China Environmental News Alert

NRDC has been working in China for over fifteen years on such issues as energy efficiency, green buildings, clean energy technologies, environmental governance and public participation, and green supply chain issues. This China Environmental News Alert is a weekly compilation of news from around the world on China and the environment. 

 January 5 – January 18

China’s Thirst for Water Transfer

Chinadialogue (January 10, 2012)

Water diversion is back in the news in China thanks to the announcement of the 20-billion yuan (US $3.2 billion) Qiandao Lake project in Hangzhou, which has sparked controversy. Due to break ground during the next five years – the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) period – the scheme aims to bring water from Qiandao Lake in Chun’an county to Xianlin, closer to downtown Hangzhou, the capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang province. China’s economic reform has generated an unprecedented urbanization and industrialization process, which has brought with it numerous large-scale water-transfer projects. Although such schemes have helped create the conditions for rapid GDP growth, the negative effects of these intensive engineering projects have meanwhile been ignored. China still has a raging thirst for water-transfer, and even bigger plans are in the works.

China to Release Six Giant Pandas Into Wild

The Guardian (January 10, 2012) 

China introduced six giant pandas into a “semi-wild” environment on January 11 in one of the most ambitious attempts yet to replenish the endangered population with captive-bred animals. Celebrities – including basketball star Yao Ming – and political leaders attended the ceremony in Dujianyan, Sichuan Province, to mark the relocation of the bears, which has been hailed as a milestone in a restoration project expected to take 50-years.

Beijing to Release Real-Time Air Quality Data

China Daily (January 11, 2012)

Authorities in the Chinese capital will release real-time air quality data on the Internet for local residents to check starting January 19, an environment official said on January 11. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center’s staff will post air quality data 24 hours a day on its official website, www.bjmemc.com.cn, based on results from 27 monitoring stations in the city. The data will mainly cover the density of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and PM10. However, experts say the current air quality standard, which has remained unchanged for more than 10 years, lags behind the changes. The plan to measure PM2.5 will be fully implemented nationwide in 2016, and will be publicly released in Beijing ahead of the Chinese New year, which falls on January 23.

China’s Renewables Surge Dampened by Growth in Coal Consumption

The Guardian (January 12, 2012)

China tripled its solar energy generating capacity last year and notched up major increases in wind and hydropower, government figures showed this week, but officials are still struggling to cap the growth in coal burning, which is the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The latest evidence of China’s promotion of renewable energy has been welcomed by climate activists, but they warn that the benefits are being wiped out by the surge in coal consumption. After burning an extra 95 million tons last year, China will soon account for half the coal burned on the planet. Some key policy makers have called for energy use to be kept below 4.1 billion tons of coal equivalent by 2015. If the proposal is accepted, this would be the first time China has set such a ceiling. Until now, Beijing has only set goals for energy and carbon intensity, which are relative to economic growth and so fluctuate according to GDP figures.

Mixed Messages Dim Chinese Carbon Tax Prospects

BusinessGreen (January 12, 2012)

The Chinese government has tempered optimism that the country could introduce a national carbon tax within the next four years, after a senior official insisted that a carbon levy was just one of a number of options being explored. The past six months have seen a series of state media reports suggesting that the Chinese government is working on plans to introduce a national carbon tax, culminating in reports last week that a 10 yuan ($1.58) per ton tax on emissions from large industrial firms could be launched before 2015. However, Su Wei, China’s chief negotiator on climate change, insisted that a carbon tax was just one of a series of policy options the government is looking at to help curb emissions.

Hong Kong to Widen Pollutants Watch as Beijing Plans to Do More

Bloomberg (January 12, 2012) 

Hong Kong, facing criticism over its air quality, will measure pollutants smaller than 2.5 micrometers at all its monitoring stations by March, a week after Beijing pledged to make publicly available similar data. The former British colony’s delay in updating a 25-year air quality standard is drawing criticism from lawmakers and academics, as cities such as Beijing and Taipei pledged to improve their monitoring and disclosure of pollutants. Roadside pollution in Hong Kong was the worst ever last year, the South China Morning Post reported on Jan. 9, citing data from the government’s environmental protection department. 

