Latest comments posted about China: winner in a low-carbon economy on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1518-China-winner-in-a-low-carbon-economy http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1518-China-winner-in-a-low-carbon-economy I appreciate all these thoughts and ideas, what are great way to intellectually move forward! It is true that China’s energy efficiency has improved in recent years. China has embarked on programmes like ‘Top 1000 Enterprises’ in 2006, to improve energy efficiency in China’s largest enterprises and eliminating small, inefficient power plants, including ‘250 million tonnes in outdated cement capacity by 2010’ (Lewis, 2007). China's cement industry, which consumes about 5% of all commercial energy, is also a good example of efficiency gains. However such action to adjust the country’s industrial structure is not entirely plausible in terms of increasing its energy efficiency. This is because it means that China is focusing on replacing small/inefficient to new large/efficient power plants that emit larger GHGs. In fact, China is building a new coal-fired power station every ten days! The magnitude of that imbalance is staggering and the reason for this is coal. Coal is the challenge and the energy of our future. And leaning coal is very costly. Pursuing a policy of reducing and sequestering coal (burying CO2 rather than emitting it) would take 30-40% of energy. From the Chinese perspective, there is little financial incentive to invest in such technology because China wants as much energy from processing coal, and if it takes much energy to clean it, how does this develop the Chinese economy? How far will leapfrogging take China? The question to pursue here is therefore on technology cost. Coal's low price and its abundance have been such powerful incentive, too. Although Chinese authorities are pushing for cleaner power, clean alternatives in China aren't fully utilized because they are expensive. When alternatives like oil and gas will run out, coal will remain abundant. Suppose China had 100% of efficiency in terms of intensity, China will most likely continue to use coal. Jessica Macias Bochatay University of Southampton, UK. Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:37:09 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-7170 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-7170 Thanks Karl for your clarification. You are right that an undervalued Chinese yuan could give an even gloomy picture of China’s energy intensity. Nevertheless, China still has large potential to increase its energy efficiency, not just in the large companies, but more in the inefficient and small scale companies. Take steel as an example; in 2006 the largest 9 companies only produced little more than 30% of total production. In fact, from my recent talk with one senior officer in Chinese SEPA, he suggested that China’s energy efficiency has been improved a lot due to the use of new technology in the recent capacity expansion, especially in the large state own enterprises. I think the reason of China’s high energy intensity may come from the factors of both undervalued Chinese yuan and large number of small inefficient enterprises. How to make the low carbon transition take place within the widely spread small and inefficient enterprises will be a key to China’s transition to low carbon economy. (Tao WANG) Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research & Sussex Energy Group Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:53:13 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5417 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5417 Thanks Tao for your kind words about my attempt to paint a short history of Chinas energy and climate relations, which are, to say the least, very complex. I am happy also that you put in question the energy intensity figures. As a social scientist I have not calculated any of the numbers or figures that I present. Overall energy inensity I have quoted from vice Minister Pan Yue's article on China Dialogue earlier this year, but similar figurs are in swing all over. In fact I generally do not like to use number but try rather to portray problems in qualitative terms -- this because of the notoriously shaky data material that one can draw on from China. My own main argument against the energy intensity numbers is that if the Chinse yuan is undervalued it would consequently imply that energy intensity is much better than what it appears. In fact the World Bank is presently reviewing Chinese makroeconomic data so we will soon have to recalculate our figures and modells. Karl Hallding, Stockholm Environment Institute Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:10:56 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5302 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5302 A good introduction of China’s National Assessment Report on Climate Change and economic history since 1980s, thanks Karl! The transition to heavy industries around the turn of millennium and quick urbanisation earmarked entrance to the second phase of China’s industrialisation. As business decisions are more and more made within enterprises, especially for small and medium enterprises, China’s soaring demand on energy and energy intensive infrastructures (for steel, aluminium, cement, power etc) is largely driven by its own domestic demand, but also by the globalised market. Maybe you didn’t mention this explicitly in your article but the transition to heavy industry and high energy consumption sounds like just an endogenous change to me when reading your description. Sorry for being picky. But I agree with you that China has to build an energy-efficient society and be more active in combating climate change. The critical issue is not how fast China can get the current phase of heavy industrialisation and urbanisation, but China needs work more proactively with international community to reduce carbon reliance in conventional development path, otherwise Africa will just be another China in 10-20 years time. Regarding to energy intensity of Chinese economy, I have a more technical question, which indicator you are using? I checked the data from International Energy Agency (IEA), which says in 2004, China used 0.94 teo (Tonne of oil equivalent) for every thousand US$ (in year 2000 value) GDP produced, the figures for Japan, OECD and India are 0.11, 0.20 and 0.99; when using GDP PPP (purchasing power parity), the figures for China, Japan, OECD and India are 0.23, 0.16, 0.19 and 0.18. While either using GDP or GDP PPP is another technical debate, I didn’t see Chinese economy has energy intensity 3 times higher than India in either case. Maybe a more comparable way is to compare specific sectors by using physical outcomes per energy consumption (e.g. how many tonnes of steel or cement produced). Can you tell me which data you are using in your article? 王韬 (Tao WANG) Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research & Sussex Energy Group Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:51:06 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5203 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5203 You raise an interesting question about the reliability of climate forecasting. It is a relativel new science so I guess we shall only know with absolute certainty how reliable it is once the disaster has happened. I am not sure I want to wait. I think that we have to accept probability as our guide for much of the forecasting, as the scientists acknowledge, whilst also acknowledging that the science is improving all the time. But we are looking at complex global systems so we cannot expect it to be straightforward. If there is doubt we should take the side of caution: if the sceintists are only half right, the situation is very serious. If there was only a 50 per cent chance that your house would burn down tomorrow, you would do something about it. If there is a 50 per cent chance (and I believe it is much higher) of catastrophic limate change, shouldn't we be doing all we can to avoid it? Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:04:47 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5292 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5292 The article gave us some very good warnings and reminders, Professor Wang’s doubts also raise a question: To what degree are we to believe in numerical evidence? In science, each piece of numerical evidence must be arrived at by using scientific methods; otherwise doubts will remain. I once met a countryman who raised the subject of climate forecasting and he gave me a very nice sounding line, but with a very cold and chilling result. But, he was not able to answer, how great was the reliability of the facts which his results represented? How big was the level of certainty? Naturally I don’t feel that we ought to be as strict as this in the present case. Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:19:45 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5257 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1518#comment-5257