The Vietnamese city of Da Nang was selected at last week’s 44th APEC energy meeting in Washington DC as the site of Low-Carbon Model Town Project, according to Pham Thanh Tung, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's International Co-operation Department.
Chinese meteorologists have dismissed media reports that Beijing had been afflicted by a toxic fog last Friday and that the fog’s label, “radiation fog”, was misleading, the Global Times reported yesterday.
Governments throughout China are taking a tough stance towards plastics recyclers, an industry they say operates with disregard toward proper waste water treatment and other environmental controls, and many firms in the sector are starting to feel the pinch.
A unit of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, Hutchison Water, has taken over an Israeli cleantech incubator which it plans to fund to the tune of USD25 million from now until 2020.
Companies from the US, China, Germany and Japan will face each other on December 6 in an auction to buy A123 Systems Inc, a bankrupt maker of batteries for electric cars that was partly funded by the US government.
Hong Kong’s recently appointed Deputy Secretary for the Environment, Christine Loh, has revealed a goal of having the territory’s Air Pollution Control Ordinance completely rewritten, and possibly passed by the Legislative Council, by 2017.
Speaking to members of the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong Loh said that, although government colleagues considered the prospect of rewriting the legislation to be “scary”, she believed it was necessary in order to maintain control of the city’s air quality in the long term.
The European Union (EU) announced yesterday that it will apply a one-year moratorium on the controversial inclusion of civil aviation under its Emissions Trading System (ETS), which has mandated that all airlines flying to and from EU pay for their carbon emissions.
The freeze follows threats of widespread international retaliation from such heavyweights as the US, China, Russia and India, and is said to allow for the EU rethink its approach.
Flights by airlines within the EU will still have to pay for their carbon emissions.
China's efforts to shore up its claims over various disputed islands in the South China sea, is costing it a new desalination plant. The new municipal city of Sansha, which was only set up in July, is on Yongxing Island and administers the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands and their surrounding waters.
How serious China's leaders are about preserving a delicate economic resource have again been called into question following the results the Chinese State Oceanic Administration's (SOA) survey of the marine environment.
According to reports in Nature and Scientific American, the full survey has been kept under lock and key and, paradoxically, it has been left to state-owned news agency Xinhua to say how bad China's coastal waters are.
An environmental and health crisis may be brewing in China as a massive 2008 government drive to encourage the purchase of energy-efficient light bulbs via subsidies is now beginning to have unintended consequences, according to a report by the Global Times.
Hong Kong’s new government recently averted another political firestorm when it shot down its own trial balloon proposing last-minute changes to development plans for the former Kai Tak Airport. The waterfront site in the heart of densely built-up East Kowloon has lain largely dormant since the old airport closed in 1998.
In July, the new Chief Executive CY Leung came to office promising to tackle Hong Kong’s soaring home prices, and his administration indicated that Kai Tak’s plans would be reviewed with an eye to boosting the housing supply.
Asia must scale up sustainable transport development or face a bleak future of congested roads, pollution, ill health and economic damage, which could have ripple effects around the world, a high level transport forum in Manila heard on Monday
“The choice is to let unsustainable transport become entrenched with dire consequences for the economy, quality of life, health and climate change, or to begin making the changes needed for a sustainable transport future,” said Bindu Lohani, Vice President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
A two-decade slump in Japan’s real estate prices, an incomplete land registry and lax rules on buying forest with water rights are attracting investors led by China and come amid a fraying of ties between the two countries over a territorial dispute, according to an in-depth report by Bloomberg yesterday.
Suez Environment, one of the world leading water and waste service company, is to build a new research and development center in China’s Chongqing – a city of 28 million – with the aim of better supporting its environmental protection services.
The World Bank’s Board have approved a USD200 million loan to provide safe clean water to 1.7 million people and improved sanitation for 650,000 people in Vietnam’s Red River Delta.
The Warren Buffet-backed Chinese electric car manufacturer, BYD, is trying to lure Chinese taxi operators to its e6 model through a installment plan which would, theoretically, save them tens of thousands of dollars.
The Greater China Infrastructure Fund has bought interests in a waste-to-power to company and a water supply company, according to Yin Lian Chen, chief investment officer of the Hong Kong-listed investment company.
The World Bank says it will loan Vietnam USD50 million to build waste water treatment plants and improve environmental policies in industrial zones in four separate provinces.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has released a new policy document detailing plans to encourage the transport sector to use liquefied natural gas (LNG) as cleaner-burning alternative to conventional oil-based fuels.
According to the Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) for 2008 -2020, formulated by the National Development and Reform Commission, cities in the PRD are progressively converging into one urban cluster, forming the most densely populated urban corridor in China. The nine prefectures in the region were home to 56.15 million people at the end of 2010, according to the Guangdong Statistic Book 2010. Given that Guangzhou alone expects to have 20 million people by 2020, it is entirely possible the total population of the PRD could double by that time.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
.png "The Climate Group logo"){kind=logo}
