Blogs

Chinese firm dreams up dual-mode hybrid

Andrew Williams — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:11:41 PDT

Earlier this year, Chinese company Build Your Dream (BYD Auto) announced the launch of the F6DM, a car that might possibly emerge as the first plug-in hybrid on the market (though not available outside China). Now the Shenzen-based outfit has revealed plans to build a smaller, less-expensive follow-up.

The F3DM, with its design cues taken from the Toyota Corolla, was showcased at this yearâs Geneva Motor Show. The car allows drivers to switch between full-electric and hybrid modes.

In full-electric mode it has a fairly impressive range of 80 miles between charges. There is also a small conventional engine enabling the car to function like a regular gasoline-electric hybrid.

The model will be rolled out in China by the end of this year, via a test fleet of 200 taxicabs in hometown Shenzen. The company hopes to sell cars in Europe in 3 years and the U.S. in 3 to 5 years.

We're not getting our hopes up, though; so far Chinese auto makers have had a hard time jumping into the emissions and safety standards of the U.S. and E.U.

Via Treehugger and Greencarcongress

Cleaner, but at what price?

Trystan L. Bass — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:17:02 PDT

The Olympic torch has begun its around-the-world relay to Beijing for the start of the 2008 Summer Games. Likewise, the Chinese government is racing to improve the environment in Beijing. The organizing committee is even promoting this as a "green Olympics."

But if China's record on human rights -- including the recent problems in Tibet -- are any indication, the Communist country's environmental claims merit a closer look.

The biggest issue is air quality. China's capital is notorious for brown, smoggy skies caused by coal-fired power plants, coal-burning stoves, and tons of exahust-belching traffic. This is aggravated in spring and early summer by sandstorms that shroud the city for days.

According to the latest U.N. report, Beijing's air is improving, but slowly. Most pollutants in the atmosphere have finally dropped below the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines, but small particulate matter is still very high, as much as 200% over the safe levels.

Time magazine notes that reporters have found Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau less than forthcoming about statistics. Is the government misreporting the current air quality?

Blogger Tim Johnson offers photographic evidence of not-so 'blue sky days' in Beijing this month. Judge for yourself if you'd want to run a marathon in that.

Water is another crucial issue in northern China -- Beijing already has to import water from the south and will need a lot more to support the estimated 2.5 million Olympic visitors. This is not without problems.

Neighboring Hebei province is being sucked dry by Beijing and is suffering from saline contamination. Groundwater in the coastal Qinhuangdao area has become unpotable.

Chinese news sources claim that water conservation efforts are being made. And "water from Hebei will be used as emergency supplies" during the Olympics.

But not everyone is satisfied. Another area nearby is also being drained for the Olympics, and one official is complaining. A leader in the Shaanxi province, An Qiyuan, wants compensation. He said: "In order to preserve the quality of Beijing's water we have to close all our factories." So the environmental impact is compounded by the economic impact.

The Beijing Games has personally affected the lives of people in the city. Somewhere between 14,000 to 1.25 million people have been displaced from their homes to build Olympic buildings, shopping malls, parks, etc. Beijing's Municipal Construction Committee reports the smaller number, and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates the larger one. Either way, it's a serious disruption, and not everyone has been moved by choice.

Animals have been relocated as well as people. In one of the more gruesome stories to come out of China, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reports on thousands of cats being rounded up for extermination. Beijing wants people to believe that cats carry disease, and pet owners are forced into abandoning the animals. The goal seems to be cleaning the streets in advance of the Summer Games.

So what good may be coming out China's Olympic ambitions?

To clear pollution by getting cars of the road, Beijing has expanded its public transportation. First to open was Line 5 (check out the great photos on TreeHugger), which connects multiple lines in the once-underused system. Beijing also got a new airport with additional subway lines that connect to it.

Even better, the government lowered fares on the subway to encourage ridership.

Other infrastructure upgrades in the city should be beneficial to residents long after the Games are gone. The World Watch Institute reports that Beijing now treats 90% of its wastewater (up from 42% in 2001), and solid waste treatment is at 97%.

Little things have changed for the better too. For example, as we noted earlier this year, China has banned plastic bags to cut back on litter.

Will these improvements balance out the harsh steps taken to get there? Will the Olympics open China up to a greener future after the last medal is awarded?

Hard to say. We'll just have to wait and watch this summer and beyond.

Wal-Mart pushing China to go green

Hank Green — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:36:12 PDT

No one can tell China what to do. It's an autonomous nation with a proud history and an unquenchable desire to pull itself up by its bootstraps -- international regulations be damned!

Oh ... that is, unless it's Wal-Mart doing the asking.

Next fall, Wal-Mart will meet with thousands of Chinese suppliers and give each of them little hints about how (and why) to go green. Their first priorities will be waste disposal and greenhouse gas emissions.

