CHINA     
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CHINA OVERVIEW

The United States and China are by far the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, jointly responsible for more than 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions and about 35% of total GHGs. China has become second only to the US in its national power-generating capacity - 792.5GW per year with an expected future 10% annual increase. While China has passed the USA in total GHG emissions, per capita they rank well below North America and Europe. There are many negatives opening China up to criticism, including inefficiency: China emitted four times as much CO2 as the U.S. and six times as much as the E.U. or Japan for every unit of gross domestic product. But in recent years there is much evidence that China views renewable energies as vital to its national security and economic leadership, expanding its efforts into wind, solar and clean coal ahead of other nations. Coal and oil currently account for 69% and 20% of the country's primary energy consumption respectively, with clean energy sources, including nuclear, wind and solar power, accounting for only 7.6%.

A security guard looks on as a slogan is projected onto Yongdingmen Gate in Beijing.

Recent news:

Jan 3 2012: Air pollution long-term challenge. China's city dwellers to breathe unhealthy air 'for another 20-30 years' The cautionary note comes at the start of a year when Beijing, Shanghai and several other Chinese metropolises will begin publicly releasing data on tiny particulates known as PM2.5, which account for more than half of the country's air-borne contaminants and have the most damaging impact on human health. The promise of more transparency has been welcomed as an important step towards a clear-up of the foul smogs that plague urban China, but environment officials stress that more time is needed to turn grey skies to blue. "It took the US and Europe 50 years to deal with their problem. Even if we cut that [PM2.5] in half, it will still take 20 to 30 years," said a haze expert. link

Sept. 28 2011: China's pollution per capita rising faster than predicted. Due to its rapid economic development, per capita emissions in China are quickly approaching levels common in the industrialised countries. China already emits more carbon per person than France and Spain and on current trends will surpass the United States in per person emissions as early as 2017. The prediction comes in a report which shows that the country's carbon footprint is expanding far faster than predicted. link

The West also owns some of China's emissions. 22.5% of China's emissions are generated during production of goods and services consumed overseas, and 7.8% are embodied in exports to the US alone. link 
According to a report by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) based at the University of York, England, the UK responsibility for GHG emissions is underestimated by as much as 49%.  link   Under Kyoto rules, the pollution produced by Chinese factories making goods for the UK belongs to China. The protocol counts only the production, not the consumption, of greenhouse gases. China says this is unfair. Around half the recent increase in its emissions arises from the manufacture of goods for western markets. This pollution should, it says, belong to the consumer nations, not the producers and if the Copenhagen Conference did not recognise this, it would punish China for the west's   consumption. link

In China coal provides 70% of total energy, with petroleum contributing 20%, gas 3%,  
and hydroelectric and nuclear the remaining 7%.  But coal is China's dilemma. With approximately 13% of the world's proven reserves, China has enough coal to sustain its economic growth for a century or more even though demand is currently outpacing production. Also China's coal mining industry is deadly and has the world's worst safety record where an average of 13 people die every day in the coal pits (compared to 30 per year in the USA). World demand for China's goods and China's own rapid growth lead to a largely unregulated industry - more 

China faces desertification: Global climate change is coming home to roost in parts of Northern China. It is one of the factors causing the desert to creep in where farmland used to be. China's deserts are expanding by about 800 square miles each year. link

December 2009. Earth-friendly elements, mined destructively. Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast. Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs. link  (China controls 97% of rare earth production.)    (More on rare-earth metals)     

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Nuclear power

November 2009: Yangtze Delta has been warming faster than global average for a decade, and the impact is already being felt, according to WWF China. The  delta is home to about 400 million people. The report found that in the first five years of this decade, temperatures along China's biggest river have increased by 0.71C, after a rise of a third of a degree in the 1990s. By the estuary near Shanghai, the sea level had risen by 11.5cm (4.5") in the past 30 years. link

Nuclear power expansion in China stirs concerns
December 2009: Today, China’s nuclear plants can produce about 9 gigawatts of capacity. The government will soon announce a further increase in its targets, to 70 gigawatts of capacity by 2020 and 400 gigawatts by 2050. But with electrical demand growing so rapidly nuclear stations will still generate only 9.7% of the country’s power if the ambitious 2020 targets are met according to government projections. link 

