Above is the lead headline in the New York Times today. Reporting from Hong Kong, journalist Keith Bradsher begins:
“Earlier this summer, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China promised to use an “iron hand” to improve his country’s energy efficiency, and a growing number of businesses are now discovering that it feels like a fist.”
Other exerpts follow. For the whole article click article.
“The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quietly published a list late Sunday of 2,087 steel mills, cement works and other energy-intensive factories required to close by Sept. 30.”
“The goal of the factory closings is ‘to enhance the structure of production, heighten the standard of technical capability and international competitiveness and realize a transformation of industry from being big to being strong,’ the ministry said.”
“The announcement was the latest in a series of Chinese moves to increase energy efficiency. The National Development and Reform Commission, which is the government’s most powerful economic planning agency, announced last Friday that it had forced 22 provinces to halt their practice of providing electricity at discounted prices to energy-hungry industries like aluminum production.”
“Energy efficiency improved 14.4 percent in the first four years of the current plan, only to deteriorate by 3.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to official statistics. Mr. Wen responded by convening a special meeting of the cabinet in May to address the situation.”
“The list of steel mills to be closed appeared to emphasize smaller, older mills producing fairly low-end grades of steel. Edward Meng, the chief financial officer of China Gerui Advanced Materials, a steel-processing company in central China’s Henan province, said that the closing of such mills was consistent with the government’s broader goals of consolidating the steel sector and pushing steel makers into the production of more sophisticated kinds of steel.”
“The International Energy Agency in Paris announced last month that China surpassed the United States last year as the world’s largest consumer of energy.”
“China passed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2006. That milestone came earlier because of China’s heavy reliance on coal, an especially dirty fossil fuel in terms of emission of gases contributing to global climate change.”
“In addition to the energy efficiency objective in the current five-year plan, a plan announced by President Hu Jintao late last year called for China to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. Carbon emissions are a measurement of a country’s man-made emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. ”
The Chinese government appears to recognize the need to improve efficiency and use less energy, and is willing to act to resolutely to meet that need. The United States government has not done this.
Bill Allen, August 9, 2010