Posts tagged ‘environment’

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20/09/2012

* Dezhou, China’s solar city

China knows it is a major emitter of green gases and polluter. But it is also at the forefront of trying to minimize the effects without slowing down economic development. One example is Dezhou, a city not very far from Beijing.

Here is one image –

But if you want to get a proper impression go to – http://inhabitat.com/china-building-the-biggest-solar-energy-production-base-in-the-whole-world/dezhou-solar-valley-1/

Also read – http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/06/solar-thermal-scales-new-heights-in-china – extracts below:

“Ask any six-year-old in a Chinese street, ‘What’s a solar water heater and what’s it for?’ Without hesitation they will tell you: ‘A solar water heater is on the roof of a building to make hot water for the shower’. This story is told by Hongzhi Cheng, vice secretary-general of the Beijing-based Chinese Solar Thermal Industry Federation (CSTIF) and head of The Sun’s Vision, a company based in the city of Dezhou in Shandong province.

Dezhou, one hour by car south of Beijing, has become one of China’s solar towns due to the presence of Himin Solar, one of the country’s largest solar water heater manufacturers. For a German visitor with an interest in solar thermal technology, driving in the city provides an exciting tour past scores of roof and facade installations.

From Retrofits to Central Systems

Dezhou is also a great city to see how the solar thermal industry is developing from retrofitted systems for individual households towards large-scale rooftop solar fields serving entire buildings.

…

Building-integrated Systems Take Off

The third generation of solar thermal technology in China consists of building-integrated systems. Himin Solar is blazing a trail with several demonstration projects in Dezhou’s ‘Solar Valley’.

…

Pressurised Balcony Systems

Each flat at these new developments also includes a vacuum tube collector installed in the facade and a 300-litre tank on the balcony to supply hot water. These solar systems represent a totally new generation of residential solar water usage in China. They are pressurised, indirect systems with u-pipe collectors, and a closed-loop solar circuit filled with glycol. If the facade collector fails to reach 60°C, the electric element in the tank compensates. Solar domestic hot water is therefore separate from the buildings’ central heating and cooling system.

…

Sales Double for Balcony Systems

Balcony systems are popular for multi-family buildings that lack roof space for a solar unit for each apartment. ‘We produced 60,000 tanks for balcony systems last year and we expect a doubling this year,’ says Jie Xu, Linuo Paradigma’s production manager.

…

China’s tall buildings seem to have no upper limit for solar thermal installations. The industry aims high and still has huge growth potential, says Hongzhi Cheng. ‘Only 30% of the market demand is fulfilled yet in the rural area. We expect the rural segment to grow [from around RMB100 billion ($15 billion) today] to RMB600 million.’ But he predicts even stronger growth of thousands of billions of renminbi for the large-scale solar thermal sector. European visitors will then be astonished by even more solar thermal installations on Chinese skylines.”

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

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17/09/2012

* China, EU face dumping claim

China Daily: “Beijing said Brussels has agreed to begin dialogue and cooperation to resolve the multi-billion-dollar anti-dumping investigation towards China’s solar panel manufacturers.

But Brussels refused to go into details of such a stance, revealed by Chong Quan, China’s deputy representative for international trade talks, after three-hour intensive talks with senior officials of European Commission on Friday afternoon.

“They (Brussels) agreed (to hold dialogues) – and I found they are very candid and pragmatic,” Chong told China Daily. “I respect my negotiation partner.”

But when asked how strong Brussels’ intention is, Chong said: “I don’t know.”

Brussels was part of Chong’s three-stop mission to send a clear message from Beijing, which wants to solve this dispute through “consultation, dialogues and cooperation.” Before holding talking with Jean-Luc Demarty, the European Commission’s director general for trade, he was negotiating in Germany and has now moved on to talks in France.

EU trade spokesperson John Clancy refused to elaborate about the three-hour discussion in Brussels. Clancy said the European Commission has begun an “open” anti-dumping investigation on China’s solar panel exports, as it is required to do under the WTO framework and EU law.

He said input “from all stakeholders” is now welcome.

