When it comes to sustainable urban growth, Hong Kong has been a noted success story and possible model for mainland China and other emerging economies. The city’s emphasis on infrastructure has been its traditional path to development, with new towns and a mass transit railway in the 1970s and 1980s, airport and seaport development in the 1990s, and increased bridge and rail links to mainland China in the 2000s. Hong Kong has also enjoyed the flexibility to experiment with greener, socially conscious, and more sustainable development at its own pace.
Sprawling over 550 acres of land in the heart of India’s third largest city, Dharavi’s maze of dilapidated shacks and narrow, odorous alleyways is home to more than one million people. In this small area of Mumbai’s sprawling slum, hidden amid the warren of ramshackle huts and squalid open sewers are an estimated 15,000 single room factories, employing around a quarter of a million people and turning over a staggering USD1 billion each year.
It is one of those embarrassing things that happen from time to time – finding one or two nose hairs poking out of your nose while you are in the company of others. There’s nothing you’d want more than to get your hands on a trimmer and remove it instantly.
If you are living in a choking city like Hong Kong, however, you’d be better off keeping your nose hairs and let them grow - they are your first line of defense against air pollution.
The India solar policy brief on the Tamil Nadu Solar Policy, just published by Bridge To India presents a detailed analysis on the risks and opportunities on the state’s ambitious 3-GW solar power target till 2015. With its policy announcement in October 2012, Tamil Nadu becomes the seventh Indian state out of 28 to announce an official solar target. No breakup between photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) projects has been given as part of the policy.
The health benefits of regular physical exercise have long been known. As Plato said circa 380 BC: “Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.”
Cycling, in particular, is an efficient way for people to exercise, especially if integrated into people’s everyday lives. This could include cycling to the train station as part of a commute to work or cycling to a shopping mall on the weekend.
A slew of announcements over the past few days have done nothing to shed any light on India’s wind power market, the world’s third largest, which, to be gentle, seems to be in an endless state of flux.
In a Bloomberg report on Monday a spokesman for Mytrah Energy, the country’s third largest wind developer, warned that the rate of new wind turbine installations was in a free-fall and would continue to be so due to the government’s inability to formulate a sound policy to support the industry.
The country may install as little as 1,500-MW of capacity by the year ending March 31, about half what it did the previous year
For the past several days China’s official media has had a lot of focus – primarily for domestic consumption – on COP18, the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which began in Doha, the capital of Qatar, today.
The contrast with Western media could not be starker. Although not entirely scientific, a quick scan of the front pages on major news sites in the US and UK found not a single reference to the Doha talks.
Doha. Despite the evident energy, generosity and reasonable success of recent Qatari diplomatic efforts, their capital city remains synonymous with international diplomatic failure and national intransigence.
Eleven years ago the World Trade Organization (WTO) launched a new round of multinational negotiations for which there has been no agreement to date. The latest news headline on the WTO web page about The Doha Round says it all: “Chair reports no ‘no’ but also no ‘yes’ for farm talks proposal”.
The year 2012 will be a turning point for the Japan PV market as the share of the residential segment will decline from this point forward. Unique among major markets, growth in Japan has been sustained by the residential segment. With the kick of the national FiT, the market driver will turn to the non-residential segment called “Mega Solar” in Japan.
The Japanese government started implementing the FIT in July this year. Between July and September, nearly 1.5-GW worth of PV projects qualified for the program. This represents 60% of the total capacity the government was expecting during the period between July 2012 and March 2013.
The impact of the media coverage of Foxconn on Apple should act as a stark reminder to companies to carefully analyze both their supply chains and how they engage them. Incidents, challenges and tragedies can have a long-lasting impact on both corporate reputations and the resilience of the supply chain itself.
Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a decline in creative approaches and investment in strong supply chain engagement programs.
The economic turmoil of the financial crash saw China being feted as a white knight with drawbridges being lowered to investment from Chinese companies. This has turned to bitterness, like a liberating army becoming an occupying force.
Even with struggling solar and wind sectors, China has become the dominant global power it terms of renewable energy companies. This has resulted in the US Department of Commerce increasing tariffs to between 23.75 and 250 percent on solar cells which it calls a way of offsetting subsidies provided by China through one mechanism or another.
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.
It was like an elephant in the corner of the room as Hurricane Sandy came roaring through the Northeast United States, disrupting the lives of millions while chalking up to USD45 billion worth of damage, and yet neither presidential candidate mentioned climate change or flagged it as a policy imperative. Throughout the latter weeks of the campaign trail it became painfully obvious that neither Obama nor Romney were willing to utter policy pledges on climate change or anything environmental that could be considered hippy yogurt-weaving scare mongering.
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.
Japan is beginning to take the development of an off-shore wind industry seriously as shown with the unveiling last week of a 126-meter-tall turbine – the country’s largest to date – off the coast of Chōshi, the easternmost city in the Greater Tokyo Area.
A variety of Japanese experts have championed the development of marine wind turbines which they say have much more potential than their land-based counterparts in this small mountainous country.
Recent studies have highlighted that sizable amounts of carbon emissions are transferred between world regions in the form of traded goods and services. That is, considerably more emissions are generated for the production of imports to countries, such as the EU and US than those associated with their exports.
This observation has frequently been regarded as an indication that energy-intensive industries are being relocated from industrialized to developing and newly industrializing countries, especially to China.
The October 10 ruling by the US Department of Commerce against PV modules containing Chinese-produced solar cells is just the most recent development in a string of trade disputes that stretch across the globe.
Until now, much of the discussion has focused on the details of each case, the potential effect on different manufacturers, technology types, etc.
But perhaps the bigger question is how these issues collectively will affect the main issue confronting the PV industry today: the supply/demand imbalance. Supply/demand issues are not simply confined to upstream (manufacturer stock levels) and downstream (warehouse/distributor) inventory levels.
Hong Kong's seizure of nearly four tonnes of smuggled ivory, worth about USD3.4 million, highlights once again China's significant role in the global trade of endangered species.
According to Hong Kong's customs officials, they made their biggest ever haul of endangered species product following a tip-off from mainland Chinese police. While the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Crime scorecard says China is making some progress in key aspects of compliance and enforcement of rhino and tiger trade, it is flagged for failing on key aspects of compliance or enforcement for the illegal trade in elephant products, primarily ivory.
Business and ecosystems are linked. All businesses affect ecosystems and rely on the services they provide. However, 60 percent of the world’s ecosystems have been degraded over the past 50 years. From food, to fuel, to freshwater – nature provides the fundamental infrastructure needed for our societies to survive and prosper, but we are destroying the source of these vital ingredients for life.
We can no longer rely on the current economic model, which originated in the Industrial Revolution, to doing things. We must work with nature rather than against it.
New research from the The Norwegian University of Science and Technology study suggests that electric cars may be worse for the environment than petrol or diesel-powered cars. This could mean China’s ambitious plans to promote plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) could make things worse rather than better.
What’s the problem? PEVs rely on mains electricity to run, and most of the world’s electricity still comes from unsustainable sources. The study found the impact – especially on greenhouse gas emissions - even worse when coal is the main source of power generation, and China relies on coal for over 80 percent of its electricity.
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.
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