Geothermal Energy in Beijing
Today, we welcome for a guest post (and video…eco-rapping included!) Sustainable John of China’s Green Beat, which is back after a seven month hiatus with this excellent expose on geothermal energy in the Middle Kingdom’s capital.
You may not know it looking around Beijing, but not all of the buildings you see are heated with natural gas and coal. Some are heated (and some cooled as well) using geothermal energy. Two main technologies are currently being employed in Beijing to this end:
- Deep well geothermal
- Ground source heat pumps
China’s Green Beat – Geothermal Energy in Beijing from John Romankiewicz on Vimeo.
Deep well geothermal 深层地热井
Beijing has some unique geothermal resources. Far below the Earth’s surface underneath Beijing’s skyscrapers, apartments, and parks, there is an enormous amount of water at a natural temperature of 60-70 degrees. This is the reason why Read the full story
Green Hops: Autos, Nukes, Agro, Recycling Woes
Energy Price Reforms
NDRC announced that it would be removing price caps on coal from next year in a move towards a more market-driven price mechanism. This move comes at an opportune time when coal prices have dropped by 30 to 40% since the summer, but GLF points out an earlier post (see finding #4) on a recent MIT coal report that suggests the upstream coal industry has already moved towards a de facto market price system. Although the NDRC move “is a step in the right direction,” Huang Shengchu, president of Beijing-based China Coal Information Institute says in this interview that government macro-control is still needed to protect the rights of various coal stakeholdres in their contractual dealings with each other, accerlarate industry consolidation of the many small and inefficient mines and to set up a coal price index.
Separately, the proposed auto fuel price reform kicked in earlier than expected. So it turns out that the answer to our confusion (see earlier post) of how the government proposed to hike up taxes and keep fuel prices even was that they would adjust the base fuel price downward, predicated on Read the full story
Green Hops: Walmart, Geely, Smart Grid
Climate Social Responsibility. At its firs global supply-chain summit in Beijing, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, launched an ambitious program dubbed the “Global Sourcing Responsibility Initiative” that will require its Chinese suppliers (which may number up to 20,000 according to China Daily) to abide to potentially costly energy efficiency targets, to be verified by third party audits, among other environmental and social goals. The program will be expanded worldwide by 2011.
A new report by the Carbon Disclosure Project suggests that major Chinese companies lag far behind their foreign counterparts in carbon-risk awareness and carbon reporting. But China Mobile (the world’s biggest wireless operator with 420 million subscribers), Broad Air Conditioning (the world’s leading manufacturer of low-energy air-conditioning units) and Suntech (the world’s third largest solar energy company) are not among these companies as they have just joined the Climate Group’s global climate coalition. As members to this coalition, the three companies will make ambitious emissions reduction commitments beyond what is currently required by law. China Mobile, for instance, has set itself the target of reducing its energy intensity by 40%, double the national target, reports The Guardian.
Auto & Transportation. Geely, China’s first independent auto maker, is looking to follow BYD Auto’s footsteps to export its electric vehicles (EV) technology. Read the full story
Beijing Energy & Environment Exhibition 2008 Review
This is the 50th post for The Green Leap Forward! To celebrate, we visited the 2008 China (Beijing) International Energy Saving and Environmental Protection Exhibition held at the Beijing Exhibition Center this past weekend (Oct 17 through 20).
The first thing that strikes the visitor is the Cathedral-like grandeur of the Beijing Exhibition Center. It was opened in 1954 “with the late Premier Zhou En-Lai cutting the red ribbon and Chairman Mao Tse-Tung contributing poetic thoughts.” It doesn’t look like it is LEED-certified, but being more than half a century old, visitors could take heart in the fact that the building’s carbon debt has probably been paid off a while ago.
