China’s Grip on Solar Power

(Photo: SolarWorld)

Download MP3

Calling China: Help Build Our Bridges

Bay Bridge construction lights on at dusk. (Photo: Bay Bridge Public Information Office)

Download MP3

Why China May Lose Manufacturing Jobs to the US

Manufacturing in China (Photo: jurvetson)

Download MP3

• More from Jason Margolis at The World
• Follow Jason Margolis on Twitter @jasonmargolis

See what people are saying about manufacturing issues in the US and China

But there are major challenges.

The blades on a 300 foot tall wind turbine spin over farmland outside the northern German town of Brunsbüttel. Hundreds more stand out against the skyline. And more are being built every day, onshore, and in huge wind farms at sea.

Germany is living a wind boom. It’s already helped push renewables to 17 percent of the country’s total energy supply. And many here hope that’s just the beginning.

Jan Rispens, head of a renewable energy consortium in nearby Hamburg, said investment in renewables was strong before Germany decided to phase out nuclear power — and it needs to be to be even stronger now.

“We have the official government goal to reach 35 percent by 2020,” he said. “And 80 percent by 2050. We need to double it in eight or nine years.”

To do that, and to meet its longer-term goals, Germany will have to make tough decisions and costly investments. To start with, Rispens said, the government needs to do more to encourage investment in renewables.

He said the country will also have to make big changes in its electricity infrastructure. That is, the cables and towers needed to transport all that new power.

“We have new capacity in the north of Germany and we have our load center in the south,” he said. “We need to transport the electricity. And at a certain stage we will definitely need more grid capacity.”

It’s a matter of feasibility, and money. Beefing up Germany’s power grid will cost well over a $100 billion.

But it’s also a matter of public acceptance. Werner Beba, a professor at the University of Hamburg who studies renewable energy, said Germans love the idea of renewable energy. What they dislike are things like power lines.

“For example, they are building one strong grid from the North Sea across Germany to bring energy from off shore wind farms to southern Germany. And there are 8,000 – 8,000 lawsuits against that.”

There’s even resistance to the wind turbines themselves. They’re a blight on the landscape, some people say. Others worry that they kill birds. And a growing number of people claim they can make you sick.

Those wind turbines heard wooshing away near the town of Brunsbüttel stands about 350 yards from the home of Marco Bernardi and his wife Jutta Reichardt. On a recent day Bernardi pointed to a decibel meter at the turbine.

“We’re standing in front of my property with A-rated measures of 48, 45 decibels,” he said. “Now we’re going to change to C-rated measurement.”

Bernardi said C-rated measurements register sounds so low we can’t hear them. Set to C, Bernardi’s decibel meter spiked.

“We went up to 72, 76 decibels. I think this is evidence that these turbines emit a low frequency sound.”

Bernardi and his wife claim those low frequency sound waves have destroyed their health. They blame the turbine for a host of medical problems, from irregular heartbeats to lymphoma.

Most studies of the health impact of wind turbines have found no effects other than occasional stress and anxiety — certainly nothing like cancer.

This new coal-fired power plant nearing completion in Hamburg will provide electricity for nearly 300 thousand homes. Its owner, Swedish energy giant Vattenfall, says it's much cleaner than older coal plants. But activists say coal must go immediately. They say renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, can fill the gap as Germany phases out its remaining nuclear plants. (photo: Gerry Hadden)

Some new coal plants are in the mix in Germany, like this one being built in Hamburg. Backers of coal say that whatever the benefits or costs of wind and solar, coal offers something that renewables can’t: consistency.

Stefan Kleimeier, a spokesman for the energy giant, Vattenfall, said that’s vital for an industrial country like Germany.

“For the region of Hamburg, we have 12 minutes of power outage each year,” he said. “Which is one reason why companies that rely on constant power supply come to Germany. And politicians have to keep this in mind.”

But politicians also know that coal power is nearly as controversial as nuclear, even with the latest environmental controls.

So the German government will have to strike a delicate balance between tried and true, but polluting sources like coal and cleaner new ones that have never been used on a massive scale.

Environmentalists say it’s a false choice, and that renewable energy can be just as reliable as coal. Cristoph von Lieven of Greenpeace said the key is that new energy grid we heard about earlier.

“Germany needs smart grids,” he said. “Nets of electricity where the possibility of exchange and distribution is much better than nowadays. If we have this, we don’t need big plants, but lots of power plants of different types.”

Some experts doubt that smart grids will answer the reliability question. But one thing everyone agrees could help meet Germany’s post-nuclear energy challenge is reducing consumption. And on that front Germany is already a leader.

This new apartment building is "passive." That is, it's so well insulated that it doesn't need central heating. Body heat, sunlight through windows, and heat from appliances are enough to keep a home here warm. There are about 10 thousand passive homes in Germany, where they've become a pillar in the movement to reduce energy consumption. (photo: Gerry Hadden)

“A passive home loses so little heat that it doesn’t need active heating,” she said. “Most of its warmth comes from the sun, from the body heat of the inhabitants, and from household appliances.”

Germany’s Green Party says the country could cut energy consumption by 30 percent through passive homes and other simple technologies and changes in behavior.

That would go a long way toward easing Germany’s transition away from nuclear power. And, despite the challenges, energy analyst Werner Beba was optimistic the transition will be smooth and relatively quick. He said you only have to look at the booming renewable energy business to see why.

