Group items tagged

Panasonic has confirmed that it is planning to provide staff working in Chinese cities a salary premium to compensate them for the effects of the country's escalating smog crisis.

The Climate Group's RE100 initiative partnered with the China Renewable Energy Industries Association to encourage Chinese companies to procure their electricity from renewable sources.

Chinese automakers plan to spend almost $8 billion this year on developing all-electric and hybrid automobiles, an analysis shows. The government is setting targets and offering incentives, believing that "developing new-energy vehicles is the Chinese auto industry's only road to grow from being big to being strong," said Xu Heyi, chairman of Beijing Automotive Group. 

General Electric will supply 55 wind turbines to the Chinese power generation company Huaneng Corporation for a planned 151 MW wind installation in China's Yunnan province. The deal is General Electric's largest wind power deal in China to date.

Communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel development are taking a stand against dangerous fossil fuel projects. Take a look at the big fight in the small town of Kalama, Washington. The Chinese government is planning to build the world's largest methanol refinery to convert fracked natural gas to liquid methanol for export to China to make plastics. From a greenhouse gas perspective, this fight is a big deal. The methanol refinery alone would use more natural gas than all industry in Washington combined. Flip it around: If we win this one battle and stop the methanol refinery, we stop the equivalent of doubling industrial natural gas usage in Washington State. While the gas industry tries to spin natural gas as clean, new science shows just the opposite. The bulk of natural gas is methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane leakage from gas wells and pipelines led scientists to conclude that fracked gas can be as bad coal for our climate. And it gets worse. Gas production in North America relies heavily on fracking, a process famous for polluting air and water, endangering the health of nearby residents.

Chines courts are allowed to hand down the death penalty for serisous cases of pollution

Apple has announced a multi-year project with World Wildlife Fund that aims to protect as much as 1 million acres of responsibly managed working forests in China that provide fiber for pulp, paper and wood products.

A few basic (and often profitable) changes in a factory's manufacturing process can go a long way in cutting down pollution. That's the takeaway from Clean by Design, a new alliance between NRDC, major clothing brands-including Target, Levi's, Gap, and H&M-and Chinese textile manufacturing experts.

For a growing number of companies, fighting climate change is a zero-sum game. In late September, several organizations associated with nonprofit sustainability outfit The B Team declared a "net zero by 2050" (PDF) aspiration pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions. Among them: consumer products giant Unilever; apparel company Kering; Chinese construction company Broad Group; African telecommunications carrier Econet; Brazilian cosmetics manufacturer Natura; and British-born investment group Virgin - a geographically diverse group that underscores the global nature of climate challenges.

The country may be the world's largest carbon emitter, but China has the potential to become a clean energy leader. China is now the largest producer of renewable energy, generating 325 million tons of oil equivalent in 2013. Although renewables represented only 11 percent of the country's total energy production in 2014, this shift indicates the Chinese government's effort to transition its energy production mix.

Logging emissions is an important step in securing the transparency that China needs to solve its pollution problems, Mr. Ma argues. Among the harmful pollutants are air particles known as PM2.5, which can enter deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream. In an interview, he talked about the considerable progress he sees in the Chinese government's approach to air pollution, but also how concerns about social unrest continued to constrain discussion of pollution's damage to public health. Before 2013, levels of PM2.5 [the finest and deadliest particulate matter] were not monitored or made public in a single city. Now it's monitored and released in more than 400 cities. China has entered an era when air quality information is released. It's much more transparent. The 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans only referred to "emission reduction targets," so local governments could play games by claiming they had reduced emissions. Now, by saying by what year the PM2.5 must be below a certain amount, it's much harder to fake. The 13th Five-Year Plan is a progressive plan because it says that the public has the right to participate, to monitor, and that it's the public's right to know.

Apple has invested in four subsidiaries of China's largest wind-turbine manufacturer Goldwind, marking its largest clean energy deal to date. The deal will reportedly add 285 MW of clean energy to China's grid across four provinces.

Deep learning AI has been put to work in intelligent drones, sequencing genomes, learning the tactics of the ancient Chinese board game Go, and even keeping cats off the lawn. Now, Google has set its DeepMind system loose on its massive data centers, and drastically cut the cost of cooling these facilities in the process.

on average, each of us in the U.S. uses 25 tons of raw materials every year to produce our stuff and our energy. That is the weight of about 20 cars. By comparison, the average Chinese person uses 12 tons and the average Indian only 4 tons of raw materials per year.

The poor air quality on Dec. 6 also caused the Shanghai government to issue the highest level of public health warning as the Chinese city's pollution index ranged between 23 times and 31 times the recommended levels.

China is starting to get serious about tackling pollution and climate issues, and the fate of the rest of the world could depend on how good a job Beijing can do at mapping out a sustainable course for the future. "We need more of everything," says Chinese sustainability leader Peggy Liu. "Wind, solar, a modernized grid. We need to leapfrog over the past and into a clean-energy future."

China seeks a fair, global system to tackle climate change and will deliver its pledge to the United Nations by the end of Tuesday on how much it will cut emissions, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said after talks with top European Union officials.

Apple is working with the World Wildlife Fund to preserve as much as 1 million acres of Chinese forests and will also promote clean energy and sustainable manufacturing practices in China and elsewhere. "Apple is in a unique position to take the initiative toward this ambitious goal. It is a responsibility we accept," CEO Tim Cook said. 

China's largest online travel agency, began selling haze travel insurance to compensate domestic tourists that spend time in major cities affected by smog. Travelers will be able to file claims if they spend at least 2 days in cities with high smog levels.

China will present its post-2020 goals for coping with climate change ahead of schedule, according to the nation's top climate official. Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations climate change talks in Lima, Peru, said China will announce its "intended nationally determined contribution" in the first quarter of next year, rather than in June.