The Green Leap Forward TV (GLFTV) film crew (i.e. me and my trusty Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3) spotted a maniacal looking tall white guy among the attendees. He turned out to be none other than the ever-enthusiastic “Sustainable John” from China’s Green Beat fame. John graciously agreed to sum up the mood in the Solar Hut portion of the exhibition:
This other clip shows what it was like in the outside area of the exhibition. Of special focus in this clip was a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) installation on display. The company that makes these CPV units is Beijing Globalac (北京富利宝公司), which also makes a whole host of other power control systems for various commercial and industrial applications:
There were tons of other exhibits other than solar applications, such as home-scale wind turbines, energy efficient lighting and other home appliances, green building materials, smart electricity meters, electricity consumption monitoring software and hardware, and of course, technological applications that were deployed in the recent “Green Olympics”. According to the Star Daily, there were some 203 vendors spread across some 12,000 plus square meters. It really did feel like a whole lot more than 203 vendors though (felt more like 500 to 1,000, as mentioned in the above video). Here are just a few that caught the eye of GLF TV: Read the full story
Green Hops: Solar Irrigation, MEP Hall of Shame, Beijing Traffic
Nuclear is Hot. Big 5 power company China Huaneng Group has signed contracts with suppliers to equip its first nuclear power plant in Shandong province. The plant, planned for 200 MW in its first phase with a 2013 start date, will boast “high temperature, gas-cooled technology” (HTR-PM), which is supposed to be safer and simpler in design compared to conventional nuclear plants. It is the smallest of 21 plants in China’s nuclear pipeline. For the tech geeks our there, Tsinghua University, one of the purported suppliers of nuclear equipment for the project, has put out a paper describing HTR-PM. A review of China’s nuclear sector is really overdue here at The Green Leap Forward. Watch for it.
Solar-Powered Water. The Xinjiang government has invested RMB 160 million ($23.5 million USD) in a drip irrigation system powered by solar panels. [Pictured: a picture of a generic drip irrigator stolen from the interweb]. Elsewhere, China Solar & Clean Energy Solutions has been awarded a US$3.5 million solar water heating project in Shenzhen. Separately, the Beijing government announced it will invest RMB 13 billion (US$1.9 billion) over the next three years in Read the full story
Green Hops: BYD Auto, Algae, Green Bricks
BYD Auto/ Warren Buffet Update. Seems like the investment of Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings in Shezhen-based BYD Auto is not just a bet on electric vehicles, but also on the collaboration between MidAmerican and BYD to develop “rapid charge batteries” for electrical grid systems to serve as energy storage for renewable but intermittent power such as wind and solar, revealed MidAmerican’s chairman, David Sokal, at a press conference earlier this week in Hong Kong. (I have argued before in my solar blog how grid-tied energy storage solutions are the key to a clean electricity revolution.) Elsewhere, it appears more definitive that BYD’s entry into the Israeli market will be facilitated by Clal Industries and Investments, a unit of conglomerate IDB Development. Clal will start importing BYD’s electric vehicles into Israel next year. Such developments have apparently caught the eyes of Portland’s city officials, who are trying to woo BYD to start make America’s greenest city its North American hub.
Post-Olympic Traffic Measures Draw Mixed Reactions. As smog re-envelopes Beijing, the capital is reinstating a modified set of traffic measures to curb the growth of auto emissions that will, among other things, ban corporate and private cars from taking to the roads one day per week depending on their license plate number. Xinhua reports mixed reception to the measures, with some contemplating purchasing a second car, and others more astutely observing that “to ban should not be the ultimate way to ease Beijing’s traffic woes… Read the full story
Green Hops: Cleantech Roundup
Cleantech news has been slow on The Green Leap Forward lately, so we play catchup on recent developments in the sector over the past two months…
Efficiency is King. Energy efficiency continues to be the clean energy policy priority of Beijing. New regulations governing energy efficiency in civil construction projects are on the cards, reports Cleantech. Meanwhile, the almighty National Development and Reform Commission (发改委) has announced optimistic news that 879 of 953 enterprises that had pledged to reduce energy consumption had fulfilled their goals last year. These do not include certain companies in Guizhou, apparently. Separately, China Recycling Energy Corp. (CREG) has been awarded a contract to recycle waste gas and waste heat into electricity (7MW capacity) for China Zhonggang Binhai Enterprise Ltd., a nickel-iron manufacturing joint venture between China Zhonggang Group and Boasteel Group at a facility in Cangzhou City, China, reports Renewable Energy World.