“The average growth per years is 20 percent in employees and in revenue,” he said. “That’s great.”

Great, he said, because one day Germany could become the first industrialized country to rely almost entirely on clean energy.

But one thing Israel and the Palestinian territories do have in abundance is sunshine. So, why not go solar?

Sunday, Israel unveiled its first commercial solar field at Kibbutz Ketura. The facility consists of a few dozen rows of 15 foot-high solar panels in the southern desert. When it goes online, the five mega-watt field will supply electricity to three nearby kibbutzim.

The Israeli company behind the project – Arava Power Company – says this is just the beginning. Executives say they are planning to sink $2 billion of investment capital into 40 more solar projects in Israel.

It is early days still for Israel’s commercial solar industry. But this one facility is already seen as a model for an interesting new partnership.

Gershon Baskin is an Israeli activist trying to help start alternative energy projects in the Palesitnian territories. (photo: Matthew Bell)

Baskin says it is high time for Israelis and Palestinians to get serious about alternative energy.

“Israel has been the cutting edge in the development of green technologies, but most of it is exported,” Baskin said. “Israel is pretty backwards in terms of its own care of its own environment. And Palestine is even worse.”

Baskin added, that “for two peoples who are fighting over land that they claim that they love, they’ve done a tremendous job of polluting this place, of destroying the land, destroying the environment, destroying the water resources we have, polluting the air, you name it. This country is an environmental mess.”

Power Deficit

Beyond the aim of saving the environment, there are strategic reasons for Israelis and Palestinians to help each other go solar. Israelis, for example, are living with an electrical power deficit and the government plans to make up for it with coal.

At the same time, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza buy almost all of their power from Israel. Gershon Baskin says every kilowatt hour produced by Palestinian solar power would end up helping Israel.

“We’ll save the environment in Israel,” Baskin said. “We’ll save the environment in Palestine by having renewable energy. It all goes together: it fits economically, it fits environmentally and it fits in terms of building models for peaceful coexistence.”

The politics of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, of course, are problematic, to say the least. One example: Baskin’s Palestinian partner did not attend the ceremony this weekend at Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel.

Hanna Siniora is former editor of an Arabic language daily newspaper. Now, he is working to bring alternative energy - like solar - to the Palestinian territories. (photo: Matthew Bell)

“I could not feel myself able to go and celebrate something which I support ­ renewable energy ­ during such a difficult period historically,” Siniora said from his office in Jerusalem. “Our people were actually trying to tell the Israeli public and Israeli government, enough of occupation, we want to be also free and independent like you.”

Siniora says building up the economic infrastructure of the Palestinian territories is equally as important as opposing the Israeli occupation. Electrical power is one part of that, he said. It’s pricey, but there¹s one big advantage to solar energy.

“Even if it is more expensive,” Siniora said. Israel “cannot prevent the rays of the sun.”

Siniora and Baskin said they are laying the groundwork to build solar fields in the West Bank. And that means finding investors, finding land to build on and navigating the Palestinian bureaucracy.

Then, there is the nagging issue of politics, again.

Nothing scares off investors like the unkown and right now, it’s very difficult to see a clear path ahead for bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict closer to a resolution.

Technology podcast: Solar Powered Plane Takes Flight

Solar Impulse homepage

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Zeroracer on the road (courtesy of Zero Race)

The race began last August and ended today in a Swiss city that we want you to name.It’s a French-speaking city, next to a large lake, and it’s home to the European headquarters of the United Nations. Those are your clues.

Three electric vehicles rolled into Geneva, Switzerland today which makes Geneva the answer to our quiz. Louis Palmer is the organizer of the ‘Zero Emissions Race’.

Download MP3

The teams (courtesy of Zero Race)

Follow the ‘Zero Race’ on twitter

Domestic coal delivery (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Ask a middle-class person in China what it means to be middle class – and you might get a very familiar answer: “Well, in Beijing you certainly need to have property, and own a car,” says Zhong Ling, a college professor. And then there’s all the other stuff – computers, flat screen TVs, air conditioning all summer – pretty much what a middle-class American might say.

That American lifestyle has great appeal. Chinese have seen it on TV and in movies, and an ever-growing number of the country’s 1.4 billion people want it too. The problem is, it has a huge energy footprint. The average American consumes more than twice as much energy as the average person in China.

But it’s China, with four times as many people and a much dirtier energy infrastructure, that’s now the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Most of those emissions come from burning coal. That’s left many in the United States saying that China urgently needs to cut its emissions to fight climate change.

But Xu Yinlong, a professor of climate change at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, invokes fundamental American values to turn the argument around. “Your Declaration of Independence, and your Constitution, say everyone should be equal,” he says. “So why do Americans think they deserve more emissions per capita than Chinese?”

Xu points out that most of the carbon pollution already in the atmosphere was put there over the past 150 years by the United States and other Western countries. They say China’s already doing better than those countries did at the same stage of development – and when China has reached the same level of prosperity, it will cut emissions more.

Jonathan Watts, an environmental correspondent in China for the British newspaper The Guardian, and author of the book When a Billion Chinese Jump, says they’ve got a point. “In terms of fairness, China should have the space to emit more and more and more and more,” Watts says. “That would be completely equitable, but totally calamitous. So you have to balance, what’s fair, and what will preserve you and us. And that’s the key question.”

