China Takes Lead in Green Technology

Workers walk on the roof, covered by solar panels, of the Theme Pavillion for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations’ efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

China’s vast market and economies of scale are bringing down the cost of solar and wind energy, as well as other environmentally friendly technologies such as electric car batteries. That could help address a major impediment to wide adoption of such technologies: They need heavy subsidies to be economical.

The so-called China price — the combination of cheap labor and capital that rewrote the rulebook on manufacturing — is spreading to green technology. “The China price will move into the renewable-energy space, specifically for energy that relies on capital-intensive projects,” says Jonathan Woetzel, a director in McKinsey & Co.’s China office.

Future renewable energy production

Regulators will announce several low carbon centers next year that will have preferential policies to promote low carbon manufacturing and exports.

China’s goals face big challenges. China could end up becoming simply a low-cost manufacturing base, not a source of innovation. Worse, its drive to cut costs could stifle innovation overseas.

And Beijing has a long way to go to reducing China’s carbon footprint. For each out-of-date power plant it shut down in a two-year cleanup campaign, it added the capacity of roughly two more. Even some of the better power plants are run poorly because company bosses don’t want to pay to clean up their emissions.

In the fight against global warming, some of the biggest gains are to be made in scrubbing carbon from coal-burning power plants. China and the U.S. together have 44% of the world’s coal reserves, and aren’t about to give up on the cheap and reliable source of power. According to U.S. government projections, world coal use could increase nearly 50% by 2030.

“If emissions aren’t reduced from power plants, global warming cannot be avoided,” says Jonathan Lewis, a climate specialist at the U.S.-based Clean Air Task Force, which has sought to pair U.S. utilities with Chinese companies. “The solution can be led by the U.S. and China.”

Capture technology traps carbon dioxide gasses released by coal plants. The gas can be pumped deep underground, typically into salt caverns or aging oil fields. The carbon can be stripped either before or after the coal is burned. Post-combustion capture is simpler and can be retrofitted on existing power plants. Current versions cut energy output by a fifth or more.

Far more complicated is precombustion carbon capture, which involves completely redesigning plants. Coal is turned into a gas, the carbon is stripped out and the rest is burned. Called “integrated gasification combined cycle” plants, these cost billions of dollars and haven’t been developed on a commercial scale yet.

China has a technological lead in turning coal into gas. It has been using the technology widely to make petrochemicals and fertilizers as a substitute for pricier natural gas. Houston-based Future Fuels LLC has licensed gasification technology from China to use in a plant in Pennsylvania.

Critics say current carbon capture technologies are merely a Band-Aid for global warming. That’s because they’re so inefficient that even more coal has to be burned to produce the same amount of electricity. Also, the technology uses a lot of water and sequestering carbon underground isn’t proven.

Still, some analysts estimate carbon capture could account for between 15% to 55% of the world’s cumulative carbon emissions reduction by 2100.

Though carbon capture has moved into the mainstream, it is still at least five to 10 years away from becoming a widespread technology, analysts say.

China has doubled its wind power capacity in the last four years

In 2004, foreign firms owned 80% of China’s wind-turbine market, according to energy consulting firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Now, Chinese companies own three-quarters of the country’s market, thanks to companies which make turbines a third cheaper than European competitors.

Chinese wind-turbine makers are starting to export. In October, Shenyang Power Group struck a deal to supply 240 turbines to one of the largest wind-farm projects in the U.S., a 36,000-acre development in Texas.

Chinese factories, such as the Suntech Power Holdings plant in Wuxi, have pushed down prices of solar panels. China hopes it can reshape green technology as it has businesses such as cranes and computers.

Chinese competition is forcing rivals to shift production. U.S. Evergreen Solar Inc. said it will move its assembly line from Massachusetts to China. General Electric Co. said it will shut a facility in Delaware. BP PLC’s solar unit said this spring it would stop output in Maryland and rely on Chinese suppliers instead.