Green Energy Investment Soars to $260bn

The Guardian (January 12, 2012)

Global investment in clean energy reached a new high of $260 billion last year – despite the financial crisis and the anti-environment agenda of Republicans in the US Congress, a United Nations investors’ summit was told on Thursday. Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which tracks clean energy investment, showed a 5% increase compared with 2010, driven largely by a surge of money going to the solar industry. The US made $56 billion in clean energy investments last year, overtaking China, which invested $47.4 billion. It is the first time since 2008 that the US has invested more.

Apple Releases 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report

China Digital Times (January 16, 2012)

Apple has released its latest Supplier Responsibility report, which shows an 80% drop in underage labor and signs of a new and long-awaited transparency. The company also published a nearly comprehensive list of suppliers for the first time, and announced its membership in the Fair Labor Association to provide some measure of third-party oversight. But this relative openness still leaves much about Apple’s supply chain obscured. Many have criticized the absence of information beyond a bare list of names that fails to reveal which suppliers have committed violations, where their plants are located, or with which subsidiaries of the larger companies Apple is involved.

NGOs Upbeat Over China’s Environmental Transparency Progress

The Guardian (January 16, 2012)

Green activists applauded steady progress on environmental transparency in China after public campaigns forced major players, including Apple and the Beijing government, to release sensitive information on pollution and its origins. This month, the Beijing government started releasing real-time data on the most toxic form of air pollution. On Friday, Apple published a previously secret list of its suppliers and outlined the steps it has taken to deal with illegal discharges of hazardous waste. State planners are aware that transparency was a key element in the clean-up of other polluted countries, but it has struggled to enforce compliance and lacks the tools of an independent judiciary and free media that were also key elements in spreading and using data to put pressure on polluters.

China Cancer Village Tests Law Against Pollution

Reuters (January 16, 2012)

Environmental advocacy groups have filed a public interest lawsuit in a special environmental court for residents suffering from chromium pollution in China’s Yunnan province. In a country where non-governmental organizations have long been treated with suspicion by authorities, collective litigation by organizations with no government backing is breaking new ground in the environmental courts. The groups want the privately owned company responsible for the chromium pollution to establish a 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) compensation fund for an environmental clean-up.

China Urges Hydropower Developers to Heed Environment

Reuters (January 17, 2012)

China’s hydropower developers must “put ecology first” and pay strict attention to the impact of their projects on local rivers and communities, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Tuesday, as the country embarks on another dam-building boom. The ministry’s intervention comes in the wake of a controversial decision to reduce the size of a protected nature reserve in southwest China’s Chongqing in order to allow the construction of the massive 30-billion yuan ($4.75 billion) Xiaonanhai hydropower plant on the Yangtze River. With new nuclear reactor construction suspended as a result of last year’s disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan, analysts say big hydro is back in favor as the government tries to meet a pledge to increase the share of non-fossil fuel energy to at least 16 percent of the total by 2020.

China Report Spells Out “Grim” Climate Change Risks

Reuters (January 17, 2012)

Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government’s latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself. The warnings are carried in the government’s “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change,” which sums up advancing scientific knowledge about the consequences and costs of global warming for China – the world’s second biggest economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas pollution. China’s rising emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels, will begin to fall off only after about 2030, with big falls only after the mid-century, says the report. 

China Turns Predominantly Urban

Wall Street Journal (January 18, 2012)

China has announced that people living in its towns and cities now outnumber those in the countryside, making it a predominantly urban nation for the first time in Chinese civilization. The historic milestone spotlights a trend that China’s government says will be a key driver of economic growth over the next two decades as hundreds of millions more people move into urban areas in search of higher-paying jobs. But it also points to the challenges facing Chinese leaders as mass migration places an increasing strain on urban housing, transport and welfare, while fueling pollution, social unrest and demands for political reform.

CDB Funding Solar Plants in US

China Daily (January 18, 2012)

A total of $64 million from China Development Bank Corp. (CDB) to construct solar power plants in California and New Jersey helps create jobs and benefits the local economy, said a spokesman for Solar Power Inc. (SPI). China-based LDK Solar Co. Ltd. announced on Jan. 4 that it had secured $20 million from CDB to construct two solar power plants in California. In addition, SPI, a California-based company majority owned by LDK, received $44 million from CDB to pay for the construction of solar projects it is working on jointly with KDC Solar LLC in New Jersey. In line with China’s “Go Global” strategy to acquire natural resources and expand China’s multinational businesses and brands, CDB has been scaling up its international lending.

 

(CENA prepared by Craig Spencer)

* The links and article summaries in this post are provided for informational purposes only and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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