Fairness aside, Watts says the Chinese leadership faces a dilemma. They know that climate change is real, and already affecting China, and that carbon emissions from coal are a big part of the problem. They also recognize the severity of local environmental and public health problems from burning so much coal. But at the same time, the government is committed to spurring rapid economic growth and improving the material lives of Chinese people and coal, for now, is the cheapest available fuel with which to do it. With Communism all but dead as an ideology in China, the Communist Party’s legitimacy is seen to rest on that pledge.

Watts says he sometimes hears a defense of coal from Chinese scientists and policy-makers that straddles these two concerns. “What they say is, ‘look, we know coal is bad. Nobody likes coal. But we don’t think we have any choice,’” Watts says. “If we want to keep growing at the speed we’ve been growing, if we want to remain competitive then we need to keep using coal.”

Under current projections, China’s use of coal will continue to grow well into the middle of the century. And increasingly, that includes importing coal – the transportation of which uses even more energy, which creates even more emissions. China has plenty of coal at home, but its mining industry can’t keep up with demand, as cities expand and infrastructure projects demand ever more cement and steel, the making of which is fueled by coal.

But all this begs a few questions. Is China’s current speed of development necessary? And does the model of growth have to keep favoring heavy industry – which favors state enterprises, which the government tries to protect, but is bad for the environment? Or, with the right political will, could China move more quickly to a less coal-dependent, more environmentally sustainable model of growth? The government has talked about restructuring the economy, to make it more reliant on domestic consumption and less reliant on export. But Michael Pettis, a Peking University finance professor, says even that transformation isn’t going to happen until there’s a shift from over-investment in heavy industry and infrastructure.

“Some of the infrastructure investment is certainly necessary, and will create more value than it costs, so it will cause future consumption to grow more quickly than it otherwise would have,” Pettis says. “But certain types of infrastructure investments, if they’re not economically viable, reduce economic wealth, and therefore they have to be paid for. And they’re always paid for by households – in the United States, in the form of taxes, in China, in the form of indirect taxes, like very, very low interest rates on their savings deposits. And if you force households to pay for non-economic investment, you are going to reduce future consumption, and that will slow GDP growth down considerably.”

That suggests that, even if environmental concerns are set aside, the Chinese government has ample motivation to accelerate a transformation of the economy, away from a heavy industry model that’s quite so reliant on coal.

Some Chinese officials say, this is a phase a developing economy has to go through, and the best thing that could happen is not that China change the way it’s developing its economy, but that the technology improves.

“Personally, I’m very concerned about climate change,” says Kang Qing, who heads the Development and Reform Commission in the city of Baoding, about 90 miles south of Beijing. I’m especially worried for my children, and grandchildren. But – the thing is, climate change has been caused by improving living standards with the technology available. So it’s the technology that needs to improve, so we can develop with less environmental impact.”

Baoding has long been a smoggy industrial city. But pull in to town on the high speed train these days, and you might actually see blue sky . In the last few years, the local government has replaced almost 500 dirty coal-fired boilers with cleaner natural gas. It’s also experimenting with energy-efficient buildings, putting up solar pilot projects, and shifting public transportation to natural gas.

Baoding is trying to become a low-carbon city. The transformation began through political will – and a shrewd business sense. Ma Xuelu was a local city official a dozen years ago, when he got sold on the potential for solar energy to give Baoding a new lease on life.

“Developing a low carbon economy is an opportunity for Baoding,” Ma says. “We don’t have the resources to support traditional industries. So we have to explore in a new way – a way that includes technological innovation and renewable energy.”

Ma persuaded the Baoding government to open a hi-tech industrial development zone – and he became its director. He also became co-founder of Yingli Solar, one of the world’s biggest photovoltaic companies, and China’s first. Now, Ma says, with obvious satisfaction, the manufacturing of solar and wind energy equipment accounts for a quarter of Baoding’s GDP, and Baoding’s air quality has steadily improved.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature has been helping Baoding with its transformation. Lei Hongpeng, of the group’s Beijing office, says since the project started, officials from more than a dozen other Chinese cities have also asked for assistance in becoming low-carbon cities themselves.

“Maybe five years ago more local governments paid attention to steel, auto industry, because these industries could create bigger GDP,” Lei says. “But recently they see the future, is the renewable or low carbon clean energy industry.”

It’s a future the central government wants to encourage. It has named Baoding one of eight low-carbon city pilot projects. The central government has also started evaluating local officials around the country not just on how well their local economy performs, but also on how well they protect the environment. That includes minimizing the impacts of coal.

Wind turbine factory in Xinjiang

“I do think China is sincerely trying to change,” says Watts, author of When a Billion Chinese Jump. “And it’s not doing it because it wants to save the world. It’s doing it because it wants to save itself, and because it wants more energy security, to be less reliant on fossil fuels, which are dirty or need to be imported. And because it’s a power play. If you control the energy of the future, if you are the leader in solar and the leader in wind, and if the world 30 or 40 years from now is all supposed to be using that technology, that puts you in an incredibly strong position.”

But the Chinese paradox, Watts says, is that China is going ‘green’ and at the same time staying ‘black’ – increasing coal use, while trying to increase efficiency and reduce emissions along the way. For now, China continues to chase its own version of the “American Dream” – big cities built for cars, an impressive new highway system, a growing middle class with a growing hunger for all the accoutrements of the ‘good life’ it has seen on TV, in movies, and on trips abroad.