Yet, despite China’s armies of fresh engineering graduates, foreign companies still create and own most of the key technologies. “China lags about 10 years behind in technology,” says Bernice Lee, a research director at Chatham House, a London-based think tank that analyzed patent holders on renewable and low-carbon technology.

The Qinghe Wastewater Plant in Beijing. China’s water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country, is driving a need for wastewater recycling.

Others say China’s missteps could hurt the market for all. “China is making prices cheaper in renewables today, by lunging into oversupply, as it does in most industries,” says Daniel Rosen, principal of consulting firm Rhodium Group. “The question — and danger — is whether by oversupplying the market today China is damaging longer-term innovation and competition in the sector for the future.”

In green technology, China has figured out ways to turn excess capacity to its advantage. Until this year, China’s solar-panel makers exported nearly all their output to countries such as Germany and Spain, where government supported growth in the sector.

That changed this year when solar-panel prices fell as dozens of new Chinese polysilicon-makers started operating. The sudden glut in the raw material to make solar panels coincided with a drop in orders from European companies hit by the recession. The result: Polysilicon prices fell by half from January peaks. HSBC estimates they could drop 20% more by the end of 2010.

Softening prices created an opportunity for Chinese regulators. Officials are now talking about raising solar power capacity targets five- or tenfold, so that by 2020 China could have more than double current global solar-power capacity.

Demand for renewable energy is dwarfed by other sources of energy use in China

“The Chinese manufacturers can now make [solar panels] a lot cheaper than Europe, the United States and Japan because the whole supply chain is now available in China,” says Martin Green, who runs the photovoltaic center at the University of South Wales in Australia, a training ground for many scientists working in China’s solar industry. “The Chinese are making it more affordable, and they’re more adventurous in introducing new technology as well.”

The ability to manufacture cheaply is attracting the notice of U.S. utilities. Huaneng says it can make gasification equipment cheaper than foreign rivals.

Duke Energy Corp., of Charlotte, N.C., signed a pact with Huaneng in August to share information on clean-coal technology. Duke says it would take eight years to build an IGCC plant in the U.S. — versus three in China.

中国绿色投资领先世界
据汇丰银行近期的一份报告显示，中国已经投资510亿美元用于“绿色刺激计划”，据汇丰的统计，这占各国政府总共590亿美元相关投资的86%，相比之下美国相关的投资只有50亿美元。

据《华尔街日报》消息，汇丰的报告采用广义的“绿色项目”概念，包括公共住房、农村基础设施、铁路和港口。

报告显示，中国建设了1500个大中型水资源保护工程，污水处理能力和废物处理能力每天分别增加518万吨和16亿吨。这只是中国“四万亿”经济刺激一揽子方案中的一小部分。刺激计划也为今年前8个月新开工的6万个基础设施项目提供资金支持。

近期，中国出台了一系列的“绿色经济”政策和节能减排措施。最新的消息是在哥本哈根气候大会召开前，中国国务院会议研究于11月26日宣布决定了中国控制温室气体排放行动的目标——到2020年中国单位国内生产总值二氧化碳排放比2005年下降40%-45%。

从“红色”到“绿色”：中国要成低碳经济领导者

中国能成为全球“绿色”冠军么？看起来似乎不可能。这个大国通常被描绘成地球的可怕威胁，人口众多又依赖污染最严重的能源——煤炭。

但所有这一切即将改变。

　　今年9月份《纽约时报》发表题为“新的人造卫星”的专栏文章，作者是多次普利策奖得主托马斯?弗里德曼，他认为这不仅仅是中国更绿色的问题，而是会在世界上特别是美国引发的变革，就像前苏联1957年决定发射人造卫星后引发太空竞赛那样。

　　文章写到，“中国领导人决心要发展绿色能源……，依赖煤炭和石油的制造业发展让多数人无法去呼吸、游泳、钓鱼，没田种，没水喝。除非中国用清洁能源和没有烟囱的知识密集型行业带动发展，否则中国将因自身发展而消亡。”

