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09/11/2013

India, Kuwait to take relationship beyond buyer-seller partnership – The Hindu

India and Kuwait on Friday held talks in the areas of investment, trade, and security, and of joint ventures in the energy sector, to take their relationship beyond the present buyer-seller partnership.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomes his Kuwaiti counterpart, Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al- Sabah, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Friday. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Five pacts signed

As Kuwait holds over $350 billionin surplus funds and accounts for 10 per cent of India’s oil imports, talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah centred around these two aspects. As many as five pacts were signed in the presence of the two leaders.

Strategic partnership

In his statement, Dr. Singh said the two leaders discussed the development of a more strategic partnership in the energy sector through long-term supply contracts and the establishment of upstream and downstream joint ventures in the petroleum and petrochemical sectors.

An indication of the importance attached by India to these areas came from separate talks between the Kuwaiti leadership and Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, besides a luncheon meeting with leading industrialists.

India has proposed several specific projects for investments by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.

Dr. Singh noted that Sheikh Jaber’s response was encouraging.

“I am hopeful that we can translate some of these proposals into concrete symbols of cooperation very soon,” he said.

A delegation of the Kuwait Investment Authority is expected visit India to explore opportunities for investing in the country as part of the $350 billion fund which is growing by $25 billion annually.

India expressed interest in a $100 billion Kuwaiti infrastructure renewal programme.

Security cooperation

The two leaders also discussed security cooperation and agreed to strengthen cooperation in counter-terrorism through institutionalised dialogue and training.

Joint Secretary (Gulf) in the Ministry of External Affairs, Mridul Kumar said, “We thought we will move our relationship from a buyer-seller relationship to a more strategic relationship. Now let us not only buy oil, but look at joint ventures in petrochemical complexes, fertilizers and working together in third countries.”

via India, Kuwait to take relationship beyond buyer-seller partnership – The Hindu.

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25/10/2013

Chinese scientists unveil energy-generating window | South China Morning Post

Scientists in China said on Thursday they had designed a “smart” window that can both save and generate energy, and may ultimately reduce heating and cooling costs for buildings.

china_window.jpg

While allowing us to feel close to the outside world, windows cause heat to escape from buildings in winter and let the sun’s unwanted rays enter in summer.

This has sparked a quest for “smart” windows that can adapt to weather conditions outside.

Today’s smart windows are limited to regulating light and heat from the sun, allowing a lot of potential energy to escape, study co-author Yanfeng Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.

“The main innovation of this work is that it developed a concept smart window device for simultaneous generation and saving of energy.”

Engineers have long battled to incorporate energy-generating solar cells into window panes without affecting their transparency.

Gao’s team discovered that a material called vanadium oxide (VO2) can be used as a transparent coating to regulate infrared radiation from the sun.

VO2 changes its properties based on temperature. Below a certain level it is insulating and lets through infrared light, while at another temperature it becomes reflective.

A window in which VO2 was used could regulate the amount of sun energy entering a building, but also scatter light to solar cells the team had placed around their glass panels, where it was used to generate energy with which to light a lamp, for example.

“This smart window combines energy-saving and generation in one device, and offers potential to intelligently regulate and utilise solar radiation in an efficient manner,” the study authors wrote in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

via Chinese scientists unveil energy-generating window | South China Morning Post.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/how-well-will-china-and-india-innovate/

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21/10/2013

Documentary ‘Katiyabaaz’ shines spotlight on India’s power shortage | India Insight

A documentary about a power thief, the government official who tries to stop him, and the larger story about the lack of power and infrastructure in India’s small towns is making news at the Mumbai Film Festival.

“Katiyabaaz” (Powerless) chronicles the clash between Loha Singh, a Robin Hood-style power thief who claims to be the best in the business, and Ritu Maheshwari, a government official who is determined to stop power theft in the industrial town of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

The film will screen at the Mumbai Film Festival, which begins Friday.

Directed by documentary filmmakers Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar, the 84-minute movie screened at the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals before appearing in Mumbai.

“The film is as much about the energy crisis in India and globally as it is about the ingenuity and tenacity of the people in Kanpur. It is also a film about the challenges of governance, the numbers and scale that our policymakers must contend with,” Kakkar told Reuters in an email interview.

