Chinese farmers are leaving it to the philosophers to decide who came first, the chicken or the egg. While waiting for the answer [and collecting the eggs], another side-product of poultry has captured their interest: excrement… 

Building on a growing body of regulation, capital inflow and international cooperation, farmers are increasingly turning their attention to the development of rural energy. More than 105 national standards - including “domestic biogas stoves”, “household biogas lamps” or “technology rules of biogas fermentation for houseold in rural areas” - have been passed, signalling a keen interest from the government. Close to USD 1 billion has been poured in renewable rural energy in the past few years.

Biogas figures proeminently in the drive to make the best from one’s local environment. More than 30 million biogas tanks have been installed in households. They even sometimes come with biomass stoves, which not only improve the “fuel” efficiency bur also reduce CO2 emission.

Why not hold the next global climate talks in the Chinese countryside?

While China is catching up with France in terms of nuclear reactors, it seems to pursue alternative energy sources with a similar enthusiasm. Beside wind farms in Inner Mongolia, solar power is getting into the mainstream - according to the World Bank, most water heaters in China are solar thermal heaters and China is said to already produce more than 60% of the world’s solar cells (with plans to expand abroad).

Beijing is using a typical mix of incentives to gain critical mass: governments at all levels are offering solar panel producing firms subsidies - free land, R&D grants - while bank offer very attractive loans.

Unfortunately the battle for an eco-frienly environment is is far from won: the objective to grow the installed capacity from 2GW to 20GW (the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors…) of solar energy by 2020 is less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants built annually.

P.S.: China Mobile established the world’s largest solar energy-powered base station cluster in Tibet

China is sourcing its energy demand from increasingly diversifed, both geographically and technologically - a welcome change from its “coal-only” approach - but the country has still a long way to go to balance its energy mix.

Take nuclear energy for instance. During the 90s, the country has only 3 reactors in operation - 2 in Daya Bay and 1 in Qinshan. Today, 11 reactors are running with more than 8 Gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity.

In 2006, nuclear energy accounted for 1.1% of electricity production, nothing in comparison with  thermal’s 77.8% (of which  68.7% from coal…) or even hydro-power’s 20.7%. But 16 new reactors are under construction (for 15 GW) and 34 more (for 32 GW) are planned till 2020. That will place China at par with the world leader France which currently counts 59 reactors and 63GW - just remember that the Chinese population is 200 times larger.

The good news: the country has pledged a 20% reduction of its energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 2010.

Chinese cities march on towards eco-friendliness!

After the much-touted project of Dongtan (now rumored to be a fiasco), it is now the turn of Baoding - a 1 million city, 140 kilometers south of Beijing - to make the news. The city is now the fastest-growing hub of solar, wind, and biomass energy-equipment makers in China. It counts more than 200 renewable energy companies and these eco-firms are soon to weigh as much as more traditional industries. The marketing-savvy mayor even came up with the slogan “Positive carbon city” as the carbon saved annually worldwide through the use of equipment made in Baoding outweighs the city’s own emissions.

The good news is that the eco-friendly trend seems to be growing. Chinese factories produce a third of the world’s solar cells and China will soon lead the world in wind turbines. Added to the desire to become the leader in electric cars and China may well be on track to achieve its target to have a proportion of renewables in the country’s energy mix of 20% by 2020, akin to Europe.

Ma Jun - one of the leading (and very charismatic) environmentalist in China - continues his crusade for a greener China. He tracks the pollution generated across the country via a website monitoring all discharges.

Very conscious that the current fine system is simply not working he has opted for a “name and shame” strategy that seems to bear fruits. Public opinion and multinationals buyers can indeed act as much more powerful incentives to control the behaviour of Chinese firms.

In addition to the bottom-up approach - citizen, associations and even firms can submit information about pollution - Ma Jun also uses a top-down approach by publishing a ranking of cities, thus putting pressure on local governments to improve their standing.

With the massive restructuring of the US car industry and green new deals flourishing all across the world, it is no surprise that electric cars are (once again) are the forefront.

For many years, Europe, the US and Japan have competed (and by-and-large failed) to come up with cost-effective electric cars. Now, China is joining the battle, but from the side. The country is investing massively (USD 1 billion) to become a major supplier of lithium-ion batteries with the final aim to lead the world in electric vehicles - this explains closer collaboration with Boliva which is said to hold 10% of world lithium reserves.

Volkswagen, who has been manufacturing cars in China for more than two decades, is now collaborating with BYD to develop electric cars. A number of other partnerships are in-the-making, involving ventures between European, Japanese and Chinese firms.

Let’s see if China’s auto industry manages to leapfrog the combustion engine!

Does “Made in ….” really mean anything anymore? If you are a Champagne producer, the answer would probably still be “yes” and one could argue that in this case origin and brand carry a lot of meaning too for consumers.

But what about a hard disk or for that matter any component of a computer? The answer would probably be “no”. In fact, that’s a good thing since determining where a product comes from is increasingly difficulty when components criss-cross the world to be used as inputs in “moving” assembly plants.

But who cares if a hard disk and its parts comes from Vietnam, South China, Malaysia or Japan… Well, we should, since moving around of all these parts carries an important environmental cost - economists would speak about negative externalities. Hopefully, one day product traceability will allow us to put a price on the environmental cost of these sophisticated supply chains and make informed and sensible purchasing decisions.

Supply chain for a hard disk assembled in Thailand: components are sourced from no less than 11 countries

Source: Baldwin R. and Evenett S. (2009) The collapse of global trade, murky protectionism, and the crisis: Recommendations for the G20

The Alliance for Universal Power Supplies (AUPS) - an industry standards group that seeks to enable universally compatible and eco-friendly products and services - is counting on China to lead the way towards a universal phone charger.

Because every new CE device comes with a charger, some 3.2 billion power supplies will be designed and shipped in 2008 alone.

China is the first country to pass a law requiring a USB interface for cell phone chargers: all cell phones designed after June 14 2008 must use a USB charger to be sold legally in China. With a production above 500 millions mobile phones for 2007 alone, China’s standardization effort (enlightned self-interest, at last) is poised to have some impact beyond its borders. Let’s also hope that someone, in a not-too-distant future, tackles the standardization of the charger’s other half …the plug!