But the ‘stuff’ the middle class craves takes energy to produce, and much of that energy comes from coal. The idea of scaling back the middle class lifestyle to cut emissions and save the environment is something Americans have barely begun to embrace. And the Chinese government is only starting to structure new cities and set incentives to encourage a lower-carbon lifestyle, as ever more Chinese reach for a more-energy intensive middle class life.

“The American lifestyle is the American dream to us. And it’s comfortable. We like it,” says Chang Hong, a 45-year-old electronics entrepreneur, on his way out of an upscale Beijing department store. “But if everyone lives in such a way, I don’t think the environment can take it.’

Chang’s 17-year-old daughter, Chang Yi Fen, agrees. “China’s history is very long, and throughout it, Chinese people have been making compromises due to this big population,” she says. “And I think it’s a trend that’s going to continue. Each generation will have to make compromises for the population, and for the finite resources.”

Chang Yi Fen thinks many people her age get that, and will be willing to make changes and conserve energy if it means helping the environment, and breathing cleaner air. And for those who don’t get it yet? They will, she says. By the time her generation takes the helm, there won’t be another choice. Download MP3

Reporter’s notebook: the air in China

China’s coal habit series page

The city “by reason of the excessive coldness of the air, hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steam of…coal, that hardly can one see across the street, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one would scarcely breathe.”

The description could fit many a modern northern Chinese city on a coal-heated winter day. It happens that the author, diarist John Evelyn, was writing about London in the 17th century – a good reminder that choking on growth is nothing new. Indeed, Monet captured London’s haze when painting there in the late 19th century:

Claude Monet's 'Houses of Parliament, London, Sun Covered by Clouds' c. 1904

But for those of us doing the choking today, it’s still a favorite topic of conversation. We are survivors together. We are amazed we, along with millions of other Chinese city-dwellers, can breathe this stuff and live to tell the tale. Some of us avidly check the US embassy in Beijing’s Twitter page, which relays real-time readings from two air quality monitors kept on embassy grounds, in eastern Beijing – just a mile or so from my home. Today (Dec. 3, 2010), a relatively clear day, my view from my kitchen window looked like this:

View from Mary Kay's window on a smog free day

The air quality reading at the time was 175 – or “unhealthy” on the international scale for particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers. That’s the stuff so small it can only be seen with an electron microscope, so small it can lodge in your lungs and other organs, and cause serious long-term health problems. In cities, such pollution comes mainly from vehicle exhaust and coal-fired power plants.

On that same international scale, 300 is considered hazardous – as in, close the schools, stay home, and try not to breathe too much, hazardous. The international scale goes up to 500. In mid-November, the reading on the US embassy monitors was 520, and the same view out my kitchen window looked like this:

View from Mary Kay's apartment on days with heavy smog

It would be comforting to think of this as fog, and some Chinese do. The Chinese weather forecasts certainly like to call it that. But this is really more like the Victorian “fog” that gave a hint of romanticism to Sherlock Holmes, striding in his cape, sucking on his pipe, or a cover for Jack the Ripper, or set the scene for Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, in which at one point he talks about November smoke from coal that seemed to cause “the death of the sun.”

There was talk, over time, in 19th and early 20th century London, of taking steps to clean up the factories and reduce emissions. But economic growth came first, and coal was the fuel driving it. Dramatic and lasting change didn’t come until after the “fog” of all “fogs.” Here’s a glimpse of what it looked like:

Five days of intensive smog in December 1952 caused 4,000 deaths more than would have regularly occurred during that period, with another 8,000 deaths above the normal level over the next two months. Four years later, Britain passed its Clean Air Act, and the famous and seemingly permanent “London fog” of the industrial age retreated into memory.

China now has the same kind of economic ambition and has made many of the same choices as Britain did more than a century ago – grow first, use coal, worry about the environment later. The example of Britain – and of the United States after its own Clean Air Act helped save lives and reduce health care costs – shows what political will, with the regulations and enforcement to back it up – can do, and how quickly it can work.

To the credit of Chinese policy-makers, they’re not waiting as many decades as both Britain and the United States did to start trying to clean up their act. Although still at a much lower level of GDP per capita – they’ve set a goal for China to use 45 percent less energy per unit of GDP by 2020, compared to 2005 levels.

China’s leaders have also introduced a ladder system of electric fees, so consumers pay more per unit as they use more. They’ve been experimenting with clean(er) coal technologies, doubling wind energy use every year for the past five years, and ramping up solar energy – although, consumer subsidies and a standard feed-in tariff would ramp it up even faster. They’re also building nuclear power plants and ever more dams – both of which have significant environmental issues of their own, but at least don’t increase the emissions that take lives early and contribute to climate change.

These are all positive steps, and by any measure, a significant change for the better. The nagging question is whether they’re enough.

Although China aims to reduce emissions per unit of GDP, its overall emissions are expected to continue to grow, along with its economy, until at least 2030, and possibly until 2050. Much of that growth is centered on heavy industry, dominated by the large state enterprises the Communist Party tries to protect. In addition, some 350 million Chinese are expected to move from rural areas to cities, where, on average, urban dwellers use 2.5 times more energy per capita than rural dwellers. Current projections say that means a huge amount of new climate changing CO2 emissions – and that’s not even counting what a growing India, might contribute to emissions, or Brazil, or Russia, or Africa, whenever more countries there gain economic traction.

