10 in three key cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin,” said Christine Pu, a researcher at Deutsche Securities Asia.

She added that there remained a number of barriers to the production of ethanol in China. Owing to pricing regulations, ethanol producers are dependent on government subsidies to avoid losses.