Mustafa, who is from Kanpur, and Kakkar spent more than two years following Loha Singh as he climbed electricity poles, strung together wires and brought power to several small workshops and businesses that need uninterrupted power to function.

“It’s all because of him – it is his blessing that this workshop is running,” one worker says as the lights flicker on.

The Indian government estimates that almost 20 percent of power generated in the country is stolen. The country has never overcome its chronic power crisis, and some analysts say it is a key reason why it might fall behind in its quest to compete with China and other developing nations. Peak demand shortage is pegged at 10 percent, according to government estimates.

In an industrial town like Kanpur, known for its leather and textile industries, lack of power can be crippling, and lives and livelihoods are at stake, Mustafa said.

“It is ostensibly a story about a lack of infrastructure, but I like to think that it also touches upon many other aspects of life in cities in India, the inequalities and struggles therein. For me, the city of Kanpur itself is a character to be reckoned with on film,”  he said.

The protagonist of the film, he said was a “discovery’, and symbolic of the travails that his city had to face.

“We met a lot of electricity thieves in Kanpur (indeed, it seems half the city steals electricity), but no one like Loha, a person who owned himself, a legend in his neighborhood, foul-mouthed, fiercely independent, a true working class hero, and a product of the travails of the city,” said Mustafa.

In the trailer of the film, Singh is shown biting off wires, attaching them to electricity poles, and laughing off threats from Maheshwari’s people, who are determined to stop power theft. Often, he is supported by citizens, who blame the government for not providing them with uninterrupted power.

“The electricity people force even an honest man to become a thief,” an irate man tells the  camera.

It is this inequality and dichotomy that both film-makers said stood out starkly during their film-making process.

“The scale of energy paucity in India is staggering. Of the 1.5 billion people worldwide who live without power, 400 million live in India. We want to put this crisis into perspective and bring it home to people,” Kakkar said.

via Documentary ‘Katiyabaaz’ shines spotlight on India’s power shortage | India Insight.

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20/10/2013

Osborne agrees to China investing in UK nuclear plants – BBC News

The Chancellor, George Osborne, has announced that the UK will allow Chinese companies to take a stake in British nuclear power plants.

The announcement also said that Chinese firms might eventually be allowed to take majority stakes in British nuclear plants.

Mr Osborne made the announcement on the last day of a trade visit to China.

The first China deal could be as early as next week, with the go ahead for a new £14bn plant at the Hinkley C site.

Also on Thursday, a report commissioned for the prime minister warned of a growing risk of power shortages over the next few years.

The Royal Academy of Engineering said the closure of older power plants and the slow progress in building news ones was likely to stretch the system “close to its limits”.

Supply is expected to come under strain in the winter of 2014-15.

Most existing coal-fired plants are expected to be closed in 2015 to meet European Union pollution directives, while many gas-fired power plants are not being used at the moment because gas is so expensive.

These would take time and money to bring back on stream.

via BBC News – Osborne agrees to China investing in UK nuclear plants.

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01/10/2013

China’s Synthetic Natural Gas Plants Could Accelerate Climate Change – Businessweek

Northern China’s reliance on burning coal for heat and energy contributes to the heavy haze that shrouds city buildings, especially in winter, and shortens the life spans of northerners as compared with their southern counterparts by as much as five years, according to a recent study (PDF) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A worker moves coal briquettes onto a pedicab at a coal distribution business in Huaibei, central China's Anhui province on January 30, 2013.

Beijing and other Chinese cities won’t see frequent blue skies until coal burning is dramatically curtailed in adjacent industrial regions. In September, China’s State Council released a significant new environmental target: trimming coal’s contribution to overall energy output from 67 percent in 2012 to 65 percent in 2017, even as the country’s economy and energy demand continue to grow.

STORY: Growing Concerns About Pollution And Public Health In China

Unfortunately, one scheme to limit coal burning by converting China’s plentiful coal supplies into synthetic natural gas (SNG) presents a host of other ecological worries. To date, China’s government has approved construction of nine large SNG plants in northern and western China, which are projected to generate 37 billion cubic meters of gas each year when completed. At least 30 more proposed plants are awaiting approval.

