The Green Leap Forward 绿跃进

Archive for October, 2009

Energy Service Companies in China

Guest blogger Tristan Edmondson (right), partner at Mint Research, a clean tech consultancy, describes China’s growing Energy Service Company (ESCO) industry.
China has one of the worst ratios of energy use to GDP in the world, two and a half times the world average. This undoubtedly creates investment opportunities for a country that is awash in [...]

October 28th, 2009 | Tags: China, energy, energy efficiency, environment, ESCO, Tristan Edmonson | Category: energy efficiency | Leave a comment

Carbon trading, taxes and putting the cart before the horse

There have been mixed messages lately about whether China will soon adopt a carbon emissions trading scheme. On the eve of President Hu Jintao’s speech at the UN Climate Summit in New York last month, Times Online ran a sensationally misleading story suggesting that China would adopt a carbon emissions trading scheme that would [...]

October 13th, 2009 | Tags: carbon tax, carbon trading, China, energy, energy price reform, environment, price controls, subsidies | Category: capital and finance | Comments (3)

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What is the Green Leap Forward?

The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1960 which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers into a modern, industrialized communist society. It is now widely seen, both within and outside of China, as an major economic (and environmental) disaster.

By contrast, the Green Leap Forward, is an emerging movement to harness and combine the powerful forces of smart policy, sustainable finance and green technologies to steer China's red-hot economy onto a more ecologically and socially sustainable path. Unlike its predecessor, the Green Leap Forward is as much a bottom-up revolution as it is a top-down one and in this age of increasing global interconnectedness, is a movement that will have an impact beyond its borders.