Clean Green China? Maybe
China is taking another step toward being greener and cleaner. While recycling technology continues to improve, efforts to curb and perhaps even reduce greenhouse gas emissions are well under way, according to the Xinhua news agency.
The Xinhua news agency is state-backed, which makes it a little suspect as an objective source of information regarding the Chinese government. Still, the detailed plans to set binding regional caps on energy consumption do sound promising.
Energy consumption caps have been mentioned before — the Chinese government has announced plans to reduce its carbon intensity by at least 40% before 2020, and the consumption caps are reportedly an integral part of the current 5-year phase of the longer-term plan.
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As reported by Business Green:
[Xinhua] reported that the proposals for energy quotas would be released in the near future, although it added that the plans would need approval from China’s State Council.
No hard numbers have been released, through the Xinhua news agency or any other source, but the head of the planning department for the National Energy Administration, Jiang Bing, has been quoted as saying that the caps would apply only to energy derived from fossil fuels. In other words – solar, wind, and hydro power remain unlimited (increasing the Chinese market for solar panels, perhaps?).
While the Chinese government has promised what’s been called “draconian legislation” with regard to its energy targets, the sheer amount of plans released make those quotas a little hard to track. Also according to Business Green, reports emerging in the last thirty days include a resource tax on oil, gas, coal, and other scarce raw materials, a higher renewable energy target, and tighter air pollution standards.
Any personal exposure to China and how green it is or isn’t? Let us know in the comments, below.
Source: Business Green | Image via Wikimedia Commons
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