Clancy also confirmed that EU and Chinese trade officials discussed preparations for next week’s EU-China summit in Brussels.

Chong confirmed that China’s Minister of Commerce Chen Deming will be in Premier Wen Jiabao’s delegation that will attend the summit during a one-day visit to Belgium.

Wen and Chen are expected to urge Brussels to negotiate. Chong said both sides are eager to resolve this dispute through dialogue and both sides need to make every effort to avoid a trade war.

In the face of a severe economic slowdown and the magnitude of this dispute, Chong said: “Both of us will become losers if a trade war occurs and the situation is out of control.””

via China, EU face dumping claim |Economy |chinadaily.com.cn.

Posted in Anti-dumping, China alert, Economics, WTO | Leave a Comment »

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06/09/2012

* China to spend massively on farmland improvement

Xinhua: “The government will spend 37.36 billion yuan(about 5.93 billion U.S. dollars) to improve the quality of farmland this year, the Ministry of Finance said Thursday.

The fund, which is a part of the country’s comprehensive agricultural development plan, includes 21.92 billion yuan from the central budget and 12.05 billion yuan from local budgets, the ministry said.

The government plans to improve the quality of 15.47 million mu (1.03 million hectares) of medium- and low-yield land and build 13.31 million mu of high-quality farmland by the end of 2012, said the ministry.

The government will also support improvements for 45 water-saving projects in medium-sized irrigation districts, said the ministry.

The projects will add or improve irrigation on 25.82 million mu of land, aiming to increase agricultural production capacity, it said.”

via China to spend massively on farmland improvement – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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29/07/2012

* Thirsty South Asia’s river rifts threaten “water wars”

WSJ: “As the silver waters of the Kishanganga rush through this north Kashmir valley, Indian labourers are hard at work on a hydropower project that will dam the river just before it flows across one of the world’s most militarised borders into Pakistan.

The loud hum of excavators echoes through the pine-covered valley, clearing masses of soil and boulders.

The 330-MW dam shows India’s growing focus on hydropower but also highlights how water is a growing source of tension with downstream Pakistan, which depends on the snow-fed Himalayan rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture.

Islamabad has complained to an international court that the dam in the Gurez valley, one of dozens planned by India, will affect river flows and is illegal. The court has halted any permanent work on the river for the moment, although India can still continue tunneling and other associated projects.

In the years since their partition from British India in 1947, land disputes have led the two nuclear-armed neighbours to two of their three wars. The next flashpoint could well be water.

“There is definitely potential for conflict based on water, particularly if we are looking to the year 2050, when there could be considerable water scarcity in India and Pakistan,” says Michael Kugelman, South Asia Associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.”

via India Insight

Posted in agriculture, Construction, India alert, Politics | 3 Comments »

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29/07/2012

* China waste water pipeline scrapped after protest

BBC News: “Authorities in China say a project to build a waste water pipeline in the city of Qidong has been scrapped after a protest over pollution.

Demonstrators took to the streets of the city, north of Shanghai, and ransacked local government offices. They said the pipeline, proposed as part of a paper-making company, would pollute their coastal waters.

China has seen rising anger about environmental damage after three decades of rapid economic growth.

The thousands of protesters overturned cars as well as storming the local government offices and throwing documents from the windows. Items which the protesters allege are often received as bribes by officials – such as wine – were also seized from the offices, reports say.”

via BBC News – China waste water pipeline scrapped after protest.

Yet another example that ‘people power’ is beginning to affect decisions by local authorities in China.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/07/03/china-factory-construction-halted-amid-violent-protests/

Posted in China alert, Ecology, Economics, Good news, Pollution, public protest | 2 Comments »

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13/07/2012

* Monsoon plays truant, Indian government’s fingers crossed

Times of India: “Delayed monsoon in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh is worrying the government with prices of fruit and vegetables up 50 percent in 10 days and the water level in reservoirs nearly half of last year.

“We are keeping our fingers crossed till July 15. There appears to be a delay in the monsoon,” said a senior agriculture ministry official, not wanting to be named.

