China aims to corner renewable energy – theage.com.au

China aims to corner renewable energy

MATHEW MURPHY -  The Age -  October 15, 2009

Changhua Wu, the China director for The Climate Group, said the country’s climate change image was undergoing a makeover.

”We are definitely a good guy now,” she said. ”Where have people been? For a long time China was painted as a bad guy. Countries like China and India have been in that category, but starting this year, with more and more information being disclosed to the international community, they are starting to recognise the contribution that China has been making.”

China’s top leadership had decided to take an alternative paradigm for the sake of the country, Wu said. ”Renewable energy is now considered as a strategic element in the country’s future competitiveness internationally.”

…While China eclipsed the US as the largest national emitter of greenhouse gas in 2007, its 1.3 billion citizens are responsible for less per capita than the US and European Union, and below the global average. To help bring that figure down, further energy efficiency is ”the number one priority of the Chinese Government”, according to Wu. ”China’s energy efficiency has improved dramatically but still, if you compare energy efficiency levels to other countries, China is still lagging behind,” she said.

The Chinese Government has adopted a multifaceted approach to climate change. Its attention to renewable energy has come about because it has found a market to sell into. The Climate Group report shows that 44 per cent of the world’s solar photovoltaic technology last year was produced by China…

Growth in installed wind turbines is faster in China than in any other country. Wind power in 2008 topped 12 gigawatts – a figure that is doubling every year. The country has committed to a renewable energy target of 15 per cent by 2020…

As the road leads to Copenhagen, and potentially a new global climate change deal, China is in an interesting position. If the world signs up to a post-Kyoto emissions reduction target, then China will assist in bringing down the world’s emissions with a big role in manufacturing.

Wu said the Copenhagen deal needed to offer technology transfer agreements, more robustly than in Kyoto, to get China on board.

”China is far behind in developing the low-carbon technology, but has a very strong capability in manufacturing the products for the rest of the world,” she said. ”The Clean Development Mechanism was to enable technology transfer from developed countries to developing countries. But for the last few years it has become clear that the technology transfer has not been significant at all…”

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