January 2011: Nuclear breakthrough. Chinese scientists have claimed a breakthrough in reprocessing fuel from nuclear power plants so that a kilo of uranium could produce almost 60 times more power than currently possible. State media reported yesterday that techniques developed at the China National Nuclear Corporation, deep in the Gobi desert, would extend the lifetime of the country's uranium deposits from 70 to 3,000 years. China's nuclear capacity is expected to increase exponentially over the next decade and reduce the pollution pumped out by its vast number of coal-fired power stations. The new technology is likely to prove a key step in expanding China's nuclear sector and could spark a construction boom for plants and reactors. Russia, India, Japan and several European countries already reprocess nuclear fuel to separate and recover unused uranium and plutonium, reduce waste and close the nuclear cycle. China has so far failed to disclose whether its new technique differs from those already employed. link    
January 2011 - China joins Britain, France and India in the ability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.  China has been working on this technology for 24 years, and has an ambitious program of building new nuclear power stations. link   (July 22 2011: First new reactor hooks up to grid) 

March 2011: China suspends nuclear building plans. Following the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, China has suspended approval for new nuclear power stations as it grows increasingly worried about the nuclear accident in Japan. China currently gets only about 2% of its electricity from nuclear power from 13 reactors, but it has launched an ambitious project to drastically increase those figures. China is currently building 27 new reactors, about 40% of the total number being built around the world, and according to the World Nuclear Association, China wants to build a total of 110 nuclear reactors over the next few years. link  

Signs of change - the good news

August 2011: China tops 2011 index rankings for renewable energy. China overtook the US at the end of 2010 to become the world leader in wind power, having installed around 16 GW in 2010 or almost half of global installations, taking cumulative installed capacity to 42 GW. This is contrasted with an additional 5 GW installed in the US last year and a total of 40 GW. However, China ranks second globally in terms of grid-connected capacity; more than a third of wind capacity had yet to be connected to the national grid at the end of 2010. China's PV market also experienced strong growth in 2010, installing around 1 GW and taking cumulative capacity to 2.6 GW. link

January 2010: China leading global race to make clean energy.  China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. link  March 3 2010: A recent report by the Global Wind Energy Council found China to be the largest market in wind generation after a 100% growth in 2009, taking its installed capacity to 25.1GW. link  

May 2011: Solar goal is 50GW by 2020. China has more than doubled its target for solar power capacity to 50 gigawatts by 2020, as the world's largest polluter steps up efforts to boost clean energy sources.  The increased target follows a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan that triggered a nuclear crisis in the country's northeast and fuelled worldwide debate about the safety of atomic power.  China hopes its installed solar power capacity will reach 10 gigawatts by 2015 and 50 gigawatts by the end of the decade  China’s current installed capacity is less than one gigawatt. link

March 2011: Next 5-year plan.  The latest draft of China’s 12th 5-year economic development plan plots targets for the environment and clean energy in the country’s efforts to achieve their pledge to cut carbon intensity by 2020. The draft contained key details on how China can proceed with its targets in non-fossil fuel energy use, better energy consumption, lowering carbon emissions, increasing forest coverage and reducing water consumption, especially in industry. In an attempt to reduce China’s dependence on coal, which comprises about 70% of the country’s total energy consumption, they plan to increase their use of non-fossil fuel from 8.3% in 2010 to 11.4% in the next five years. In addition, they intend to expand their use of wind, solar and biomass energy, with a plan to install 235 gigawatts of power generation from clean energy sources. Most of the “clean energy” category will be derived from hydropower. For wind energy, the plan is to create 70 million kW worth of wind power capacity with eight large wind farms. link 

May 2011: China's production of green technologies has grown by a remarkable 77% a year, according to a report commissioned by the World Wildlife and has made, on the political level, a conscious decision to capture this market and to develop this market aggressively. Denmark earns the biggest share of its national revenue from producing windmills and other clean technologies while the United States ranks 17 in the production of clean technologies. link

May 2010: China to impose a carbon tax on industry from 2012 to curb carbon dioxide emissions it was reported late yesterday. The decision came after a recent survey conducted by officials in the Ministry concluded that a tax was the most efficient method of reducing carbon emissions from industry. Revenue from the tax would be used to fund energy-saving and environmentally friendly industries.  link 