He said the ministry hoped for normal rains from Sunday.

Tomatoes, which cost Rs 25 per kg on an average in Delhi 10 days ago was selling at Rs 55 per kg on Thursday. Potatoes which cost Rs 10 per kg are now selling at Rs 20 per kg here.

The overall monsoon deficiency in the country was 23 percent till Tuesday, the meteorological department said.

The rainfall deficit, said the met department, was 40 percent in the northwest, 22 percent in the central region and 13 percent in the eastern and northeastern regions, which produce the bulk of the summer crop.

In Haryana and Punjab, the deficit was 71 percent and 73 percent respectively, it said.

Around 60 percent of the country’s agriculture depends on monsoon rains. As such, the ministry has asked states to keep alternative plans ready in case the situation does not improve.”

via Monsoon plays truant, government’s fingers crossed – The Times of India.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/07/02/india-to-launch-75m-mission-to-forecast-rains/

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10/07/2012

* 5m greener vehicles on the Chinese streets by 2020

China Daily: “China has set a target of producing and selling 500,000 energy-efficient and alternative-energy vehicles a year by 2015, and five million vehicles by 2020.

The blueprint, announced by the State Council on Monday, has outlined generous subsidies to consumers and producers of the new generation of greener vehicles, as it aims to ease the country’s heavy dependence on imported oil, cut emissions, and speed up the restructuring of its automobile sector into a more environmentally sustainable model.

According to the details, there will be heavy government investment in the core technology needed to build a strong and globally competitive new-energy vehicle industry.

The short-term emphasis will be on developing pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, as well as wider usage of hybrid vehicles and energy-saving combustion engine automobiles.

The world’s largest auto market has set an accumulated production and sales target of 500,000 units of pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015, and that will be increased tenfold to more than 5 million units by 2020.”

via 5m greener vehicles on the streets by 2020 |Economy |chinadaily.com.cn.

Continuing on the path to a ‘greener’ China – https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/

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02/07/2012

* India to launch $75m mission to forecast rains

BBC News: “India is launching a $75m (£48m) scheme using computer models to understand the south-west monsoonand forecast the rains more accurately, officials say.

Rains have come down pretty heavily this monsoon

Rains have come down pretty heavily this monsoon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the summer monsoon between June and September.

A significant shortfall in rain can trigger drought, which can cause great damage to India’s 235 million farmers.

There have been reports that this year’s monsoon has been poor.

“Understanding the monsoon will be a major priority of the government for the next five years,” says Shailesh Nayak, a senior official in the ministry of earth sciences.

He said efforts will be made to understand the rains using computer models developed by the UK and the US and gathering fresh data.

Forecasting the monsoon is a tricky task, as India’s meteorologists have discovered time and again.

Last year they predicted a bad monsoon, but in the end the rains turned out to be in excess of what was forecast.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) admitted later that it was “not very accurate” in its forecasts.

In its 137-year history the IMD has never been able to predict a drought or a flood – the two extremes of a monsoon season – successfully.

Experts say scientists all over the world struggle to forecast weather patterns.

They say the IMD does a “commendable job, putting its reputation on the block” by making monsoon forecasts every year.

Monsoon watchers like Prof J Srinivasan from the Indian Institute of Science says seasonal forecasts for drought and floods are relatively accurate for the Sub-Saharan region in Africa, but no agency in the world has ever been able to predict a drought or flood for the Indian region.”

via BBC News – India to launch $75m mission to forecast rains.

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21/06/2012

* All eyes on China’s green leap forward

New Scientist: “TWENTY years ago this week, the United Nations’ Earth Summit closed in Rio de Janeiro having forged landmark agreements on climate change and biodiversity. Next week, delegates from around the world will meet again in Rio for a new Conference on Sustainable Development, dubbed Rio+20. How far have things advanced in the interim?

On the face of it, the picture is dispiriting. Annual global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by over 50 per cent, and the demise of the Kyoto protocol has halted co-ordinated action on climate change. And while the Convention on Biological Diversity is still in force, it has not prevented rampant habitat destruction.

