As I discussed in a previous blog, renewable energy trade disputes are becoming a particularly contentious issue between many nations. The United States and China are facing off in one of the most publicized of these disagreements. Further action was taken last week as the U.S. Department of Commerce made its second ruling of the year on this issue, placing tariffs on solar photovoltaic (PV) imports from China.

A Suntech Power Holdings employee at a Chinese solar PV manufacturing facility. The Commerce Department ruling placed a 31.22% tariff on Suntech products. (source: China Daily)

The previous Department of Commerce ruling from March 2012 placed countervailing duties on solar PV imports in order to balance what the department determined to be illegal subsidies to solar PV manufacturers from the Chinese government. The initial tariff rates, which were set between 2.9 and 4.73 percent, came in much lower than what was expected by most experts.

The new preliminary ruling comes in response to the second set of claims by the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) that Chinese solar companies have been dumping their products in the U.S. market at below market value. The coalition, led by SolarWorld USA, looks to level the playing field for U.S. solar manufacturers against what they see as artificially cheap imports coming from China.

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By Haibing Ma

Guangdong is releasing a series of policies to ensure a green future. ©nfdaily.cn

According to media reports, Guangdong province has taken the lead in becoming the pioneer of low-carbon practices in China. Guangdong is one of 13 pilot regions—including five provinces and eight municipalities—that the Chinese government has selected to explore low-carbon development. So far, it is the only pilot region that has issued a comprehensive plan for this development and had it approved by the central government.

In January 2012, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) reviewed and then “approved with positive comments” Guandong’s “Implementation Plan for Low-Carbon Pilot Programs.” Although this plan has not been made public, it reportedly lays out eight “key actions”:

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With the continued advancements in the development of renewable energy technologies and their ever-increasing cost competitiveness, there is more and more money at stake for countries and companies alike. A number of countries have recently found themselves at odds with one another over the international impact of certain domestic financial support policies for promoting renewables. The United States, China, Japan, Canada, and the European Union, discussed here, along with many others, currently find themselves on varying sides of major international trade disputes on this topic. High-end manufacturing of renewable energy technology components, and the money and jobs this brings with it, is becoming an increasingly important component for policymakers and an increasingly contentious issue at the international level.

A worker assembling solar PV panels in a Suntech Power Holdings Co. factory in Jiangsu Province, China. (Source: Bloomberg)

The dispute between the United States and China over solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing is probably today’s most high-profile renewable energy trade dispute. The Chinese share of global solar PV manufacturing has grown at an incredibly fast pace since the country entered the market, as Chinese manufacturers have rapidly expanded from a 15 percent market share in 2006 to provide nearly half of the world’s total solar PV manufacturing output today. As of 2008 China produced 2,500 megawatts (MW) of solar cells, up from just 4 MW a decade earlier, as reported in the Worldwatch-REEEP report Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in China. With an existing installed capacity of 900 MW at the end of 2010, much of this production is being slated for export.

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By Haibing Ma

Provinces and municipalities had been competing to establish emissions trading systems (Source: nddaily).

In an article co-authored with my colleague Alexander Ochs in September 2010, we discussed China’s interest in setting up a scheme for carbon-emissions trading in the next five years. Now, the deal is set: The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) recently issued an official notice to initiate pilot carbon-trading programs in seven regions. By embracing market-based approaches to mitigating climate change, China is seeking to facilitate a smooth and efficient transition to sustainable development.

The seven pilot regions are the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, as well as Guangdong and Hubei provinces. It’s no surprise that some of these regions overlap with China’s “Five Provinces, Eight Cities” pilot program on low-carbon development, initiated in 2010. Although details of the emissions trading programs have not been elaborated, designation of the pilot regions indicates that the central government has finally made up its mind to issue clearer guidance on exploring carbon markets, in order to better coordinate existing municipal and provincial interest in emissions trading.

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At the opening ceremony of the 5th World Future Energy Summit, held in Abu Dhabi on January 16, 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured the world that China will stick to a green and sustainable development path. As the highest-ranking Chinese official ever to present at the summit, Wen’s speech delivered a clear message to the world about what China plans to do to secure its future development.

Premier Wen Jiabao gives his speech in Abu Dhabi.

But sustainable actions already being pursued in China provide an even more convincing picture than the premier’s words. In its 12th Five-Year Plan—an overarching guidance framework used in Chinese policymaking—China includes a fairly comprehensive collection of sustainable development goals, among them energy intensity and carbon-emission intensity targets. Because the Five-Year Plan lays out only very general goals and measures, it is up to individual ministries or the State Council, China’s cabinet to sketch out and pursue implementation.

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This coming weekend (January 14–15), Peace Boat and five other international non-governmental organizations will host the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World in Yokohoma, Japan. The event was organized in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the resulting disasters at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

An image of the Biblis nuclear power, one of the nuclear power plants permanently shutdown in Germany shortly after the events at Fukushima (Source: The Open University).

