China

China's central government is to launch a special fund to support weather modification operations by local authorities in areas prone to drought and haze, according to a Ministry of Finance announcement yesterday.

Aware of the need to improve resource efficiency, China’s state bodies are gearing up to increase recycling across the country, aiming for a 70 percent recycling rate for consumer products by the end of 2015. The National Supply and Marketing Co-operative General Agency has just released its “Opinion on the Acceleration of Construction of Post-Consumer Recycling Systems”, which says that my the end of the 12th Five Year Plan in 2015, over 80 percent of urban communities will establish standardized recycling stations and 1,000 recylced material markets. The system’s consumer products will account for over 60 percent of the volume of all recycled materials.

Beijing’s environmental authority started publishing daily readings of ozone levels in the air over the weekend, in line with China's new edition of air quality guidelines, according to the Global Times.

Reuters has reported Applied Materials Inc will move its solar equipment plant to China from Europe to cut costs and tap into the growing appetite for clean energy in Asia.  Asia is expected to overtake Europe as the largest solar power generation hub, aided by lower manufacturing costs, while falling subsidies and weak demand have hurt the industry in Europe.  Applied Materials, the world’s largest chip-fabrication equipment maker, diversified into the solar industry in recent years, making equipment that is used to slice silicon into wafers as thin as human hair.

Beijing plans to eliminate 66 highly polluting enterprises this year in an effort to improve the city's air quality, the municipal environmental protection bureau announced Wednesday.