With global co-operation proving hard to secure, progress now depends heavily on the unilateral actions of individual countries. The US tops the priority list, just as it did at the original Earth Summit – but it has been joined there by China. The Asian giant’s extraordinary economic growth has come at enormous environmental cost: it is now among the world’s largest polluters, and its natural resources have been massively exploited in recent years.

Despite this, China’s appetite for resources still falls well short of the west’s on a per capita basis, and its people do not generally enjoy the prosperity, health and life satisfaction common to the world’s richest billion inhabitants. It has become the received wisdom that nothing approaching global parity can possibly be achieved without utterly gutting the planet. The implication? That the lives of 6 billion of the world’s residents are, and must remain, “nasty, brutish and short”.

We now have a first sense that this picture is not true to life. Much discussion revolves around GDP, but this is a poor measure of sustainable development. Pick a metric that emphasises citizen well-being in combination with the environment, such as the Happy Planet Index, and the pecking order is turned on its head, with countries such as Costa Rica topping the league (see “What is wealth on a happy planet?”).

Such measures are for the moment informal. But the World Bank has for some time been plugging away at its own tweaked index, which would offset the environmental damage caused by a nation’s industry against its productivity. It has been slow going, due to political resistance and the difficulties of pricing up “natural capital”.

This is where China’s role becomes most surprising – and promising. It is setting out on a huge green experiment that could provide lessons far afield (see “China leads the march for the green economy”). Even as its economy booms, it is sharply reducing its “carbon intensity” – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – and deploying new economic models to price natural resources.

Such models are routinely scorned in the west as the products of ivory-towered wishful thinking, and their adoption deemed unthinkably risky. Yet China, acting largely out of economic self-interest, and perhaps with a longer-term vision than beleaguered western democracies can muster, is forging ahead.

All this does not expiate China from its environmental sins. But its experiment offers the west scope to learn from its experience. Our representatives at Rio+20 should pay close attention.”

via All eyes on China’s green leap forward – opinion – 14 June 2012 – New Scientist.

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15/06/2012

* Toilets Become a Battle Cry in India

NY Times: “You could be forgiven for thinking that safety is the top concern for travelers brave enough to venture on Indian railways. It’s not. Unclean toilets appear to be their main grouse, according to a recent survey.

Across India, toilets appear to be the new battleground on which wars are being waged, whether it’s about hygiene, austerity, gender equality or corruption.

On India Ink, we’ve previously written how sanitation is a dump in India, with more than half of all households having no toilet facilities.

Even Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest people, has made his new mission to “reinvent the toilet.” “One of my ultimate dreams now is to reinvent the toilet — find a cheaper alternative to the flush toilet that does not require running water, has smell characteristics better than the flush toilet and is cheap,” he told the Times of India newspaper.

But it’s mostly the women in India who are paying a price for toilets -– literally. On Thursday Jim Yardley wrote in The New York Times that unlike men, many women in Mumbai often have to pay to urinate –- an injustice that has started a “Right to Pee” campaign.

Toilets have also been flushed into the austerity debate last week, when India’s Planning Commission ran up a 3 million rupee, or $54,100, bill for renovating the toilets at its headquarters, a move viewed by some as lavish and a drain on public funds. That was followed by news that the western state of Goa had given 2 million rupees, or $35,700, to build a single air-conditioned toilet in the constituency of the former chief minister of the state.

Think that raises a stink? In India, where the government is reeling with corruption scandals, the innocuous toilet made a brief swirl when many reportedly went missing. According to an April report in an Indian daily, the Telegraph, the federal government says it delivered about 87.1 million toilets to households across villages over the last decade. But the census shows that only about 51.6 million had toilets in 2011. That’s a case of 35 million missing toilets.”

via Toilets Become a Battle Cry in India – NYTimes.com.

Another example of discrimination against women in India.  See: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/06/14/india-the-worst-big-country-to-be-a-woman/

See also: Will India overtake China in 25 years?

Posted in corruption, Economics, India alert, Inequalities, Politics | 3 Comments »

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