China makes renewable power play to be world's first green superpower. 
June 2009: A game-changing moment could be upon us. In recent years, the world has grown used to condemning China as a climate criminal. But over the next few weeks and months, don't be surprised if you hear the same nation being hailed as the planet's first green superpower. The State Council, China's cabinet, will soon release the details of a staggeringly large "new energy" programme that could propel the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter past Europe and the US into a global leader in renewable energy and low carbon technology. This is a long-term investment aimed at making China a dominant force in the global low-carbon economy for decades to come. Power plays do not come much bigger. This is not being done because of international obligations, but as an investment in national security.  link

Changes in coal production: 
Between 1979 and 2007, the Chinese economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.8%.
China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet. But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost. After relying until recently on older technology, “China has since become the major world market for advanced coal-fired power plants with high-specification emission control systems,” the International Energy Agency said in a report on April 20 2009.  link

Wind energy in China.
January 2011: According to a report a from a wind turbine manufacturer, China has now installed more wind power capacity than the United States. Wind installation surged there last year, far outpacing the US, and now China has an estimated base of 40,000MW of wind power installed. The US, which was the previous leader, ended the year with just shy of that. Not to further exacerbate the already over-dramatized US vs. China clean energy smackdown narrative, but China is totally laying the smack down on the US in clean energy.link  (Above: Wind farm in Nan'ao Guangdong, China.)

April 2010: Wind power in China.  China is already the world's largest market for wind power, and China's first offshore wind farm, a 102-megawatt array that's set to come to full power this month in the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, looks to be the start of something big. Chinese officials announced plans for three to four large-scale offshore wind power projects generating up to 1,000 megawatts total. Predictions are that China will install 514 megawatts of offshore wind over the next three to four years, and by 2020 will have invested $100 billion to install up to 30,000 megawatts equal to all of the onshore wind farms currently installed in China. However quality shortcomings are rife in the Chinese turbine industry. A 2009 report on the Chinese market for clean energy technologies last year reported: "Real and perceived quality issues for Chinese domestically manufactured turbines and components negatively impact wind farm efficiency and constrain export market opportunities." link   

September 2009: China could meet its energy needs by wind alone, according to a new report. Moving to a low-carbon energy future would require China to make an investment of around $900bn (at current prices) over the same 20-year period. The scientists consider this a large but not unreasonable investment given the present size of the Chinese economy. Moreover, whatever the energy source, the country will need to build and support an expanded energy grid to accommodate the anticipated growth in power demand. ‘Wind farms would only need to take up land areas of 0.5 million square kilometers, or regions about three-quarters of the size of Texas. The physical footprints of wind turbines would be even smaller, allowing the areas to remain agricultural. link

Solar Power expansion.        
China is to throw its economic might behind a national solar power plan that could result in it becoming one of the world's biggest harvesters of the sun's energy. The government body responsible for overseeing energy policy has ­finalised a proposal for billions of pounds of ­incentives for solar farms and rooftop panels, which will come from the government's £400bn ($645bn) economic stimulus fund. By 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original 3GW target. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade. Once approved by the state ­council, it is expected to give a boost to the ­domestic solar power market, which has lagged behind China's wind, nuclear and hydroelectric power investments. "This is extremely important. It's a milestone," said Chen Dongmei, director of climate change and energy at the WWF's China office. China is the world's leading ­manufacturer of photovoltaic (PV) panels, which turn sunlight into electricity. But 95% of these are exported.  link 

Wave power in China set to begin. April 20 2010: China proposes 10GW  wave energy project along its coastline. China may be fast establishing itself as the global leader in wind and solar energy, but to date it has made little progress in the sphere of marine energy. Now that looks set to change after an Israeli marine renewables firm announced that it will complete construction of a 1MW wave power plant in China by the end of the month. The plant, which cost around $700,000 to build, is in Guangzhou province, and is the first installation in a proposed 10GW renewable energy project to install wave energy systems along the coastline. link

(April 2009)  China vies to be world’s leader in electric cars - story

Sources for above material from:

New York Times  
Congressional Research Service (pdf)

The (U.K.) Guardian offers a regular compilation page of environmental items on China.

Footnote. Of 28 million electric bikes sold annually, 27 million are bought by Chinese. see