But Wal-Mart is also hoping to spread initiatives that it began in the U.S., like asking suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging they use and pressuring them to build electronics that are more efficient and easier to recycle.

Of course, the task is enormous. Every supplier has to be monitored and inspected sepeartely. Wal-Mart is already partnering with a large consulting firm and several NGOs to help in the greening of China.

Welcome to the future. There's no way to regulate anyone, except through the power of the world's biggest buyers. If it's going to be the international government...then at least we can be happy that it's got the environment on its list of concenrs.

Via Reuters

China's outta the bag

Trystan L. Bass — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:37:13 PST

According to the Environmental News Network (via Reuters), the biggest maker of supermarket-style plastic bags in China is shutting down.

The Chinese government actually announced a ban on the flimsy bags as part of its pre-Olympics clean-up. An official state website proclaimed:

"Plastic shopping bags, due to reasons such as excessive use and inefficient recycling, have caused serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution."

Many doubted the ban would have much effect, or be enforceable. But with Suiping Huaqiang Plastic Co. Ltd. closing its doors, maybe plastic shopping bags are truly on their way out in China.

Now, if we could only get rid of them in the U.S. Whole Foods markets and the city of San Francisco have ditched the urban tumbleweed. More cities are looking into plastic bans or taxes, and grocery stores like Safeway (on the west coast) give you cash back when you bring your own bags.

If China can do it, so can we! Equip yourself with handy reusable bags and you'll never have to worry about choosing between paper or plastic again.

China going 'toilet to tap' by 2010

Hank Green — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:57:59 PST

Envirovore just got finished dissecting one of China's more questionable environmental policies (feeding pollution to fish and then the fish to people).

Well here's another environmental decision that, while more sound, still gives me the willies...

Converting waste water to drinkable water has long been the holy grail of water treatment. Generally, we can only get the water just clean enough to dump it into some body of water without causing too much harm to the system.

Cleaning it to the point where it is once again safe to drink is possible, but has remained prohibitively expensive.

Tongji University's Siqing Xia is both lead researcher and champion for his small-scale water-reclamation facility. Right now, the facility creates "gray water" that is suitable for things like flushing toilets and irrigation.

But after a bit of further treatment through ion-exchange and reverse osmosis filtration, the facility could produce tasty drinkable water.

Xia hopes to have a full-scale toilet-to-tap project operating in time for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. We can't help but wish him luck.

Unfortunately, it seems that convincing the population that they should drink this water might be even more difficult than making it economically viable. But when a country grows like China and demands for water are ever-increasing, these sorts of technologies will be vital to keeping those pressures off the rivers and aquifers.

Via TreeHugger

Chinese hybrid ready to roll

A Siegel — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:27:46 PST

Just a few days ago, the first domestically developed and produced Chinese hybrid vehicle rolled off the assembly line.

"It took us 6 years to develop this hybrid, and it marks the beginning of mass production of hybrid vehicles at our company today," said Xu Liuping, the president of Changan Automobile at a celebration ceremony.

The Jiexun is claimed to have 20 percent lower fuel usage than conventional vehicles with tailpipe emissions that can meet advanced EU-IV standards.

According to Xu:

"the Jiexun-HEV was a major component of the 'electrified automobile program' in the state backed high-tech plan, known as the 863-Plan. With a development period of six years, the car had finally become a mass-produced model with internationally-advanced technologies."

Expect the Jiexun to get some press at next year's Olympics, with the manufacturer already committed to donated ten Jiexuns to the Olympic committee.

In terms of business levels, Changan Automobiles plans to invest 300 million yuan ($40.7 million) for hybrid technology breakthrough research and to implement volume production. Consider that amount for a moment. Would that even cover executive bonuses at any of the American Big Three, let alone the R&D and production enabling costs for a new technology?

Cost: Estimated to be 50 percent that of a Prius. At 150,000 Yuan, this translates to a little over $10,000 for a marketed Jiexun ... which has four doors ... which meets European pollution standards ... Is the Jiexun headed toward Europe (and the United States) post-Olympics press?

Hat tip to Celsias, AutoBlogGreen, and the Auto Channel.

One child per family: a green innovation?

Hank Green — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 03:22:00 PDT

It's not easy to defend a social program as broad and controlling as China's one-child policy, but from a purely EcoGeek perspective, it needs attention. Don't accuse us of promoting the idea, though. It's weird, it's broken, it's dangerous, but if it could only be voluntary, it would be the finest environmental innovation our world has ever seen. Aside from, possibly, the innovations of birth control, without which any kind of family planning is impossible.

