Low-carbon industry new boon for China

By Peng Yining

The development of low-carbon industries brings China great economic opportunities, and an increasingly central role in solving the climate change challenge, Tony Blair, former prime minister of Britain, said at a press conference held by the Climate Group yesterday in Beijing.

As a partner of the Climate Group, Blair said there has been an incipient, but definitely noticeable, shift towards a lower-carbon green economy, and China is fast becoming the global leader in this new range of low-carbon products and services and highlights its huge potential for further growth.

“Now China could develop the technology of carbon emission reduction as well as Western countries, and the West could invest in China’s low-carbon industries,” he told the Global Times. “The opportunity of business is huge.”

Blair also said the industry should be processed according to China’s realities and it is no good being over hasty.

On the back of ambitious government policies and a new breed of entrepreneurs, Chinese businesses are among the top producers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficient appliances. Statistics indicated that 13 cities have signed up to a government scheme to purchase 13,000 electric vehicles this year in total.

Besides, China is the largest wind power generator in Asia and 4th in the world, according to a Climate Group’s report on China’s development of low carbon industry issued Wednesday.

Meanwhile, coal consumption, which is non-renewable, remains the dominant energy source, accounting for 65 percent of non-renewable energy production in China.

Coal-fired power plants take the lion’s share – 77 percent – of the power industry, greatly dwarfing hydroelectric power, which only accounts for 20 percent of the total.

But the opportunity of low-carbon industries in China might be over-estimated, and enterprises should be clearheaded and calm before they swarm towards developing new energy, said Zhang Yue, vice chairman of Sustainable Buildings and Construction Initiative of the United Nations Environment Program.

He said people usually focus on how a new energy or finished production reduces carbon emissions without paying attention to the emissions during the producing process of new energy and low-carbon products.

The lack of national standard on carbon emissions in different industries would also to blame.

“I’m not so optimistic about the low-carbon industry,” Zhang told the Global Times. “It is exaggerated too much.”

“The government should shore up low-carbon industries in policy making, legislation and programming,” Zhuang Guiyang, deputy-secretary-general of the sustainable development center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the media.

Zhou Fengqi, an expert at the Energy Research Institute of National Development and Reform Commission, said China is struggling hard to catch up with its international counterparts and to move from lower-end to higher-end technology.

“But the technologies for revolutionary change will be ready,” said Jiang Kejun, a researcher on the same commission.
 

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