The official Chinese response to this is, “look, we’re being a lot more responsible than you Western countries were, when you were developing. We’ve just come a little late to the table. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get to eat.”

But those same Chinese policy-makers are, every day, breathing the kind of air you see in the Beijing photos above. So are their kids, and grandkids. Whatever they say in public, in forums like the climate change talks in Cancun, their actions show that they’ve already begun to rethink how much economic growth is worth the long-term cost to the environment and human health. By some calculations, including by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, those costs almost wipe out China’s GDP growth.

Much comes down to political will. Giving the right incentives to improve energy efficiency and use cleaner energy, and sufficient penalties to those who don’t, could yet help China clean up long before 2050. If it does, the world – and especially residents of China, whose lungs will no longer be quite so inflamed – will have reason to breathe a deep sigh of relief.

China’s coal habit series

Rooftop solar panels in Dezhou (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Dezhou is trying to reinvent itself as a solar city. One trishaw driver says his solar water heater saves him money, and he’d love to get solar electric panels for his house.

“If the price is right, of course I’d use them! A lot of people would,” he says. “It’s just hard to find them in the market.”

Despite the fact that Dezhou has more than 100 solar energy-related companies, almost all the solar panels produced here, and throughout China, are exported abroad. The current system of government subsidies is set up to encourage export rather than domestic use – to the point that the US government has filed an unfair trade practices case against China through the World Trade Organization. The Chinese have in turn protested that they’re just doing what makes sense at the moment.

“Some people may think you produce solar panels and you sell to other people, and you take advantage,” says Li Zheng, director of Tsinghua University’s Clean Energy Research Center in Beijing. “But actually, we don’t think so. Because this industry is very energy-intensive, and there are pollutant emissions. So I think other countries are very smart, to use the solar panels for cleaner air there, but let the solar panels be produced here, to pollute our air.”

But what about China reaping the advantage of using a little more clean solar energy itself? Li Zheng says the view among Chinese policy-makers is that the cost of photovoltaic energy is still too expensive compared to other sources of energy available – even after prices have dropped by 70 percent over the past five years. Once international research and development leads to further cost reductions, better methods of storage and of moving solar energy onto the grid, he says, the government will likely do more to encourage the widespread use of solar panels within China.

Meanwhile, other forms of renewable energy are already taking off. More than 30 million Chinese households use rooftop solar water heaters – more than in any other country in the world. And wind energy capacity within China is now 35 times what it was five years ago.

At the same time, China has, in a few short years, become the world’s top producer of both wind turbines and solar panels. Dezhou’s biggest solar company, Huangming, best known for its solar water heaters but ramping up photovoltaics – sees a bright future for these technologies within China, and around the world.

“We at the company have our goal,” says Chen Quanmin, an energetic young manager at Huangming. “We want to see 25 percent of the world’s energy come from renewable sources by 2025, and 90 percent by 2050. ‘That’s what we hope to do, and everyone is working very hard on it.”

That’s an ambitious goal – far beyond the Chinese government’s own targets, or what’s considered realistically possible. But the government is at least moving in that direction. It has set a goal of getting 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020 – that’s about twice what it gets from renewables now — and at least 30 percent by 2050. Most of that energy will be hydropower from dams, which are plentiful in China and have their own environmental issues. But wind energy is increasing fast – with white turbines spinning against windswept blue skies in open stretches of western China – in places like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

“The electricity produced by our wind farm is delivered to the grid and distributed to households and industrial customers in Xinjiang,” says Lu Feng, manager of the Tianfeng wind energy company in Xinjiang. “It’s like any public power plant.”

Wind turbines in Xinjiang (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

All this shows what can be done when the political will is there to do it. Solar energy, by comparison, has not yet been given the same kinds of subsidies within China, nor has a standard feed-in tariff been set. It comes back to the concern that solar energy is still too expensive compared to coal. But when you add up all the costs of using coal – to the environment, to human health, and the sheer cost of getting it out of the ground and transporting it – the numbers change.

Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the standing committee of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, has worked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to research the real cost of energy in China, focusing as an example on the environmental cost of energy use in 2005.

“We found the environmental cost from low energy efficiency, environmental pollution and also the damage of ecological system equaled 13.5% of our GDP,” Cheng told a World Economic Forum gathering in Tianjin this autumn. “And that year, our GDP only increased by 10.4%. That means we leave an environmental debt to our children and grandchildren.”

Cheng had a receptive audience at the World Economic Forum for his call to look past the immediate bottom line cost of energy, And at least a few deals were done on the side– including one between China and Iceland for a geothermal energy project – one of several promising renewable technologies, along with solar thermal, that have barely been tapped in China.

Huangming’s 'Utopia Garden' (photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

A sales rep shows off solar electric panels on the roof, a solar thermal heating system, energy efficient windows and other green features. She says most of the apartments here have already sold, even at about twice the price of other apartments of comparable size in town. But even this utopian complex can’t yet generate enough of its own solar electricity to run all the computers, TVs, gadgets and air conditioners of its residents.