China recently released some statistics defending its one-child per family policy, and you can't argue with the significance. So far, they say, the policy has 'prevented the births' of over 300 million children...roughly the population of the United States. And they estimate that the policy has prevented the release of 1.3 billion tons of CO2, roughly equivalent to the output of Germany.

Population is the single most important factor in climate change, urban pollution, the water crisis, agricultural collapse and ecological destruction. Yes, our ultra-fabulous way of life in America doesn't help, but the strain of an estimated 9 billion people by 2050 is going to push the earth close to its breaking point no matter how simple a life those 9 billion people lead.

China is careful to point out that it doesn't believe the one-child policy is right for every nation. But they stand strong behind their assertion that population control is entirely vital to the fight against climate change. It's not a popular assertion, but is, without doubt, entirely correct.

Via Reuters

Sci-fi hotel in an abandoned Chinese quarry

Hank Green — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:00:00 PDT

The Songjiang district near Shanghai, China, has become a popular destination for tourists...apparently fantastically wealthy tourists with an eye for the peculiarly sustainable. This planned sci-fi luxury hotel with underwater rooms and indoor waterfalls has significantly more humble beginnings. It's located in a 100 foot deep abandoned quarry.

Using an already disturbed site like this is key when building in ecologically sensitive areas. And the architects have done an amazing job incorporating the design of the hotel into it's humble surroundings. But the sustainability doesn't stop there. The hotel extends some of the natural landscape over itself by covering it's ground-level roof in dirt and greenery. The green roof would also keep the hotel cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Even cooler, because the quarry was dug so deep, it will be relatively inexpensive to harness the geothermal energy of the site. There's no word on exactly how much of its power will be generated this way, but it could possibly provide all of the hotels heating and electricity needs.

Aside from all that, the hotel looks ridiculously cool, check out this picture as well.

Via Inhabitat and Atkins Architecture

See Also:
-Living Walls-
-Green Skyscrapers-

Texting fuels Chinese green revolution

Alex Pasternack — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:40:00 PDT

One million text messages. That's how residents of China's port city of Xiamen spread word to protest -- and eventually halt -- construction of a chemical plant on Thursday. The $1.4 billion facility was meant to produce the petrochemical paraxylene, exposure to which can cause eye, nose or throat irritation, affect the central nervous system and may cause death. Though international standards dictate that such a plant should be 100 km from the nearest city, the short text messages that mobilized Xiamen's smart mob warned the factory would have been only 16 km away.

While the central government is clearly showing more interest in protecting the environment, local governments, eager to cut corners in the name of economics, are helping block the path to sustainable development. But the Xiamen protests, thousands of people strong, are the latest sign of people power in China, where tens of thousands of protests over tainted land and water are recorded every year, threatening the government's dream of a "harmonious society" while pointing the way forward for environmental action in a place that seriously needs some.

That local officials in Xiamen reportedly began blocking text messages too in an attempt to stem the protests, and that the protests continued apace, is an indication that, try as it might, China's authoritarian controls simply can't keep up with the power of cell phones blogs, bulletin boards, and the smartmobs they might create. (Local governments are getting into the SMS act themselves, using text messages to warn citizens of floods and even stop protests.)

Clearly, stopping protests just isn't possible the way it used to be. Between increasing countryside unrest (there may be nothing scarier to the government) and deadly pollution (China's rural cancer rate rose by 23 percent in the past two years, and more than 70 percent of the country's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated ) something's gotta give.

Since the plant's not been completely scrapped, residents are still protesting, according to Reuters. And the more word spreads, the more likely it is that protests will continue elsewhere too. An large expansion of a chemical plant in the southeastern city of Quanzhou that produces paraxylene and other chemicals was announced in March, funded by China's No. 2 oil company, Sinopec, Saudi Aramco, and ExxonMobil Corp. Paraxylene is a key material in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) saturated polyester polymers -- the stuff of which the world's plastic bottles are made.

Via SFGate and Asia Sentinel

The world's first solar cell phone

Hank Green — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:30:00 PDT

We've seen the prototypes and heard the speculation for years now, but here we have it, the world's first solar cell phone, and you can buy one right now...if you happen to live in China.

HiTech Wealth telecommunications has just begun selling the S116 and the specs are pretty impressive. However, the $510 price tag will have you wondering why you don't just get an iPhone. A 1.3 mpx camera, and an MP3 player are fairly standard additions to cell phones these days, but the solar panels do make this guy stand out.

The panels trickle-charge the battery in any amount of light, including indoors (or even by candlelight), and the battery life is 2.5 times longer than it would be without the panels. An hour of direct sunlight will give users 40 extra minutes of talk time.

While this first model is pretty exciting, HiTech Wealth will be releasing six more solar phones within the year and has promised 30 solar models before 2009.

Via Inhabitat and Xinhua News