None of these planned plants are located near large Chinese cities, so the emissions generated in producing the gas will not hang directly over metropolises. But that doesn’t mean the coal-to-gas conversion process is clean. According to a new study (PDF) in Nature Climate Change, the entire life cycle of harvesting coal and turning it into gas produces from 36 percent to 82 percent more total greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal directly—depending on whether the gas is used to generate electricity or power vehicles.

While the most-polluting stages of energy generation could be moved farther from China’s population centers—perhaps allowing for more brighter, cleaner days in Beijing—the net effect could be to accelerate global climate change, argue the study’s authors, Chi-Jen Yang and Robert Jackson of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

via China’s Synthetic Natural Gas Plants Could Accelerate Climate Change – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/

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20/09/2013

The politics of Chinese dam-building: Opening the floodgates

The Economist: “CHINA has many good reasons not to build the $5.2 billion Xiaonanhai dam on the Yangzi river in Chongqing. The site, on a gentle slope that moves water along only slowly, is not ideal for generating hydropower. The fertile soil makes it one of China’s most productive regions, so it is densely populated with farmers reaping good harvests. And the dam (see map), which would produce only 10% of the electricity of the Three Gorges project downstream, could destroy a rare fish preserve, threatening several endangered species including the Yangzi sturgeon.

Yet it does not matter how strong the case may be against Xiaonanhai, because the battle against a hydropower scheme in China is usually lost before it is fought. The political economy of dam-building is rigged. Though the Chinese authorities have made much progress in evaluating the social and environmental impact of dams, the emphasis is still on building them, even when mitigating the damage would be hard. Critics have called it the “hydro-industrial complex”: China has armies of water engineers (including Hu Jintao, the former president) and at least 300 gigawatts of untapped hydroelectric potential. China’s total generating capacity in 2012 was 1,145GW, of which 758GW came from coal-burning plants.

An important motive for China to pursue hydropower is, ironically, the environment. China desperately needs to expand its energy supply while reducing its dependence on carbon-based fuels, especially coal. The government wants 15% of power consumption to come from clean or renewable sources by 2020, up from 9% now. Hydropower is essential for achieving that goal, as is nuclear power. “Hydro, including large hydro in China, is seen as green,” says Darrin Magee, an expert on Chinese dams at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state.

There is also a political reason why large hydro schemes continue to go ahead. Dambuilders and local governments have almost unlimited power to plan and approve projects, whereas environmental officials have almost no power to stop them.”

via The politics of dam-building: Opening the floodgates | The Economist.

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Posted in China alert, Construction, Ecology, Economics, Electricity, energy, Environment, Green, hydroelectric | Leave a Comment »

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17/09/2013

China to cut coal use, shut polluters, in bid to clear the air

China‘s fight against pollution continues unabated. Hope it is enough to save China (and the world).

Reuters: “China unveiled comprehensive new measures to tackle air pollution on Thursday, with plans to slash coal consumption and close polluting mills, factories and smelters, but experts said implementing the bold targets would be a major challenge.Vehicles past apartment blocks during rush hour in Beijing July 11, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

China has been under heavy pressure to address the causes of air pollution after thick, hazardous smog engulfed much of the industrial north, including the capital, Beijing, in January.

It has also been anxious to head off potential sources of unrest as an increasingly affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has spoiled much of China’s air, water and soil.

China published the plan on its official website (www.gov.cn), also promising to boost nuclear power and natural gas use. Environmentalists welcomed the plan but were skeptical about its effective implementation.

“The coal consumption reduction targets for key industrial areas are a good sign they are taking air pollution and public health more seriously, but to make those targets happen, the action plan is a bit disappointing and there are loopholes,” said Huang Wei, a campaigner with Greenpeace in Beijing.

Beijing has struggled to get wayward provinces and industries to adhere to its anti-pollution measures and there were few concrete measures in the new plan to help strengthen its ability to monitor and punish those who violate the rules.

“We don’t see any fundamental structural changes, and this could be a potential risk in China’s efforts to meet targets to reduce PM 2.5,” said Huang, referring to China’s plan to cut a key indicator of air pollution by 25 percent in Beijing and surrounding provinces by 2017.

