China Preparing Greener Five-Year Plan
SustainableBusiness
China’s new five-year economic plan–to be released in March–is likelyto be the greenest strategy document in the country’s history, according to a story in The Guardian.
It is likely to include measures to curb pollution, promote clean energy technology and establish an environmental tax.
Other measures could include caps on energy use and a shift away fromGDP-based performance evaluation, as the country seeks to reduce itsenergy intensity over the next decade.
Even with these proactive environmental steps, the country’s greenhousegas emissions could double before peaking–sometime after the year2030–according to Hu Angang, an economics professor at TsinghuaUniversity who consulted on the plan. This is because the five-year plan will also include a scaling up of coal-fired power in the country tosupport its booming economy.
China is also planning to expand nuclear power production and buildabout 140 gigawatts of additional hydropower in the next fiveyears–development that will have profound environmental impact.
"In clean energy, China is busy setting themselves up as a worldleader. If they meet their most ambitious targets for 2020, they’ll havethe most wind, the most nuclear and the most hydro," Deborah Seligsohn of the World Resources Institute told The Guardian. "ButChina is still playing catch-up on pollution. The air quality in Beijingdoes not exactly feel like London or New York."
Read the in-depth story at the link below.
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/china-green-growth-boom-industry
Original Article on SustainableBusiness.com
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