The overarching goal of the conference is to facilitate discussion of a nuclear power free world. Regional and international experts, activists, and people affected by radiation exposure from nuclear power plants will come together to generate a roadmap promoting the decommissioning of these facilities worldwide. Participants will discuss policies that support renewable energy over nuclear energy and create action plans for implementing these policies in Japan and other countries that depend heavily on nuclear.

The Worldwatch Institute recently published an article, “Global Nuclear Generation Capacity Falls,” discussing the current status of the nuclear industry. Last year saw a decline in global nuclear generating capacity, stemming largely from the events at Fukushima and several countries’ reactions. Germany, for example, decommissioned more than 8 gigawatts of nuclear capacity immediately following Fukushima. China, a country that still plans ambitious nuclear capacity growth in the future, suspended its nuclear power plant permitting process pending further review. Japan, which has relied heavily on nuclear energy for decades, took many of its reactors offline, leaving only 10 of its 54 nuclear reactors connected to the grid following the earthquake.

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The president of COP 17, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, speaks at the final plenary session of the climate change meetings in Durban, South Africa (Source: Worldwatch).

As the new year begins, climate negotiators have begun to move on from their engagement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. After two weeks of intense negotiations on the future of the international regime to combat climate change, they bring home pieces of an ambiguous mandate—but also some critical steps forward. Below, we discuss some of the outcomes of those exhilarating talks in early December.

Symbolic survival of the Kyoto Protocol

Under European Union leadership, signatories of the Kyoto Protocol agreed to enter a second commitment period for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, extending the treaty terms through 2017 or 2020. This symbolically salvaged the agreement—the only existing climate treaty with internationally binding reduction targets. However, the 27 EU countries, together with Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland, are the only countries to take on these targets, and they agreed to do so only under the condition that all major countries agree to a new, truly global and comprehensive climate treaty, if necessary outside the Kyoto structure.

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The 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change begins today in Durban, South Africa (Source: UNFCCC).

This week the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins. In Durban, South Africa, delegations from countries around the world will continue negotiating greenhouse gas reductions in order to prevent global warming from spinning out of control. So it is just in time that the International Energy Agency (IEA) releases its latest statistics on global CO₂ emissions.

The provided figures contain CO₂ emission source breakdowns by fuel, sector and region over the period 1971 to 2009. According to the data, nearly two thirds of worldwide emissions come from two sectors – electricity and heat generation (41 percent) as well as transport (23 percent). Remaining emissions come from industrial processes (20 percent), residential (6 percent), and a multitude of additional sources (10 percent). Regarding energy, coal is the leading CO₂ emission source, accounting for 43 percent of those emissions, followed by oil at 37 percent and natural gas at 20 percent.

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Apple is accused of environmental damages in China

By Qiong Xie

Haibing Ma, China Program manager at the Worldwatch Institute, was interviewed by Voice of America on August 31^st to discuss whether Apple, one of the most successful American IT companies, should be responsible for environmental pollution from its Chinese supply chain. Mr. Ma commented that even though Apple has completely outsourced its production to many factories in developing countries such as China, it still bears the responsibility to carefully choose its first and second tier suppliers to make sure all Apple components are manufactured in an environmentally friendly way.

Apple’s supply chain problem is only the latest example of an emerging environmental issue: the sustainability of globalized supply chains. The concept of sustainability has emerged as a popular word in the political, environmental and business fields, partially due to the report Our Common Future, which was presented during the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987. According to this report, sustainability is defined as “using resources to meet the need of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.” For the manufacturing sector, sustainability is more about using operational management, such as product design, process technology, and an environmental management system, to reduce negative environmental impacts to the greatest extent possible. In the era of globalization, supply chain management has become an indispensable part of operational management for companies with globalized business operations like Apple.

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Yesterday, the Worldwatch Institute joined Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), Representative Edward Markey (D-MA), the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21^st Century (or REN21), and a panel of energy experts to celebrate the launch of Renewables 2011 Global Status Report, an integrated analysis of the state of renewable energy around the world. First published in 2005, REN21’s annual report has since become the most heavily cited analysis of renewable energy business and policy.

According to Alexander Ochs, event moderator and Director of Climate and Energy at the Worldwatch Institute, renewable energy today already accounts for about 25 percent of total global power capacity and 20 percent of actual electricity production, percentages that continue to grow quickly. Over the five-year period from the end of 2005 through 2010, total capacity of many technologies including wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass  grew at rates averaging 15 - 50 percent per year. Total global capacity of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2010 was up as much as 72 percent from just the year before. Little noticed, approximately half of the estimated 194 gigawatts (GW) of new power capacity that was added globally in 2010 were renewables.

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