Windy and Made in China. Local wind parts manufacturers continue to benefit from China’s wind development policies, as this highly recommended in-depth article by Lou Scwhartz and Ryan Hodem discusses. This trend will also benefit the likes of HLS Systems International (China), an automation controls specialist that is seeking to diversify into clean tech by offering its automation control solutions to wind systems and is in talks with some of China’s largest wind turbine producers, as well as China Wind Systems (see also here). On the development front, Inner Mongolia is set to add some 300 to 1,000 MW of wind installations by 2010 to 2011, courtesy of China Power, Inc.
Supersize Solar. China Solar Energy Blog keeps track of the latest developments in pilot solar power plants in Beijing (10 MW, courtesy of NYSE-listed Yingli Green Energy) Shanghai (1 MW and the biggest already in operation), Ningxia (330 kw, courtesy of Ningxia Power Group) and Shilin (66 MW, courtesy of Yunnan Power Investment New Energy Development Co., Ltd. and the largest plant in China planned). Across the straits, Taiwan might become host of the first concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Asia, while Taiwanese solar panel makers are seeing the cash roll in. The significance of these announcements are that these are some of the first announcements of power plant-scale solar projects in China, where there has been at the end of 2007 an installed capacity of only 0.08 GW of solar compared to nearly 6 GW of wind.
Get on the Bus. Xiamen’s Bus Rapid Transit system, also China’s first elevated BRT system, came into operation, reports People’s Daily. Incidentally, today (Sept 22) was supposed to be National Car Free Day. The Green Leap Forward frankly didn’t even notice.
Electric Dreams. A pilot network of electric charging stations will be built in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin so as to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles (EV), says the State Grid Corporation, according to China Daily. Each charging station is estimated to cost between 250,000 yuan ($36,550) and 300,000 yuan ($43,860) to construct. China Daily mentions BYD Auto (see also previous post “Electric Dreams—BYD Auto Brings Electric Cars to Israel”), Dongfeng Motor, Chery Auto, Changan Auto, Wanxiang Group and Tianjin Qingyuan Electric Vehicle as domestic cars and parts makers that are investing money into EV research and development. GreenCarCongress reports that China is shaping up to be the a leading R&D center for lithium-ion batteries, a necessary component of an EV system. Australia is chipping in as well.
Water and the Paradox that is Ningxia. Ningxia Autonomous Region, located in arid Western China, has had its economy hampered by water shortages, as the article in Beijing Review accounts. So it is welcome news that Ningxia, also a coal-rich region, will be the beneficiary of China’s first million-kw air-cooling systems in ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants. Ultra super-critical thermal generation relies on very high pressures and temperatures to achieve greater efficiency of fuel use, while air-cooling (instead of water-cooling) replaces the need for water. Yet, news that coal-to-liquids (CTL) projects in Ningxia will go ahead after most of the other CTL projects nationwide have been halted has The Green Leap Forward shaking its head. The CTL process, after all, consumes large amounts of water. This blog will take a closer look into CTL in an upcoming post. In other water news, Hebei’s role as water backstop for Beijing (see previous post “Chinese Water Torture”) has been activated, while Inner Mongolia gets a new wastewater treatment plant.
LNG, CLP and Tale of Two Cities. Hong Kong-based China Light & Power has been in the news lately with its plans to make investments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. While the Hong Kong government voted against it’s LNG terminal plans in Hong Kong due to ecological reasons, CPL seems to have turned its attention to neighboring Guangdong province, reports Financial Times. Climate thug ExxonMobil is reported as possible investor in the Guangdong project. A classic environmental “race-to-the-bottom”?
GE Feeling at Home in China. As part of its China green energy business plan, General Electric is seeking to make China its second home while it expands its presence into five new locations. It currently has offices in Shanghai and Beijing but will add offices in the provincial capitals of Shenyang, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi’an and Guangzhou.
Green Taxes. The Beijing authorities have indicated that new environmental taxes to curb pollution are in the offing. Xinhua reports that Pan Yue, the deputy minister of environmental protection, has revealed that an inter-ministerial team of officials together with experts have been convened to “come up with a research paper on environmental taxes.” This is likely the green taxation component of the Green Whirlwind policies that this blog reported earlier this year.
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