And that’s China’s problem, writ large, as it quickly urbanizes and grows wealthier, says Jonathan Watts, the Beijing-based environmental correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, and author of the new book on China’s environment, When a Billion Chinese Jump. He says China outspent the US almost two to one on renewable energy last year. And it’s also making big investments in nuclear power, cleaner-burning natural gas power plants, and energy efficiency.

“But even with that, they’re saying the dependency on coal will probably go down from 70 percent today to 64 or 65 percent by 2015,” Watts says. “So if you carry on at that pace, it’s still going to take 30 or 40 years, at the very quickest, to wean yourself off coal.”

Watts says solar energy could yet come from behind, and become an affordable clean energy option for China.

“Many of China’s leading scientists say, in the long term, China’s energy demands can be best solved by solar,” he says. “China is cursed, in a sense, that it has so many deserts in the north, but when it comes to solar power it could be a blessing. You have these huge areas where you can put solar panels. It can be done. People want it to be done. But they don’t want to move too quickly.”

All that said, China is expected to more than double its solar capacity this year. It’s one of many signs that China’s leaders are serious about at least taking the edge off of China’s coal habit.
Download MP3

China’s coal habit series page

Also in this week’s episode, we hear about some robots that may way one day do the dirty and dangerous work that miners do. We’ll also consider two opposing viewpoints on Google’s self-driving car; we’ve got one guest who thinks that vehicles that can drive themselves will one day make for safer roads, and another guest who doesn’t want to sit in a car he’s not controlling (he would be happy with a self-navigating lawnmower, however). Cue Jetson’s theme music, please.

In addition, we’ll hear about a proposal to use cell phone towers in Africa as base stations for refrigerators that could keep vital vaccines cool, and therefore usable in rural areas of the developing world where electricity, and there refrigeration, is scarce.

And we’ll also hear an interview with a UK firm called Internet Eyes, which enlists the help of the public in trolling through hours of CCTV footage, looking for potential criminal activity. Did the bells just chime 13, Mr. Orwell?

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

(Photo: Noodle Eyes)

• Slideshow: See photos from Jeb Sharp’s reporting in Tanzania
• Renewables find niche in Pakistan
• Renewables Fill the Power Gap

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  Most of us take electric light for granted.  We might use candles during a blackout or flashlights on a camping trip, but for the most part, we flick a switch and the light comes on.  That’s not the case in much of the world.  I saw that on a recent trip to Tanzania where most rural residents still don’t have regular access to electricity.

STEPHEN CHIMALLO:  Imagine at night without light.  Imagine if you want to study at home and it takes you like ages to find where the matchbox is because there is no light.

SHARP:  Stephen Chimallo grew up in a small village in Tanzania.

CHIMALLO:  Sometimes there’s no matchbox so therefore there’s nothing to light on your kerosene lamp.  Imagine you’re sick at night, you’re bitten by a snake, it happens a lot in the villages, you’re bitten by a scorpion. There’s no light.  You don’t where you’re bitten.

SHARP:  Chimallo didn’t experience the joys of electric light until he won a place at a Catholic boarding school as a teenager.  He remembers being amazed just walking down the lighted corridors.

CHIMALLO:  When you see the light, it’s like oh my God, this is the world now.  This is what’s supposed to be there.  This is what we really need.

SHARP:  Electric light changes everything, Chimallo says, which is why he finds his job so satisfying.  He works for SolarAid, a British NGO that installs solar powered electrical systems in schools and health centers across Tanzania.  On this day, Chimallo and his American boss, Mason Huffine, are headed to the remote village of Idodi in the center of the country.  It’s miles from anything resembling an electrical grid.  SolarAid is installing a new solar system at the village health center which will light the whole clinic.  When they arrive, Huffine tells a medical assistant they’re here to finish installing the new lights.

MASON HUFFINE:  The technician is on his way and we brought the batteries so he’s come to be able to do the maternity ward.  We’ll have one outlet we can use for a brighter light and for a suction machine.

TARCHISYA KIPANGULA:  That would be awesome.

HUFFINE:  That would be an answer, huh?  Good.

KIPANGULA:  That would be an answer.

SHARP:  Tarchisya Kipangula has worked at this clinic for four years. Four frustrating years, because electricity has been intermittent.  There was an old solar system, but it broke and no one knew how to fix it.  Kipangula says they’ve had to resort to flashlights on night shifts.  It’s hard to stitch wounds, or find veins for injections, and delivering babies is an ordeal.

KIPANGULA:  Labor, they always come during the night for maternity so this also is difficult.

SHARP:  Kipangula’s cellphone, which she charges at a village shop, has a flashlight on it.  She pops it into her mouth to show how she copes in the dark when she needs free hands.  She mumbles through the phone to show how ridiculous it is.

KIPANGULA:  (Sound of mumbling.) It’s very dangerous, even for contamination.

SHARP:  Dangerous because you’re using the same pair of hands to touch patients and handle the cellphone, and then putting that cellphone in your mouth.

KIPANGULA:  But if there is light, you go on with the procedure without touching anywhere.  After this, you wash your hands; you move out your gloves no problem.  But with the darker, it’s a very terrible situation.

