We’ve heard a lot about environmental problems in China, but U.S. News & World Report has published an encouraging article on China’s efforts to develop renewable energy. This enormous and fast-growing country appears to be mandating renewable energy in a much more aggressive way than we are.

Here’s an excerpt:

The country’s new renewable-energy law specifies tariffs that favor nonfossil energy sources such as wind, water, and solar power. Beijing has promulgated building codes mandating that all new construction dramatically improve energy efficiency. “We need everything–natural gas, nuclear, coal, renewable energy,” says Li Junfeng, secretary general of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. “But for the long term, renewable is still the most important.”

China began tapping into renewable energy in the late 1980s because of worries that pollution and associated health and environmental issues caused by industrialization could cause popular unrest. In 2004, an estimated $5.5 billion was invested in renewable energy in China. The rest of the world spent a total of $30 billion. “There is no renewable-energy law in the U.S.,” says Eckhart. “We fund research and development, and give incentives. China is giving directives–getting right to the point.”

Small solar panels can already be seen across the rooftops of major Chinese cities like Beijing. These supply power to solar water-heating systems, of which China is already both the largest producer and consumer in the world. At least 10 percent of all households in China (that’s 30 million households) have them–and the market is growing by 20 percent to 25 percent a year, according to Eric Martinot, a leading researcher on renewable energy at Beijing’s Qinghua University. This is partly because the relative cost of systems is so much less than in other markets. Someone in China can buy a solar water heating system for less than $200, a fraction of the cost of a comparable system in Europe. In the Chinese countryside, farmers whose houses are not connected to an electricity grid will pump water up to their roofs from their own wells to heat using solar power. “At first, in the countryside, they just had barrels that they painted black and put in the courtyard,” says Cao Zhifeng, an engineer with the science academy. “But over time the systems became more sophisticated, and now … they use insulated pipes.”

I’ve priced solar water heaters here in our region of the U.S. as well, and the price is many times what it would cost in China, though I expect we might get a better system here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 9:53 am and is filed under Environment and Ecology.