Coal, which supplies more than three-quarters of China’s total electricity needs, has been identified as one of the main areas it needs to tackle. China would cut total consumption of the fossil fuel to below 65 percent of primary energy use by 2017 under the new plan, down from 66.8 percent last year.

Green groups were expecting the action plan to include detailed regional coal consumption cuts, but those cuts appear to have been left to the provinces to settle themselves.

Northern Hebei province, China‘s biggest steel-producing region, has announced it would slash coal use by 40 million metric tons over the 2012-2015 period.

Other targets in the plan were also generally in line with a previous plans. It said it would aim to raise the share of non-fossil fuel energy to 13 percent by 2017, up from 11.4 percent in 2012. Its previous target stood at 15 percent by 2020.

To help meet that target, it would raise installed nuclear capacity to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2017, up from 12.5 GW now and slightly accelerating a previous 2020 target of 58 GW.

It would add 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas trunk pipeline transmission capacity by the end of 2015 to cover industrial areas like the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze and Pearl river deltas in the east and southeast.”

via China to cut coal use, shut polluters, in bid to clear the air | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/

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11/09/2013

Changing China set to shake world economy, again

In my view, this is a ‘must read’ article for anyone interested in how China will impact their own countries and lives in the foreseeable future. It complements another recent article – https://chindia-alert.org/2013/09/11/reading-li-keqiangs-tea-leaves-at-the-world-economic-forum/

Reuters: “Long after concerns about tightening U.S. monetary policy have faded, a more profound issue will still dog global policymakers: how to handle the second stage of China’s economic revolution.

A view of the city's skyline from the Beijing Yintai Centre building at sunset is seen in Beijing, August 29, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

The first phase, industrialization, shook the world. Commodity-producing countries boomed as they fed China’s endless appetite for natural resources. Six of the 10 fastest-growing economies last decade were in Africa.

China’s flood of keenly priced manufactured goods hollowed out jobs in advanced and emerging nations alike but also helped cap inflation and made an array of consumer goods affordable for tens of millions of people for the first time.

The second stage of China’s development promises to be no less momentous.

Consumption will take over the growth baton from investment. Services will grow as a share of the economy, while industry shrinks. Commodity-intensive mass manufacturing based on cheap labor will give way to greener, cleaner ways of making things.

More of the value added by a better-educated, more productive workforce harnessing new technologies will stay in China instead of going to multinational companies.

That’s the plan, anyway.

China will remain the most powerful engine of global growth for the next couple of decades, but it will no longer be just processing imported raw materials and components for re-export, said Li Jian with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, the Commerce Ministry‘s think tank.

“China has realized that it cannot blindly rely on investment and exports as the main drivers of growth. So China’s demand will be more balanced,” Li said.

HIGH STAKES

To show it is serious about more sustainable growth, China deliberately engineered the first-half slowdown that unnerved markets in order to address these longer-term structural priorities, according to President Xi Jinping.

Xi and the other new leaders of China’s Communist Party are expected to approve a blueprint for reform at a plenum in November. Overcoming vested interests opposed to the new economic model will be a stern test of their credibility.

A lot is at stake for the global economy too.

Philip Schellekens, an economist with the World Bank in Washington, said the importance of the reforms Beijing intends to make cannot be overstated. As China changes, so will the rest of the world.

“The structural transformations that we think are going to happen in China over the next two decades will matter far more than the near-term vulnerabilities,” he said.

On balance, commodity-exporting developing economies stand to be affected more than rich nations – an obvious exception being Australia, where the end of a China-driven mining boom was a big issue in Saturday’s election. China buys a third of Australia’s exports.

Commodity demand should stay strong, especially as China’s capital stock per head is only 10 percent that of America’s and urbanization has a long way to go. But rebalancing will favor commodities more closely tied to consumption than to investment.

Economists fret that too many emerging markets spent their windfalls from surging raw material prices instead of sloughing them into infrastructure and other investment. As a result, growth is slowing now that China’s demand is softening.

China’s appetite for agricultural commodities and energy should hold up well but Capital Economics, a London consultancy, said it was concerned about large metals exporters that have not saved their extra income and so are running current account deficits.

