September 19, 2009
China speeds up along the path of green tech
DALIAN // It would be easy to view the electric vehicles used to take delegates to the World Economic Forum in Dalian, China earlier this month as a gimmick.
A sceptic might see the deployment of hybrid buses and plug-in cars as a cynical attempt to portray the country as a green pioneer even as it gorges on cheap coal, grabs resources across Africa and rebuts limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But the truth is that China is probably moving faster than any other major economy to tackle the combined problems of energy scarcity, atmospheric pollution and climate change.
The buses ferrying the forum’s influential participants were actually the first of 1,500 such vehicles to be deployed across Dalian, one of 13 cities participating in a pilot electric car programme. The programme is just a small piece of a broad-based government strategy of investments and subsidies to promote low-carbon growth in the world’s most populous nation, which is firing up two new coal power stations every week to keep up with its energy needs. Read more
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