　　该文章引发一片愤怒的争论。英国卫报记者华衷（Jonathan Watts）指责他花费太多时间“去和大连的技术官僚喝茶聊天，而没有足够时间去呼吸下山西、河南和北京的空气。”

　　总的来说，除了绿色能源行业投资之大让人印象深刻，中国能源需求70%仍依靠煤炭，快速的工业化进程和增长的汽车保有量让许多城市笼罩于雾霾中，据美国能源情报署（U.S. Energy Information Administration）报告，中国的碳排放已超过美国而且必将继续增长。

　　但近期的一份报告使得争论复杂起来。

　　上个月国合会中国发展低碳经济工作组（CPTLCE）提交给中国政府一份报告，题为《中国通往低碳经济之路》展示了一个清楚的规划，表明中国该如何从“红色”转向“绿色”。

　　报告建议可以通过改进经济发展模式，调整经济结构，加强技术革新能力达到目的，以此加强经济可持续发展能力。

　　报告认为问题虽然很大，但前途是光明的。

　　但中国能成为世界所需要的领导者么？

　　“假如我们只是谈论绿色科技，那我想这个答案绝对是肯定的，”报告的联合作者比约?斯蒂格森（Bjorn Stigson）说，他是世界可持续发展工商理事会主席。

　　他和弗里德曼一样相信绿色变革在中国势不可挡。

　　他说，“和包括温家宝总理在内的中国领导人会谈时，我听到非常明确的信号，绿色科技革新有优先权。中国领导人决心致力于环保、水资源保护和发展领先世界的技术。”

　　“考虑到新兴经济体国家人口增长，城市化和减少贫困人口问题，我们可以预测将来的世界资源和碳排放量都很紧张。中国将受到气候变化和资源紧张的负面影响，除非包括中国在内的世界各国走上一条低碳发展之路。”

　　“过去中国优先发展经济，忽略了环境保护。这都导致空气、水和土壤的污染。然而领导层最近意识到了这点并采取严厉措施解决这种不平衡。”

　　从世界工厂走向技术创新

　　斯蒂格森认为，中国世界工厂的地位使得中国在技术革新中处于有利位置。

　　他说，“中国能成为发展绿色能源的科技领袖，在太阳能、风能、生物能源和清洁煤炭方面。”

　　“更重要的，中国正在快速工业化，有机会在企业中应用目前最好的技术。”

　　那些热切把中国称为环境恶棍的西方人一定程度看起来更伪善，他们更该关注自己身边的问题。

　　“目前美国人均温室气体气体排放为20吨，中国是美国的五分之一，还有2.38亿人生活在贫困线下，”地球之友国际环境谈判员乔?扎库恩（Joe Zacune）说。

　　“同时，英国的个人碳排放量是中国的两倍，可中国比英国拥有更高份额的可再生电能。”

　　“中国的确有成为世界环境领袖的潜力。中国在本土投资发展可再生能源，还要继续这样做，在适当的社区扩大可再生能源投资，而不是煤炭和其他污染严重的不可再生能源。”

　　“中国看起来不像美国等其他发达国家，没有更多政治意愿，无论在国内还是国际上……，中国成为绿色领袖的首要障碍是，那些应该为环境保护负起历史责任的国家没有一个是好榜样。”

　　“中国促进洁净能源的行动实际上强调了美国相应行动的缺乏。中国应该最大程度不去效仿美国灾难性的碳排放额度与限制交易模式（cap and trade）。”

　　扎库恩还相信由于中国不在京都协议书认为的富裕国家名单，这使得中国有机会成为其他发展中国家的领袖，在目前进行的哥本哈根环境会议中促使美国和欧洲担负起责任。

　　但到最后，促进美国承担责任的可能是担心落后于东西方国家正在发生的革新。

　　“发展低碳经济的动力引发了各国间积极的竞争，”斯蒂格森说。“美国已经意识到中国和欧盟都采取了认真的政策来领导此事。”

　　“‘绿色竞赛’已经开始，希望最高效的国家赢得这场比赛。”