It singled out South Africa, Zambia, Chile and Peru as being particularly vulnerable.

via Insight: Changing China set to shake world economy, again | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/china-needs-to-rebalance-her-economy/

Posted in China alert, commodity, Consumer, Economics, employment, energy, exports, Import, Manufacturing, Market economy, Re-balancing the economy, Service industry | 1 Comment »

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06/09/2013

China’s Factory Owners Hunt for Energy Savings

BusinessWeek: “Kevin Chang, general manager of Concord Ceramics, is a member of a younger generation of factory bosses in China trying to survive leaner times. That quest led him to examine the power use at his factories. He didn’t like what he found.

A worker at a textile factory in Huaibei, China, on Apr. 10

For decades after China started trading with the U.S. in 1979, most factory managers didn’t focus on electricity prices. Demand from abroad was expanding, labor was cheap, and the exchange rate favored China’s exporters. But conditions have changed since demand softened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Chang says his labor costs have doubled, and the exchange rate is less favorable. Increasing energy efficiency is one way to shore up the bottom line.

The work at Concord requires constant air conditioning, and in the summer electricity has accounted for as much as 15 percent of operating costs. Chang, who was already leaving the hallway lights off, installed a high-volume air-conditioning system to cut expenses. Yet once the system was up and running, his electricity bill went up. Chang hired an engineer from the China Academy of Building Research, a government think tank, in Guangzhou. The engineer figured out the cooling system was more powerful than the factory needed, so the air conditioning constantly cycled between maximum cooling and powering down, wasting energy. The solution, conceived a few weeks ago, was to run just half of the unit. Now the air remains at a steady temperature, and Chang says he should save about 40 percent on electricity bills: “A lot of things can be made more efficient.”

via China’s Factory Owners Hunt for Energy Savings – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/chinas-manufacturing/

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03/09/2013

Beijing aims to slash coal use

China Daily: “The Beijing municipal government has vowed to slash the capital’s consumption of coal by more than 50 percent over five years based on 2012 levels, according to a clean-air action plan issued on Monday.

Beijing aims to slash coal use

With the plan, local government is aiming to reduce the proportion of coal used within the city’s total energy mix to below 10 percent. Pollution from coal-fired emissions is a major contributor to Beijing’s smog, especially during the winter.

The plan aims to reduce the amount of fine particulate matter to 60 micrograms per cubic meter by 2017, which would be a 25 percent drop from 2012 levels. This requires the capital to slash 13 million metric tons of coal consumption over five years.

The municipal government has been cutting down on coal consumption for 14 years, according to China Environmental News, which is run by the Environmental Protection Ministry. Within that time frame, according to the publication, Beijing has slashed 7 million tons from its total coal consumption.

The plan issued on Monday lists a number of coal-cutting measures, including allocating a coal quota to districts and key users, strengthening the capital’s gas and electricity supply and revising a sulfur concentration standard in coal.

By reducing its coal consumption, the government says it will increase the demand for natural gas supply to 24 billion cubic meters by 2017, a goal the government said it will meet.

“The supply of natural gas within and outside China is promising since more natural gas reserves have recently been discovered,” said Zhou Dadi, vice-chairman of China Energy Research Society.

Four gas-based power plants will begin operations in Beijing by 2014. It has been estimated that they will cut the use of coal by about 9.2 million tons.

Another measure within the plan calls for replacing low-quality coal usually used in rural and suburban areas with high-quality coal that is low in sulfur content before the 2016 heating season begins.

“These areas use about 4 million tons of coal every year, accounting for less than 20 percent of the city’s total consumption. Yet because of the coal’s low quality, the sulfur dioxide generated amounts to more than 70 percent of the total emissions,” said Wang Jian, deputy head of the pollution prevention and control department of the Environmental Protection Ministry.

Wang said all low quality coal will be phased out in 2016.

Beijing is also trying to completely eliminate the use of coal within the Second Ring Road, the core area of the city, an aim first established in 2001. So far, about 200,000 households had switched from coal to electricity by the end of last year. The plan issued on Monday said by the end of 2015, the remaining 65,000 households within the area will begin using electricity for their winter heating.”

via Beijing aims to slash coal use |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.

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