SHARP:  If practicing medicine in the dark sounds terrible, consider what happened just up the road at Idodi Secondary School.  Students let off steam by playing volleyball outside the government-run boarding school.  It’s the sort of place where students can earn a ticket out of poverty if they do well on national exams.  As a result, they work incredibly hard.  They’re in class most of the day and they return to their classrooms at night for more study.  For years, the school lit those classrooms with a diesel generator.  Now many of them are lit by a solar system provided by SolarAid.  But until very recently, there was no electricity at all in the dormitories.  That proved fatal, says Mason Huffine.

HUFFINE:  One of their brighter students was studying in the dormitory after midnight.  As near as we can tell, she fell asleep with her candle in the bed.  The mattresses are these super cheap foam mattresses and they ignite up and there’s a wood ceiling in there and in literally 15 minutes, the entire place was engulfed in flames and 12 students perished.

SHARP:  School officials won’t let me talk to the students about last year’s fire.  But they can’t make it go away.  The graves of those who died are right next to the school.  The tragedy spurred a national campaign to ensure safe lighting in all Tanzania’s schools.  Candles and kerosene lamps are now banned here at Idodi.  Instead, students share solar powered study lamps that have been donated to the school.  Eighteen-year-old Leah Gawaza uses them to study at all hours.

LEAH GAWAZA:  I just sleep for two hours and then I wake up again, studying for three hours, then sleeping until morning.

SHARP:  Do you set your clock or do you wake up anyway?

GAWAZA:  I just set my clock or if someone woke up, they can make me to wake up also.  We sleep together, studying together.

SHARP:  Leah’s friend, Oliver Mwenda, says she’s getting better grades now there are study lamps in the dorms.

OLIVER MWENDA:  Especially mathematic subject.  I was poor in performance because the time was not enough for studying mathematics in the class but when the light comes, I was spend most of the time in the dormitory for mathematics.

SHARP:  Terrifying as it is, the risk of fire is not the only reason solar advocates want to wean Tanzanians off candles and kerosene.  Kerosene is also notoriously dirty.  It spews carbon into the atmosphere and clogs children’s lungs with smoke. And it eats up money that could be spent on better things.

HUFFINE:  So our slogan is “Don’t burn what you earn.”

SHARP:  Mason Huffine likes to point out to people like these students that if they invest in a little solar lamp, they’ll have paid for it with what they spend on kerosene in a matter of 2 or 3 months.  Huffine’s not your typical aid worker.  In another life, he was a contractor putting up green buildings in Seattle.  That was before he rode his motorcycle around the world and ended up in East Africa.  Now he’s a development worker with a business sensibility.

HUFFINE:  You know, we’re passionate people but you know, what makes this world go around is not passionate people; it’s people who know how to make money.

SHARP:  Huffine is a born salesman and he sees Tanzania as a giant potential market for solar power.  On his trips to and from villages like Idodi, he often stops by the side of the road to talk to people about solar.

HUFFINE:  Now with one of these, you have a good light but no kerosene.  But no smoke.

SHARP:  His dream, and a key part of SolarAid’s strategy, is to spur viable businesses selling small, affordable solar devices that power radios, phone chargers and desk lamps like the ones the students at Idodi are using.  SolarAid even has its own franchise with the catchy name Sunny Money to market these products.  Huffine hawks them wherever he goes.

HUFFINE:  Like this one I think is 10,000 shillings.  In one month you could buy it from the batteries you spend.

SHARP:  His goal is not to sell products one by one.  It’s to identify shops and tap entrepreneurs who can serve as distribution hubs.  Huffine says that’s the big challenge, getting these things out to the people who need them in the villages.  A crowd forms around Huffine’s Land Rover.  Huffine’s colleague, Stephen Chimallo has a big smile on his face.

CHIMALLO:  They’re really excited; everybody’s excited.  Everybody wants to see, everybody wants to see everything so I can’t get everything out of the car now.  (Laughter)

SHARP:  It’s a hopeful time for solar in Tanzania.  NGO’s and businesses are making a big push to promote it.  The government is helping by providing tax breaks, and the economy is growing.  And if global warming isn’t enough, the tragedy at Idodi Secondary School serves as a stark reminder of the benefits of clean, safe power.  What’s not clear yet is how long it will take for solar logic to prevail, in what is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Listen to Anita’s Elash’s report: “Ontario’s green energy plan”
• Environment coverage on The World

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: EU leaders would also like to see stronger emission cuts from Canada. Earlier this year the province of Ontario adopted a sweeping green energy plan that could make it a world leader in phasing out polluting sources of electricity. The plan paves the way for what supporters hope will be a massive expansion solar, geothermal, and wind power. But Ontario’s rush toward renewables is roiling some rural communities. As Anita Elash reports the communities fear massive wind farms will harm their economies and possibly their health.

ANITA ELASH: Downtown Picton, Ontario is the heart of bustling tourist district on Lake Ontario 135 miles east of Toronto. Visitors are drawn to a new wine industry, the town’s old brick storefronts, and thriving waterfront artist’s community. Dan Taylor is in charge of local economic development.

DAN TAYLOR: People are coming here to get away from it all. They’re not coming here for industrial experiences. They’re coming here for country experiences. And I guess we’re suggesting that there’s a bit of a conflict.

ELASH: The conflict Taylor is referring to is between the rustic flavor of Picton and scores of giant windmills planned for the area. Nearly 200 turbines are proposed for surrounding Prince Edward County and another 140 just offshore.

