China's Green Economy

As the world prepares for next year’s Rio + 20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, it seems that China and the other fast-emerging economies of the developing world have overtaken Europe in terms of investment in renewable energy.

According to a new report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme, investment in large-scale renewable projects such as solar and wind farms totaled $72 billion in the developing world, outstripping industrialized economies by $2 billion in 2010. China accounted for 70 percent, investing $50 billion in clean energy projects, mostly in the form of wind technology.

China’s production of wind turbines, some in collaboration with European partners like the one pictured above at a small fishing port on the Jiangsu coast, are mainly for the domestic market. By the end of 2010, China had only sold 13 turbines abroad. But that strategy is changing. China Longyuan, China’s largest wind power developer, has just acquired the rights to develop a 100 megawatt project in Ontario, Canada. Earlier this month, Sinovel, China’s largest domestic wind turbine manufacturer, concluded a deal to build a 1000 megawatt wind farm in Ireland.

Although China’s target is to produce 15 percent of its energy requirements from renewables by 2020, it is likely that an increasing share of its investment in this sector will be for the export market.

Eco pic of the week

I love this image of aluminium cans labelled as renewable energy, one of Niels Poulsen collection at Ecoscene. Aluminium of course can be recycled many times over. Each time aluminium is recycled, there are environmental gains - energy is saved as it takes much less energy to melt down an existing can, than it takes to quarry and smelt the raw material. Bauxite, the aluminium-containing ore has to be quarried from the ground at great cost. Often this rock occurs in areas of tropical forest, such as in Jamaica, and this leads to more deforestation. Bauxite has to be transported around the world to the smelters where lots of electricity is needed to extract the metal. In Canada, much of that energy comes from HEP but that is not true everywhere.
So next time you drink a can of coke or the like, make sure the empty can, be it aluminium or steel, goes in the recycle bin and not in the dustbin. Such an easy thing to do with great environmental benefit. As they say, very little counts.

The clean tech revolution

The Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk) has published an economic review today showing how investment in offshore wind and wave power technology could make the UK a global leader in clean energy, boosting the economy by £70 billion, creating up to 250,000 jobs and reducing carbon emissions - some pretty good reasons to push forward with green energy.