TAYLOR: I mean imagine if we were looking over these buildings right now and you saw a large wind turbines overlooking that. I mean that’s not what we’re all about.

ELASH: It’s a conflict that’s playing out across Ontario. The province’s new green energy plan is the most ambitious in North America. Its goal is to wean Ontario off dirty coal-fired power plants in just five years through a combination of energy efficiency and new solar biomass and wind power installations. That would be good for the environment but critics say the province is pushing a plan that will result in thousands of turbines without evaluating their impact on local communities and residents.

JOH LAFORET: A big concern is with how it’s being rolled out.

ELASH: John Laforet is president of Wind Concerns Ontario, a group organized to fight what it calls industrial wind power. Laforet says the government plan is going too far, too fast.

LAFORET: I think it’s going to lead us into a situation where families will be forced to leave their homes because turbines have been put in too close.

ELASH: The province has responded to these concerns by imposing some restrictions on where new turbines can go. For instance the structures must be at least 600 yards from the nearest building. Opponents argue that’s still too close but supporters say any farther would put too much land off limits. And they say when it comes to siting turbines there’s only so much leeway.

BEN CHIN: Windmills have to be built where there’s wind.

ELASH: That’s Ben Chin of the Ontario Power Authority.

CHIN: And windmills need transmission lines to be able to feed into the grid.

ELASH: The power authority has found that in Ontario some of the best mix of wind conditions and access to power lines is found in populated areas along the Great Lakes. Chin says that might mean putting turbines where some people would rather not have them. But that’s the price of helping tackle climate change.

CHIN: We’re not going to stand still as a society. And this province has made a conscious decision to get off of greenhouse gases. That comes with implications. That means that projects have to be built.

[WINDMILL NOISE]

ELASH: But the concerns about the windmills go beyond esthetics.

GAIL KENNY: That’s noise. That’s pretty noisy.

ELASH: Gail Kenny lives on tiny Wolf Island in Lake Ontario site of one of the most hotly disputed wind projects. Eighty-six turbines have been built on the island and Kenny says the noise is relentless.

KENNY: When they are really thumping the atmosphere is full of them. So you feel it. Sometimes it even just affects your equilibrium a little bit because sound is vibration.

ELASH: Kenny is concerned the turbines could affect people’s health and Laforet of Wind Concerns Ontario says there’s good reason to worry. His group has collected about 100 reports from Ontarians who claim that nearby wind turbines are causing headaches, dizziness, sleep loss, ringing in the ears, and depression.

LAFORET: There’s a clear correlation between the audible sound that we can hear with our ear and negative health effects through sleep deprivation. That’s undeniable.

ELASH: Laforet’s group wants the province to stop allowing new turbines until it does detailed studies that prove those health problems aren’t connected to wind power. That’s a tall order since proof is often in the eye of the beholder. The Ontario government says it believes its 600 yard setback provides more than adequate health protection. But some independent researchers say the issue remains murky. Mary English is an environmental policy analyst at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who’s looked at the issue for the US National Academy of Sciences.

MARY ENGLISH: It’s a difficult question and one that’s not easily resolved particularly since the type of problem that’s being created is regarded by some people as trivial.

ELASH: Ontario has promised to appoint a watchdog to make sure that any new wind installations are safe. But whether or not the debate has ever settled English says Ontario faces a classic societal tradeoff in siting its new zero carbon energy facilities.

ENGLISH: Given where we are right now we have a choice that includes making some people arguably worse off in order to make a number of other people arguable better off.

ELASH: English says technological advances could some day allow wind farms to be built mostly out of the way of people. But until or unless that happens Ontario leap into the energy future likely will continue to generate protests along with clean power. For The World I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Could jatropha solve India's energy problems? (All pictures copyright D1 Oils plc)

The next gold rush is gearing up: renewable energy is hot. You can find solar panels everywhere these days, from the Mojave Desert to to roofs of Midieval castles.

Nuclear energy may be entering a renaissance. And scientists are looking for nearly any type of plant to power our cars: from sugarcane, to corn, to jatropha.

In this podcast we look at the future of renewable energy in Europe, North Africa, and the USA.

Geo Quiz archive

If the clouds hold back, it could be the most-watched eclipse in history, too. That’s in part because the total eclipse path will traverse the two most populous countries on Earth.

Solar eclipse in 1998 (Associated Press)

That’s a bit of a clue for today’s quiz. We want you to name two places. One is the country that will be the first to see the full eclipse. And the other will be the last place where the full eclipse will be visible from land. You have just enough time to don your protective goggles…

Answer: The full solar eclipse will first be visible at dawn on Wednesday near Mumbai in India.

By the way, a travel agency in India is organizing a charter flight on the day of the eclipse.

The agency is charging around $ 1,600 per person.

CEO Amit Verma explains why people should pay that much to watch the eclipse from 41,000 feet.

“In India, it is monsoon season, so the best place to view a solar eclipse is above the clouds where you are not worried about any rain. So that was the whole idea, so that we could be above the clouds and then watch an eclipse.”

Verma says passengers on the flight will be able to follow the eclipse’s path for around three hours.

So the first place the full eclipse will be visible from is India. We also asked you to name the last place where the full eclipse will be visible from land.

Well, after India, the eclipse will cross parts of Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China before hitting the Pacific. Then it will cross some Japanese islands. But the last place where people will be able to see the full solar eclipse from land is Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati.