China sees what the US will not.

[Alarum]

China loves playing the PR aspect. It will call in some experts, plant a few trees, and the next time someone mentions that China, say, produces more toxic waste then is in any way safe, they'll point to their band-aids.

Read this for exactly how well china is doing in the entire pollution buisiness:

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3104453

PLUGGING a cigarette into his mouth, He Shouming runs a nicotine-stained fingernail down a list of registered deaths in Shangba, dubbed “cancer village” by the locals. The Communist Party official in this cluster of tiny hamlets of 3,300 people in northern Guangdong province, he concludes that almost half the 11 deaths among his neighbours this year, and 14 of the 31 last year, were due to cancer.

Mr He blames Dabaoshan, a nearby mineral mine owned by the Guangdong provincial government, and a host of smaller private mines for spewing toxic waste into the local rivers, raising lead levels to 44 times permitted rates. Walking around the village, the water in the streams is indeed an alarming rust-red. A rice farmer complains of itchy legs from the paddies, and his wife needs a new kettle each month because the water corrodes metal. “Put a duck in this water and it would die in two days,” declares Mr He.

There hasn't been anywhere in the US that bad for at least a decade.

 

[one love]

Creat a model eco city? Who cares? There are over 1 billion people in China, and unless this city is housing half of that population, this is just good publicity and propoganda. How many eco-friendly skyscrappers have been built in the US? Now Wal-Mart is trying to jump on the band wagon.

This is also some great propoganda on the OP's part. How bout a round of applause? C'mon, he diserves it.

Fact is, I prefer to live in the US. The thought of living in China does not sit well with me; I would never have been able to use google to find this forum and post these opinions if I were in China.

 

[TheReasoner]

Apparententely, the Chinese understand that even the longest journey begins with one step. A truth seemingly not known to all who are on here. While this IS great publicity, and one city will not make a difference worth noting, neither did the first two phones make a worldwide difference. Nor the Wright brothers first plane.
But they were all starts to something that changed the world. It is impossible to reform an entire nation's infrastructure and lifestyle in one single go.

This one city will not make the world a clean place any more than the first airplane brought intercontinental flights the same day. But it is a start, and it is a LOT better than just being a naysayer refusing to do anything because 'a single act just won't cut it'

 

[ScottishJohn]

No, it doesn't. At the same time though, one must realize the serious obstacles facing the national government (which realizes more than anyone the extent of the problem) in implementing a green energy policy. In the cities, there's a drive to decrease pollution, on the countryside, there's a drive to increase living standards as cheaply and easily as possible.

Those are other factors running alongside this iniative. They do not preclude them being serious about a change of direction either. especially if they are looking to move 300,000,000 people from the cheap and dirty systems in the countryside to new systems in new cities as opposed to leaving them in the countryside or moving them to cities with existing problems.

Uh, could you find a single "small independent" hydro power generator in China? Not all of China gets a large amount of wind, and solar power has similar geographic limitations and is EXTREMELY expensive in terms of cost per kW/h.

So because they don't have small hydro programmes now they cant have them in the future? Some of China does get wind, and if the chinese invest in Solar technology then the price will come down.

Small coal power plants are cheaper and easier, along with large hydroelectric dams.

Not when you consider the miles and miles of transmission cables needed to reach all the areas served by these larger power generating units.

I shouldn't have to tell you that China isn't Scotland. China has a much larger population to deal with, as well as a much smaller budget per capita in most parts.

Cracking the countryside is much harder in China. Rural areas have less political access, less capital on both a per capita and total basis, and a far less educated populace and bureaucracy than the cities.

I am well aware that China is not Scotland. The point however stands. Sustainability is much easier in low demand areas than it is in high demand areas.

In any case the whole point of this discussion is that China is addressing the high demand areas now with these new cities. The rest may or may not come later.

You act like the realizations of the central government automatically and quickly travel down to effective policy implementation. In China, that just isn't the case. That's one of the big reasons that even with a green energy policy at the top, it's extremely difficult to actually implement such a policy throughout China. The central national bureaucracy just doesn't have the power it did in Mao's day.

So they can't do it is that what you are saying? They have effectively lost control of the country? If they can't implement policy then how can they build anything? Even coal fired powerstations need someone to bid them to be built.

OK, and this has to do with effective renewable energy geography overlapping with the geography of the current population and where they would need to build cities how?

They don't have to build cities where the population is now, especially if the population is in isolated rural areas that makes zero sense. Build them on or near existing transport routes?!

You can't build a city "pretty much where you like" because moving those "prospective workers" gets extremely expensive as does relocating transportation and other supply routes.

They already have extensive transportation and supply routes heading over a considerable amount of the countryside to support a lot of the industry sitauted in rural areas. And people will (and already are) pay for themselves to get somewhere if there is a job at the end of it.

The Soviet Union built new cities all over a massive landscape in hard to reach places that only offered isolated advantages (usually in resource extraction or production back then) and now Russia has a huge problem where people are moving from these government planned cities to places with more convenient locales.

Why is that? Because the industry has shut down because the economy is shot to bits because they launched themselves into capitalism before they were ready for it and pretty much handed control over to the mafia. So far China appears to be managing to avoid most of these pitfalls.

Historically, governments everywhere have done a pretty sorry job of artificially creating cities in arbitrary locales. That China would adopt such a policy doesn't make much sense.

Unless they could do it better - which given the growth of their economy, the size of their workforce and the area they have to work with I would say they have a good chance.

But it does mean that there's a wide gap between planning and implementation.

No it doesn't! It means that they are sticking with what they have now until they have an alternative. Continuing with an interim solution is most likely part of the plan.

In China, like in any other country, we often see that what is planned at the top goes through huge changes before it is actually implemented.

As it does in many places. What is different here is the plan at the top. At least it is starting 'green' and some if not all of that greenness will end up in the end solution. Other countries are not planning green at all.

Are they serious? Probably, but their ability to pay for such a massive change is limited.

Their ability to pay? They have the fastest growing economy in the world, and soon to be the largest, and they stand to recieve a whole load of debt payments from the US from now to eternity.

Also political pressure for development on the (short-term keep in mind) cheap is high at the provincial and prefecture level unless the national government is willing to shoulder all the extra costs, which it almost never is.

Who is shouldering the costs here?

Because there's not enough change in energy policy now to demonstrate that they are serious about getting their new cities running on renewable power instead of current sources.

What? They haven't even built their new cities yet, and their existing cities and economy are still growing. I ask again what do you expect them to do? You have a short term medium term and long term plan. You are judging the long term plan based on the short term one!

Interestingly, we just had a very good lecture by my prof in Chinese history on hydropower, he and another prof at my university just wrote a pretty good piece on the politics of hydropower in China. If I can find a publicly accessible link, I'll post it.

There's a collective memory in China still of the hundreds of thousands dead as a result of previous dam disasters, and there is often deep grassroots opposition to dam projects which in some cases leads to the cancellation of huge dam projects already approved by national officials in China (Dujiangyan is a perfect example.)

Basically, hydropower in China is a source of power the government relies on. But due to geographic and political limitations, the power of the national government to use hydropower (like other renewable sources) as a total replacement for fossil fuels is quite limited.

Planning is always the same. You start down a planning process, if you get enough complaints the project stops. That is the same the world over. The difference in China is the extent to which they actually heed the complaints.

And there's no guarantee all those will run on renewable sources like Dongtan. Also, you must keep in mind that these cities aren't planned to accomodate 300 million overnight, and that 300 million already is only a small portion of the Chinese population. The model city of Dongtan is only big enough for 50,000 currently.

There is no guarantee for anything. The plan is that these cities will run on renewables. And no they will not be built overnight. 300 million is about 22% of the total population of China. I think that is a significant amount. For one thing it is around the same population of the entire United States.

400 cities about the size of Dongtan means that you get about 20 million people in these cities in the short term, not 300 million. These cities haven't been built yet as well, and nowhere does it say that every one of them will only use renewable power sources for electricity.

They have said that the 400 cities are going to accomodate the 300million. 400 cities of 500,000 (the planned eventual size of Dongtan) is 200 million. So some will be larger won't they?

Even if every one of those 400 cities initially used only renewable power, that's almost no dent in China's fossil fuel consumption because of their small size. By 2040 or so when these cities mature (according to wikipedia, that's when Dongtan is supposed to be 1/3 the size of Manhatten) even if 300 million people are getting renewable power, that still leaves out the vast majority of China's population.

Nowhere does it say that this will be the only sustainable development China initiaties. Their other moves to limit the use of fossil fuels, and to clean up existing use of fossil fuels will also have an impact. The WHOLE POINT is that these developments will be happening anyway, and they can be clean or dirty. Dirty will substantially increase pollution in China. Clean will not. If I were you I would be welcoming it. With the prevailing West wind, whatever pollution gets produced in China is heading your way.

How are farmers going to afford solar panels? How is the government going to be able to buy solar panels for all the farmers in China? For one thing, that would completely outstrip global solar panel supply, which is quite limited.

Some communities could use solar panels. Some could use wind turbines. If you have a lot of mass produced and easily erected modular generating systems then it is much easier to manufacture them at a central point and transport them to the small isolated communities that need them than to build a massive power station and run cables for hundreds of miles in every direction.

China could well be serious about this project, but when one actually looks at the facts and does the math, he will see that even if the national government is completely serious, and has the political capacity to carry out this project, it's effects will be quite small except for in the long term.

IN THE LONG TERM is exactly wherethis project is supposed to have its effects. That is the point. China are looking at the long term, while the rest of the world whistles.

But do those parts of China correspond with where the current population is. Not much of poor China corresponds with wavy, and in much of poor China there is huge grassroots and official political opposition to "wet" hydropower. Like I said, the sunny and windy parts of China often (especially in the case of wind) correspond to where people actually live.

They don't have to build the cities where the current population live. Where did most of the inhabitants of the US come from?

As for geothermal, everything I've read on it states that it is only cost effective in specific regions of the world where it is easy to tap. Simply drilling a hole into the ground is not cost effective compared to other means of power more easily available in China.

Yes it is cost effective. You can do it for individual houses by only digging down a few feet. You can do it on a large scale by flooding mined out coal mines. There is a development in Glasgow right now which is utilising cheap heating from a flooded mine.

http://www.johngilbert.co.uk/resources/geothermal.html

400 cities housing 300 million people in 2040 out of a population that is today 1.3 billion and growing is not going to stop the pollution problem in cities.

It will not stop the pollution in existing cities. It will prevent pollution growing with 400 new cities that will need to be built anyway. If 22% of the population are living sustainably that has a large impact.

Also, we're assuming that the plans of the government are actually carried out uniformly until those cities get to their planned sizes by 2040 and that those cities actually reach their planned sizes. This plan doesn't take into account the possibility of economic failure in these cities (definitely not unheard of in communist planned cities) or that people may still choose to migrate to the coast (despite bureaucratic hoops and restrictions) rather than these cities.

I thought the US was a 'can do country' you are desparate for this to fail. What I am impressed with is that China is even trying. We could all learn a lesson from that.

Is it unreasonable to imagine that what these cities will be in 35 years could be substantially different than what the government in Beijing plans?

Could be. Or they could be even better than the Government in Beijing plans. I just like the fact that they are planning as opposed to waiting for the hammer to fall.

All your arguments seem to be based on what they have done in the past and what they are doing now despite the fact that they have these plans for the future. Thats like hearing the weather forecaster saying it will be sunny tomorrow, and responding 'it was raining yesterday, it is raining today, it will rain tomorrow.'

 

[ScottishJohn]

Creat a model eco city? Who cares? There are over 1 billion people in China, and unless this city is housing half of that population, this is just good publicity and propoganda. How many eco-friendly skyscrappers have been built in the US? Now Wal-Mart is trying to jump on the band wagon.

Unless someone has tried to make plans to accomodate 66 million US citizens (22% of the population) sustainably, whatever the US has attempted is small in comparison to this proposal.

Fact is, I prefer to live in the US. The thought of living in China does not sit well with me; I would never have been able to use google to find this forum and post these opinions if I were in China.

Nobody is suggesting you live in China.

 

[Alarum]

Unless someone has tried to make plans to accomodate 66 million US citizens (22% of the population) sustainably, whatever the US has attempted is small in comparison to this proposal.

Nobody is suggesting you live in China.

No. But some people seem to be suggesting that anyone wants to live in China:

http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=china

Their government is a bunch of abusive [unprintable word]s.

 

[morningstar2651]

Since when was that ever a central issue?

Since now.

 

[LogicChristian]

Those are other factors running alongside this iniative. They do not preclude them being serious about a change of direction either. especially if they are looking to move 300,000,000 people from the cheap and dirty systems in the countryside to new systems in new cities as opposed to leaving them in the countryside or moving them to cities with existing problems.

I simply said there are significant obstacles in the path of any Beijing initiative to switch to more expensive green energy sources for cities.

So because they don't have small hydro programmes now they cant have them in the future? Some of China does get wind, and if the chinese invest in Solar technology then the price will come down.

Again, no, it's because they don't have any small hydro projects under development or planned that I don't think they will have them in the future. China is far more interested in big dams.

Not when you consider the miles and miles of transmission cables needed to reach all the areas served by these larger power generating units.

When you consider that they are now building roads, railroads, data lines, etc. to these areas you realize that the cost of the transmission cables is incremental.

I am well aware that China is not Scotland. The point however stands. Sustainability is much easier in low demand areas than it is in high demand areas.

Except for the fact that the "low demand areas" in China encompass hundreds of millions of people, and that there aren't enough solar panels in the world to supply them all with electricity.

So they can't do it is that what you are saying? They have effectively lost control of the country? If they can't implement policy then how can they build anything? Even coal fired powerstations need someone to bid them to be built.

Did I say they effectively lost control of the country? No, I didn't, so stop putting words in my mouth.

My point is that Mao was quite nearly an absolute leader, Hu Jintao and Win Jiabao aren't. China in the reform era has seen a huge decrease in the amount of power held by national authorities in Beijing, and an increase in the power held by local and provincial officials. Those local and provincial officials tend to be less interested in long term environmental efficiency than in low energy costs in the short term, and tend to be less well educated than their counterparts in the national government. That makes them a formidable obstacle in the face of any "green" energy policy made by leadership in Beijing.

They don't have to build cities where the population is now, especially if the population is in isolated rural areas that makes zero sense. Build them on or near existing transport routes?!

You know, the density of those "isolated rural areas" isn't uniform across all of China. You certainly could build those new cities in Tibet, Xinjiang Uighur, or Inner Mongolia away from where most of China's rurual population is, but I'm not sure how many people would move there.

They already have extensive transportation and supply routes heading over a considerable amount of the countryside to support a lot of the industry sitauted in rural areas. And people will (and already are) pay for themselves to get somewhere if there is a job at the end of it.

But that transportation infrastructure and supply routes in most parts of rural China would need huge amounts improvement to support a city.

Why is that? Because the industry has shut down because the economy is shot to bits because they launched themselves into capitalism before they were ready for it and pretty much handed control over to the mafia. So far China appears to be managing to avoid most of these pitfalls.

How does the mafia have anything to do with the fact that the Soviet government built cities where it didn't make sense to build them and moved hundreds of thousands of people out to these models of inefficiency?

Unless they could do it better - which given the growth of their economy, the size of their workforce and the area they have to work with I would say they have a good chance.

How do any of those things make it more likely that an arbitrarily built city will be more successful? Russia had lots more room to work with, a large, better educated workforce than exists in rural China, and a substantial economic growth rate when such policies really accelereated in the 30s under Stalin.

No it doesn't! It means that they are sticking with what they have now until they have an alternative. Continuing with an interim solution is most likely part of the plan.

But in this case, the "interim solution" is taking up the lions share of funding and focus from the government.

Their ability to pay? They have the fastest growing economy in the world, and soon to be the largest, and they stand to recieve a whole load of debt payments from the US from now to eternity.

The problem is, not all of China is growing equally fast and provincial budgets are tied closely to provincial revenues. The parts of China with high growth rates are the parts that aren't going to be building these new cities. Rural China is extraordinarily poor, and quite simply does not have the money for these projects.

If China were to wake up tomorrow with the same GDP as the USA, that only works out to a GDP of about $1,000 per capita.

So yes, their ability to pay is a huge problem.

What? They haven't even built their new cities yet, and their existing cities and economy are still growing. I ask again what do you expect them to do? You have a short term medium term and long term plan. You are judging the long term plan based on the short term one!

As we've learned in the US time and time again, a long term energy sustainability plan often fails to be executed because of a lack of follow through in short and medium term policy. Given the focus and budget of the Chinese government and CCP, it appears they are having a similar problem.

Where's the investment in domestic solar cell or wind turbine production? If they're serious about getting away from coal and oil, you'd think they would be investing to bypass the expense of these technologies and shortages on the global market (and inability of the global market to meet Chinese energy demand) by opting for at home production. Chinese SoEs likewise seem far more interested in buying stakes in American oil companies than in those that design green energy tech.

Planning is always the same. You start down a planning process, if you get enough complaints the project stops. That is the same the world over. The difference in China is the extent to which they actually heed the complaints.

Actually, in China, planning is quite different. Until Dujiangyan, not a single dam project had ever been scrapped once it was given full approval for construction by the national government. The point I was trying to make is that public opposition to hydropower in China is extremely stiff, stiff to the point of being able to get the CCP and government to reverse a policy course they have already begun to implement.

As I already said, green energy policy has substantial hurdles to beat at the provincial and local level. Even when the central government had managed at Dujiangyan had managed to clear these hurdles, citizens simply would not accept the project

There is no guarantee for anything. The plan is that these cities will run on renewables. And no they will not be built overnight. 300 million is about 22% of the total population of China. I think that is a significant amount. For one thing it is around the same population of the entire United States.

That's 22% of the Chinese population today that will be supposedly be housed in these cities by 2040.

They have said that the 400 cities are going to accomodate the 300million. 400 cities of 500,000 (the planned eventual size of Dongtan) is 200 million. So some will be larger won't they?

And considering that many of these cities will necessarily be located in poorer parts of China than Dongtan, which is located near Shanghai, it would stand to reason that these cities will not be funded as well as this coastal city.

Nowhere does it say that this will be the only sustainable development China initiaties. Their other moves to limit the use of fossil fuels, and to clean up existing use of fossil fuels will also have an impact. The WHOLE POINT is that these developments will be happening anyway, and they can be clean or dirty. Dirty will substantially increase pollution in China. Clean will not. If I were you I would be welcoming it. With the prevailing West wind, whatever pollution gets produced in China is heading your way.

It's not that I'm not welcoming any greener policy coming out of Beijing, I simply understand Beijing's limitations in actually being able to implement such a policy.

Some communities could use solar panels. Some could use wind turbines. If you have a lot of mass produced and easily erected modular generating systems then it is much easier to manufacture them at a central point and transport them to the small isolated communities that need them than to build a massive power station and run cables for hundreds of miles in every direction.

Why isn't China investing in mass production of such turbines though? And what about the communities in China that receive neither large amounts of sunlight every year nor have a great deal of wind availability?

IN THE LONG TERM is exactly wherethis project is supposed to have its effects. That is the point. China are looking at the long term, while the rest of the world whistles.

The US is looking at the long term when it comes to energy sustainability too, and we have been since the 1970s. Transferring long term goals into short term implementation and policy is the issue, and China doesn't have any better a record on that than anyone else.

They don't have to build the cities where the current population live. Where did most of the inhabitants of the US come from?

As I said earlier, they have to build the cities fairly close if they want enough people to move in to meet their goal. Population density is already too high in the coastal areas for them to build a bunch of Dongtan's on the coast and have everyone move over there.

In the US, people moved to the cities, that doesn't mean they all moved from rural areas inland to the coast, and such a demographic change would have adverse effects if it happened here.

Yes it is cost effective. You can do it for individual houses by only digging down a few feet. You can do it on a large scale by flooding mined out coal mines. There is a development in Glasgow right now which is utilising cheap heating from a flooded mine.

http://www.johngilbert.co.uk/resources/geothermal.html

Wait, so how do I do this for an individual home in rural China by only digging down a few feet? The large scale development you mentioned requires either spending money on drilling a hole or geographic proximity to a coal mine, and apparently requires a good deal of investment in pipes and heating pumps

It will not stop the pollution in existing cities. It will prevent pollution growing with 400 new cities that will need to be built anyway. If 22% of the population are living sustainably that has a large impact.

Except there's no guarantee those people will be living "sustainably" in 35 years, and it won't be 22% of China's population in 2040.

I thought the US was a 'can do country' you are desparate for this to fail. What I am impressed with is that China is even trying. We could all learn a lesson from that.

ROFL, how am I desperate for this to fail? How are being realistic and being disparaging the same thing?

The US is trying too, and given the level of investment and development in green power technology here compared to China, we're doing a better job too.

Could be. Or they could be even better than the Government in Beijing plans. I just like the fact that they are planning as opposed to waiting for the hammer to fall.

The problem is that the planning seems to be more a showcase to foreigners and a pie in the sky dream as opposed to a real green energy policy.

All your arguments seem to be based on what they have done in the past and what they are doing now despite the fact that they have these plans for the future. Thats like hearing the weather forecaster saying it will be sunny tomorrow, and responding 'it was raining yesterday, it is raining today, it will rain tomorrow.'

And all of your arguments ignore the fact that even if the policy is long term, we should still be seeing more investment in this policy if it is actually what they plan to accomplish with such a large portion of the population.

You also ignore the fact that Beijing, like Washington or any other government often makes plans and advertises programs that are never accomplished, and that one of the early signs that this will occur is the level of funding and investment given to such projects from the beginning.

Unless someone has tried to make plans to accomodate 66 million US citizens (22% of the population) sustainably, whatever the US has attempted is small in comparison to this proposal.

Again, the 300 million people won't be 22% of the Chinese population in 2040, so you need to revise that figure.

Here in the US, citizens are aware of the fact that any government plan that dictates what it will do in 35 years will probably never amount to anything. In either China or the US, getting 35 years worth of leaders to agree with and actually implement the same type of policy is just about impossible.

 

[ScottishJohn]

I simply said there are significant obstacles in the path of any Beijing initiative to switch to more expensive green energy sources for cities.

There are significant obstacles with pretty much every government or private initiative. Life itself is a process of overcoming obstacles.

Again, no, it's because they don't have any small hydro projects under development or planned that I don't think they will have them in the future. China is far more interested in big dams.

Like I said, if it is raining now, and was raining yesterday, it does not follow that it must be raining tomorrow.

When you consider that they are now building roads, railroads, data lines, etc. to these areas you realize that the cost of the transmission cables is incremental.

It is still a cost, as is the construction of a power station as opposed to small generating units.

Except for the fact that the "low demand areas" in China encompass hundreds of millions of people, and that there aren't enough solar panels in the world to supply them all with electricity.

In 1900 there weren't enough cars in the world for everyone in the US to have one. 50 years later, a different story alltogether.

If hundreds of millions of people are moving from the country to the cities that will reduce the number of people in the countryside needing these services.

Did I say they effectively lost control of the country? No, I didn't, so stop putting words in my mouth.

You have said over and over that you don't think they can manage to fulfill their clean plans, yet you have utter confidence they can fulfill any dirty plans they may have. It makes no sense. Either they are able to run the country or they are not.

My point is that Mao was quite nearly an absolute leader, Hu Jintao and Win Jiabao aren't. China in the reform era has seen a huge decrease in the amount of power held by national authorities in Beijing, and an increase in the power held by local and provincial officials. Those local and provincial officials tend to be less interested in long term environmental efficiency than in low energy costs in the short term, and tend to be less well educated than their counterparts in the national government. That makes them a formidable obstacle in the face of any "green" energy policy made by leadership in Beijing.

Did I say the process would be free from obstacles? Obstacles do not necessarily mean failure.

You know, the density of those "isolated rural areas" isn't uniform across all of China. You certainly could build those new cities in Tibet, Xinjiang Uighur, or Inner Mongolia away from where most of China's rurual population is, but I'm not sure how many people would move there.

If it is the difference between work and no work people will move for miles. A lot of British people emigrated to Canada, the US, South Africa, India and hundreds of other places in order to work. People move where they can make a living.

But that transportation infrastructure and supply routes in most parts of rural China would need huge amounts improvement to support a city.

Did you not say they were already improving transport infrastructure? Will they not have to improve it anyway whether they build sustainable or unsustainable cities?

This has everything to do with the reason people moved AWAY from those cities when the USSR was catapulted into capitalism. Much of the industry in the USSR failed and the wages stopped coming in, so people moved back to the more prosperous areas to find work (although according to you people don't move that far in search of jobs) China is already pretty capitalist.

How do any of those things make it more likely that an arbitrarily built city will be more successful? Russia had lots more room to work with, a large, better educated workforce than exists in rural China, and a substantial economic growth rate when such policies really accelereated in the 30s under Stalin.

And the cities were occupied until they made the rushed and foolishly managed transition to capitalism and everything fell to pieces. China is not making that mistake.

But in this case, the "interim solution" is taking up the lions share of funding and focus from the government.

Could that be because the interim solution is entirely necessary to ensure that the growth which will fund the medium and long term solutions takes place?

The problem is, not all of China is growing equally fast and provincial budgets are tied closely to provincial revenues. The parts of China with high growth rates are the parts that aren't going to be building these new cities. Rural China is extraordinarily poor, and quite simply does not have the money for these projects.

So you are again saying that China cannot build 400 new cities, let alone 400 sustainable ones. You are describing exactly the problem that these cities are supposed to solve!

If China were to wake up tomorrow with the same GDP as the USA, that only works out to a GDP of about $1,000 per capita.

Except the balance of GDP is different. Chinese workers are paid a lot less, tax rates are higher especially for corporations.

http://www.worldwide-tax.com/china/china_tax.asp
http://www.smbiz.com/sbrl001.html#ci

So yes, their ability to pay is a huge problem.

With their economy growing at over 9% compared to the US rate of a little over 3% I would say that their ability to pay is increasing all the time, especially given that such projects will also fuel further growth and bring in more tax.

As we've learned in the US time and time again, a long term energy sustainability plan often fails to be executed because of a lack of follow through in short and medium term policy. Given the focus and budget of the Chinese government and CCP, it appears they are having a similar problem.

What I see is that the US leaves much of its planning to corporations. Therefore there is very little evidence of any plan other than making as big profits as possible.

Where's the investment in domestic solar cell or wind turbine production? If they're serious about getting away from coal and oil, you'd think they would be investing to bypass the expense of these technologies and shortages on the global market (and inability of the global market to meet Chinese energy demand) by opting for at home production.

You expect an awful lot considering we are right at the beginning of this process. These kind of things are indeed necessary, and will follow on if this project is to be successful.

Chinese SoEs likewise seem far more interested in buying stakes in American oil companies than in those that design green energy tech.

Like I said, it is all at the planning stage now, and this is a long term plan, so I am not surprised that they persue other avenues to keep their growth steady in order to fund their long term plans.

Actually, in China, planning is quite different. Until Dujiangyan, not a single dam project had ever been scrapped once it was given full approval for construction by the national government. The point I was trying to make is that public opposition to hydropower in China is extremely stiff, stiff to the point of being able to get the CCP and government to reverse a policy course they have already begun to implement.

So what is your point here? I thought you were saying that they couldn't realise these plans, now you are saying that of all the other plans they have ever made only one has been abandoned.

As I already said, green energy policy has substantial hurdles to beat at the provincial and local level. Even when the central government had managed at Dujiangyan had managed to clear these hurdles, citizens simply would not accept the project.

Why would citizens who want to move to the city discourage the building of cities which would allow them to do just that?

That's 22% of the Chinese population today that will be supposedly be housed in these cities by 2040.

Yes.

And considering that many of these cities will necessarily be located in poorer parts of China than Dongtan, which is located near Shanghai, it would stand to reason that these cities will not be funded as well as this coastal city.

Why? If funds are coming from the central government (who reap the bulk of corporate taxes anyway)?

It's not that I'm not welcoming any greener policy coming out of Beijing, I simply understand Beijing's limitations in actually being able to implement such a policy.

I think you are building a case for why you don't think that they will pull it off, because if they do then there is no excuse for anyone else and the existence of the plan itself puts every other country to shame.

Why isn't China investing in mass production of such turbines though?

Because they are right at the beginning of this process.

And what about the communities in China that receive neither large amounts of sunlight every year nor have a great deal of wind availability?

I've explained this before. There are other sustainable energy sources, and China can pick and choose where they build these cities.

The US is looking at the long term when it comes to energy sustainability too, and we have been since the 1970s. Transferring long term goals into short term implementation and policy is the issue, and China doesn't have any better a record on that than anyone else.

Breaking ground at Dongtan itself puts China a head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. And the US policy on energy is abysmal.

As I said earlier, they have to build the cities fairly close if they want enough people to move in to meet their goal. Population density is already too high in the coastal areas for them to build a bunch of Dongtan's on the coast and have everyone move over there.

People have always moved to the areas where there is work. Why you expect this process to cease is a mystery to me.

In the US, people moved to the cities, that doesn't mean they all moved from rural areas inland to the coast, and such a demographic change would have adverse effects if it happened here.

Most of the people in the US ultimately got there because their ancestors crossed oceans to get there. So why is it so hard for you to imagine Chinese people travelling a few hundred miles across land?

Wait, so how do I do this for an individual home in rural China by only digging down a few feet?

That would be the horizontal loop system.

http://www.waterfurnace.com/content.aspx?section=residential&page=loop

The large scale development you mentioned requires either spending money on drilling a hole or geographic proximity to a coal mine, and apparently requires a good deal of investment in pipes and heating pumps

Well you said that China had plenty of coal mines, so location shouldn't be as difficult as it might be elsewhere. Investment in the pipes and pumps would be offset by the removal of the need to invest in a coal powered generating station.

Except there's no guarantee those people will be living "sustainably" in 35 years, and it won't be 22% of China's population in 2040.

Of course there is no guarantee, but that is the plan, that is what they are working towards and it is admirable. And I never said it was going to be 22% of their population in 2040, I have no idea what their population in 2040 will be. Even if by 2040 300,000,000 is only 10% that will still be 10% more of the population that is currently planned in the US or the UK.

ROFL, how am I desperate for this to fail?

Read back over you posts. Most of your arguments are making mountains out of molehills.

How are being realistic and being disparaging the same thing?

You are not being realistic, realism would imply some kind of balance between disparaging and admiring. There is no balance.

The US is trying too, and given the level of investment and development in green power technology here compared to China, we're doing a better job too.

Now that IS a scream. Look at the US policy on Vehicle fuel alone! That is something to be pretty redfaced about. As is my country's failure to come up with any kind of plan, even a bad one.

The problem is that the planning seems to be more a showcase to foreigners and a pie in the sky dream as opposed to a real green energy policy.

Well we can only wait and see which it is.

And all of your arguments ignore the fact that even if the policy is long term, we should still be seeing more investment in this policy if it is actually what they plan to accomplish with such a large portion of the population.

Dongtan itself is a sizeable investment. It is also something of a prototype.

You also ignore the fact that Beijing, like Washington or any other government often makes plans and advertises programs that are never accomplished, and that one of the early signs that this will occur is the level of funding and investment given to such projects from the beginning.

I think we would need to be further into the project before you could make that point, which is quite legitimate.

Again, the 300 million people won't be 22% of the Chinese population in 2040, so you need to revise that figure.

No I don't. I have never suggested it would be 22% of the population in 2040, for the simple reason I have no idea what the population in 2040 will be. And the 66 million US figure is 22% of the current population too. So we are comparing like with like. Where is the US plan?

Here in the US, citizens are aware of the fact that any government plan that dictates what it will do in 35 years will probably never amount to anything. In either China or the US, getting 35 years worth of leaders to agree with and actually implement the same type of policy is just about impossible.

So that explains the US reluctance to plan at all, and allow the corporations who continue to make money out of bad practice in fuel consumption to drive forward an energy policy which profits them and does little for the consumer or the environment.

 

[LogicChristian]

There are significant obstacles with pretty much every government or private initiative. Life itself is a process of overcoming obstacles.

But provinces like Gansu, Anhui, Tibet, and Xinjiang don't have the money or the education level in the bureaucracy to overcome these obstacles.

Like I said, if it is raining now, and was raining yesterday, it does not follow that it must be raining tomorrow.

So the fact that they aren't even planning construction of even one of these projects doesn't mean anything?

It is still a cost, as is the construction of a power station as opposed to small generating units.

And those small generating units still cost quite a bit to produce, and don't give as much power per dollar on a large scale as do power plants.

In 1900 there weren't enough cars in the world for everyone in the US to have one. 50 years later, a different story alltogether.

If hundreds of millions of people are moving from the country to the cities that will reduce the number of people in the countryside needing these services.

You still have hundreds of millions of people to give solar panels. There still aren't enough solar panels in the world for that.

You have said over and over that you don't think they can manage to fulfill their clean plans, yet you have utter confidence they can fulfill any dirty plans they may have. It makes no sense. Either they are able to run the country or they are not.

Sorry, the issue of the politburo's power in today's China is not a black and white issue. Is the politburo powerful? Yes, but far less so than it was in Mao's day.

The US President is often considered the most powerful man in the world. When he can't get an initiative through, does it mean he is unable to "run the country?"

My comments might make a little more sense to you if you actually went out and took a course in Chinese history in the 20th century or Chinese politics.

Did I say the process would be free from obstacles? Obstacles do not necessarily mean failure.

They do mean on a long term project like this that the end product will likely look significantly different than what Beijing plans. 3 Gorges Dam anyone?

If it is the difference between work and no work people will move for miles. A lot of British people emigrated to Canada, the US, South Africa, India and hundreds of other places in order to work. People move where they can make a living.

Except today, there is a growing sentiment in rural China that the government needs to spread the wealth to rural parts, and there is a common perception in the government that migration from the rural interior to coastal areas needs to be curtailed a great bit.

Did you not say they were already improving transport infrastructure? Will they not have to improve it anyway whether they build sustainable or unsustainable cities?

There's a difference between improving current transport infrastructure and building entirely new infrastructure to get to a new location chosen for wind or solar potential. My point is that if they aren't building cities based on "green" energy, they have a much greater capacity to build new cities near existing power, road, and rail centers.

This has everything to do with the reason people moved AWAY from those cities when the USSR was catapulted into capitalism. Much of the industry in the USSR failed and the wages stopped coming in, so people moved back to the more prosperous areas to find work (although according to you people don't move that far in search of jobs) China is already pretty capitalist.

And how does this have to do with the Russian mafia? The state-planned industries quit being profitable because they were poorly planned, so people left.

That's exactly the problem China faces in building new cities. Just because China is "already pretty capitalist" doesn't mean its leadership is any better at arbitrarily choosing a city site than Stalin was. China's experiences with state owned enterprise should be enough to drive that point home.

And the cities were occupied until they made the rushed and foolishly managed transition to capitalism and everything fell to pieces. China is not making that mistake.

And how would a "well managed transition to capitalism" have solved the problem of the city's core industries being unprofitable, and its citizens lacking the education to do something different?

Could that be because the interim solution is entirely necessary to ensure that the growth which will fund the medium and long term solutions takes place?

So you are again saying that China cannot build 400 new cities, let alone 400 sustainable ones. You are describing exactly the problem that these cities are supposed to solve!

Or could it be that the proposal for sustainable cities is just window dressing that isn't getting the appropriate funding to come to fruition?

Except the balance of GDP is different. Chinese workers are paid a lot less, tax rates are higher especially for corporations.

http://www.worldwide-tax.com/china/china_tax.asp
http://www.smbiz.com/sbrl001.html#ci/

Which is great for provinces like Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Guangdong, but it doesn't provide much funding for government projects in poorer provinces.

Your sources also leave out the fact that corruption in rural areas often increases the tax rate on poor Chinese, and that corruption in urban areas often ends up with corporations, especially those in the large state owned sector, paying little or no taxes.

Sorry, but it's just about impossible to generalize a tax model for all of China, because the nation's taxation system simply doesn't work that way.

With their economy growing at over 9% compared to the US rate of a little over 3% I would say that their ability to pay is increasing all the time, especially given that such projects will also fuel further growth and bring in more tax.

A coal or coalbed natural gas plant brings in further growth more cheaply. The reason China has that 9% growth rate isn't because they've engaged green energy, in fact, it's because they've largely engaged econmic growth at the cost of the environment.

How will buying solar cells or wind generators from abroad going to fuel growth in the Chinese economy more than fuels and power facilities made domestically?

What I see is that the US leaves much of its planning to corporations. Therefore there is very little evidence of any plan other than making as big profits as possible.

I would say that the US and state welfare systems, along with other aid (student financial aid is a huge boon for my poor butt) would prove that wrong.

You expect an awful lot considering we are right at the beginning of this process. These kind of things are indeed necessary, and will follow on if this project is to be successful.

China got serious about providing hydropower free of Soviet advisory, so they started a big project that ended up successful. China wanted its own nuclear deterrant and nuclear power infrastructure, and immeadiately put funding into building both bombs and reactors. China got serious about producing its own modern fighter aircraft, and in a few years, they were producing the J-10 and FC-17 domestically.

Solar cells and wind turbines are somewhat less complicated than fighter aircraft, so if the government in Beijing were really serious, you'd think we could see similar initiatives in China's "green" energy industry to what we have seen in other major focuses of the Beijing government.

So what is your point here? I thought you were saying that they couldn't realise these plans, now you are saying that of all the other plans they have ever made only one has been abandoned.

I didn't say only one plan the Beijing government has ever made has been abandoned. I said no HYDROELECTRIC decisions were overtunred because of grassroots political opposition until Dujiangyan. The point is, even when the government makes a decision and is able to push it through provincial and prefecture level governments, grassroots mobilization is increasingly capable of scuttling those plans.

Why would citizens who want to move to the city discourage the building of cities which would allow them to do just that?

Fear that those cities won't be as successsful as the cities they want to move to, and fear that the government will use the new cities to place other restrictions on migration.

Yes.

So you're fully aware that population growth (much of it occuring in rural areas) will greatly lessen the impact of this project even if it is completely successful?

I think you are building a case for why you don't think that they will pull it off, because if they do then there is no excuse for anyone else and the existence of the plan itself puts every other country to shame.

The problem is, the evidence that they are actually going to go through with the plan just isn't there. If China can pull it off, more power to them, but it doesn't look like they are actually devoting the required resources to do it.

If they are serious, when should we expect them to start giving the process significant funding?

Because they are right at the beginning of this process.

So? They invested in nuclear reactor and weapons production at the very start of their nuclear power/weapons program. They invested in rocket boosters as soon as they began their space program, and they invested in ballistic missiles and landing craft as soon as they got serious about being able to forcibly reunify Taiwan.

I've explained this before. There are other sustainable energy sources, and China can pick and choose where they build these cities.

So the government can just move people out to Tibet or Xinjiang if they decide that those locales are best for renewable sources of power?

China has some latitude over city placement, but not complete latitude in the least.

 

[LogicChristian]

Breaking ground at Dongtan itself puts China a head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. And the US policy on energy is abysmal.

Building a new suburb of one of the wealthiest cities in China isn't terribly difficult. When they actually manage to get rural folks moved into these completely new cities (which you say can and will be located just about anywhere to take advantage of renewable resources) we'll start talking about how successful they are.

US policy is abysmal? We're not the ones that use coal for 65% of energy production and have no widespread plans for clean coal.

People have always moved to the areas where there is work. Why you expect this process to cease is a mystery to me.

I expect the process to cease because the CCP doesn't want more people moving inland to the cities, because city municipal services are already strained, and coastal population density is considered to be too high.

This is why I don't understand the Chinese government using a Shanghai suburb as as shining example of the new policy.

Most of the people in the US ultimately got there because their ancestors crossed oceans to get there. So why is it so hard for you to imagine Chinese people travelling a few hundred miles across land?

Again, the Chinese government's own movement restrictions.

That would be the horizontal loop system.

Uh huh, and all of China's rural population could stay off the grid with similar electricity output as is seen in cities? The site also doesn't say much about the cost or actual power output of such a system.

Your link seems to indicate such a system is used mostly for heating the home, not for electricity.

Also, digging a trench a few hundred feet long is a little harder than "digging a few feet into the ground" as you originally stated.

Well you said that China had plenty of coal mines, so location shouldn't be as difficult as it might be elsewhere.

Again, coal, like wind and solar resources, isn't necessarily where the population is, and is often in harder to get to. Also, pipes and pumps and digging holes tend to be more expensive than wire and telephone pole.

http://www.american.edu/TED/chincoal.htm

Approximately 80% of China's
coal resources are located in mountainous regions far away from the
industrial centers.

Of course there is no guarantee, but that is the plan, that is what they are working towards and it is admirable. And I never said it was going to be 22% of their population in 2040, I have no idea what their population in 2040 will be. Even if by 2040 300,000,000 is only 10% that will still be 10% more of the population that is currently planned in the US or the UK.

Why is it the government's job to make a plan for how we're supposed to buy energy? When fossil fuels get too scarce, I'll buy power from an electric company that uses renewable sources.

Read back over you posts. Most of your arguments are making mountains out of molehills.

Take a course in Chinese history or Chinese politics. Which problem that I've shown you isn't a problem that Chinese leadership has to seriously face when implementing new policy? What exact molehill am I making a mountain out of?

You are not being realistic, realism would imply some kind of balance between disparaging and admiring. There is no balance.

Realism has no relation to being disparaging or admiring, realism has everything to do with evaluating the goals and the resources being allocated to meeting those goals versus other ends, and seeing whether or not Chinese plans are realistic. On even this most basic level of analysis, the plans are not.

Now that IS a scream. Look at the US policy on Vehicle fuel alone! That is something to be pretty redfaced about. As is my country's failure to come up with any kind of plan, even a bad one.

Show me that China has made greater, more intelligent investments in green energy. If it's such a scream, prove me wrong.

Why should a nation have to come up with an energy plan? If the US Congress would quit pushing through idiotic energy plans, we'd have a lot better luck in having the market come up with solutions.

Dongtan itself is a sizeable investment. It is also something of a prototype.

It's also not representative of how such a policy would look in China as Dongtan is a well-funded coastal suburb of Shanghai.

I think we would need to be further into the project before you could make that point, which is quite legitimate.

We'll wait and see then.

No I don't. I have never suggested it would be 22% of the population in 2040, for the simple reason I have no idea what the population in 2040 will be. And the 66 million US figure is 22% of the current population too. So we are comparing like with like. Where is the US plan?

The nations have vastly different population growth rates, so we are not comparing like with like.

As I said, we'd be better off if the US government didn't have a plan, and allowed real world market prices to bring the costs of green technology below that of fossil fuels. The fact Congress blows tens of billions on energy proposals is a good sign that the US has a plan, but like China's it isn't really workable. At least Congress' bad plan doesn't try to plan for building cities that people might or might not move to and figure out the consumer habits and energy market 35 years from now.

So that explains the US reluctance to plan at all, and allow the corporations who continue to make money out of bad practice in fuel consumption to drive forward an energy policy which profits them and does little for the consumer or the environment.

They provide the consumer with cheap energy, they do what they advertise, nothing more. Moving to what you say is an economically better form of power should be a no-brainer for the average citizen, just go for the cheaper source of power. So if green energy really has a lot of growth potential, and really is cheaper, the market will reflect these successes.

 

[ScottishJohn]

Building a new suburb of one of the wealthiest cities in China isn't terribly difficult. When they actually manage to get rural folks moved into these completely new cities (which you say can and will be located just about anywhere to take advantage of renewable resources) we'll start talking about how successful they are.

That is fair enough. I'm quite happy to accept that we cannot predict one way or the other how successful this is going to be in the long term. What I like and admire is that plans are being made, and that they are ambitious plans, and if successful will have a large impact not only on China, but on the rest of the world - setting a new standard.

US policy is abysmal? We're not the ones that use coal for 65% of energy production and have no widespread plans for clean coal.

Again - they are at the beginning of a move to work this out. China are still developing their industry, countries like the US and UK have been industrialised a long time. We have had our quick and cheap growth phase using coal. What impresses me is that China is thinking ahead in way I have yet to see evidence of elsewhere.

http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=2559&language=1

I expect the process to cease because the CCP doesn't want more people moving inland to the cities, because city municipal services are already strained, and coastal population density is considered to be too high.

How does stopping people moving to existing cities amount to preventing them moving to new cities built for them?

This is why I don't understand the Chinese government using a Shanghai suburb as as shining example of the new policy.

Why not site the prototype where it is easily shown off? Of course there is an element of propaganda in this - show me any government initiative in which there is not an element of propaganda. If Dongtan succeeds more people will see it because of where it is, and that will help in raising investment in the cities which follow, as well as encouraging people to move there.

Again, the Chinese government's own movement restrictions.

So you think they are going to build new cities to help the economy continue growing and then stop people moving into them? In what way would that benefit anyone? They are taking this process forward because they know that 300 million people will move into cities over the next 20 years, and that this is necessary to allow the economy to continue growing.

Uh huh, and all of China's rural population could stay off the grid with similar electricity output as is seen in cities? The site also doesn't say much about the cost or actual power output of such a system.

The point is that it is viable and already being used.

Your link seems to indicate such a system is used mostly for heating the home, not for electricity.

Yes. Homes are currently heated with coal, so providing an alternative form of heating reduces pollution and also reduces demand for other forms of energy which maybe used to replace coal. For instance, if a village has this kind of heating system either a communal one, or individual ones, then their demand for coal and electricity (two other possible heating methods one dirty one cleaner) would be reduced. If this heating system is used in conjunction with other sustainable generation equipment then the overall demand for electricity is reduced.

Also, digging a trench a few hundred feet long is a little harder than "digging a few feet into the ground" as you originally stated.

I made no comment about the length of the trenches, I believe you were objecting to the viability of rural communities digging as deep into the ground as is required on conventional geothermal heating. Digging a trench a few hundred feet long is well within the capacity of any able bodied rural inhabitant. Farmers will be undertaking similar activities all the time digging drainage ditches and emptying silted up ones.

Again, coal, like wind and solar resources, isn't necessarily where the population is, and is often in harder to get to. Also, pipes and pumps and digging holes tend to be more expensive than wire and telephone pole.

http://www.american.edu/TED/chincoal.htm

I thought we were talking about rural locations? Pipes and pumps and digging holes may be more expensive than wire and poles, but that is not comparing like for like. That is comparing a method of transmission with a method of generation. This system would only be usefull in a situation where you had a mine near to several villages. In other situations the other methods could be used.

In any case we are discussing hypotheticals here. China have not yet announced any such plans to bring sustainable power to rural areas. At the moment in terms of their sustainability policy they are focussing on building cities. If they can crack the cities, the countryside will be a much easier problem.

Why is it the government's job to make a plan for how we're supposed to buy energy? When fossil fuels get too scarce, I'll buy power from an electric company that uses renewable sources.

Well you can take that view if you wish, but those who fail to manage and plan the changeover from one system to another are going to be left behind. Personally I would prefer to have a government that is looking into and planning for these kind of things, but them I am in favour of large government and I seem to remember from previous conversations that you are not.

Who says there will be enough electricity from sustainable sources to go around?

Take a course in Chinese history or Chinese politics. Which problem that I've shown you isn't a problem that Chinese leadership has to seriously face when implementing new policy? What exact molehill am I making a mountain out of?

I didn't say any of the problems you mentioned were not problems, just that they were not necessarily as significant as you seem to think.

One example of mountains out of molehills is the issue of siting the cities. Pick a good place for sustainable energy, be it solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal, or wind, or any combination of the above, build a city in conjunction with industries looking to expand and find workforces, and people will come.

Another example is your treatement of the problem of one system of sustainable energy not being suitable for a particular area. What you appear to be arguing is that their plans won't work because there are too many areas in China which cannot support ANY of the systems I have mentioned, whereas I am saying there are bound to be areas where some systems are not suitable but the chances of finding lots of areas where none of them work seems remote to me.

Realism has no relation to being disparaging or admiring, realism has everything to do with evaluating the goals and the resources being allocated to meeting those goals versus other ends, and seeing whether or not Chinese plans are realistic. On even this most basic level of analysis, the plans are not.

You have not yet demonstrated that. Your argument runs to: They are not doing it now, so they can't be planning to do it later; there are some areas where some renewable systems wont work therefore it is impractical; they cannot actually carry projects through because the peasant who want these cities and the jobs they will bring will block them; and despite having the quickest growing economy in the world along with low wages and a high tax rate, they will somehow not have the money to undertake these plans.

I just think that you haven't come up with any good reasons why they can't do it, and I am not sure why you are so keen to try?

Show me that China has made greater, more intelligent investments in green energy. If it's such a scream, prove me wrong.

No you made the claim - tell me all about how the US is so far ahead of China?

Why should a nation have to come up with an energy plan? If the US Congress would quit pushing through idiotic energy plans, we'd have a lot better luck in having the market come up with solutions.

You are asking me why a country should plan for the future? Seriously?

You mean solutions like ethanol? You are welcome to as many 'market driven' solutions as you like. the market chooses what it can make the most money from, not what is best for the country or consumer - hence ethanol the market solution which has been accepted by the government and is being funded despite being an awful solution for the country and consumer and being incredibly profitable for the corporations providing it.

It's also not representative of how such a policy would look in China as Dongtan is a well-funded coastal suburb of Shanghai.

Why wouldn't the rest of the cities proposed by the central government be well funded? And why if they are going to replicate this kind of technology 400 times on a massive scale will the cost not drop? A prototype is always expensive.

We'll wait and see then.

That is all we really can do. That is what I plan to do, but I still welcome the initiative.

The nations have vastly different population growth rates, so we are not comparing like with like. [/

As I said, we'd be better off if the US government didn't have a plan, and allowed real world market prices to bring the costs of green technology below that of fossil fuels. The fact Congress blows tens of billions on energy proposals is a good sign that the US has a plan, but like China's it isn't really workable. At least Congress' bad plan doesn't try to plan for building cities that people might or might not move to and figure out the consumer habits and energy market 35 years from now.

They provide the consumer with cheap energy, they do what they advertise, nothing more. Moving to what you say is an economically better form of power should be a no-brainer for the average citizen, just go for the cheaper source of power. So if green energy really has a lot of growth potential, and really is cheaper, the market will reflect these successes.[/QUOTE]

 

[ScottishJohn]

Building a new suburb of one of the wealthiest cities in China isn't terribly difficult. When they actually manage to get rural folks moved into these completely new cities (which you say can and will be located just about anywhere to take advantage of renewable resources) we'll start talking about how successful they are.

That is fair enough. I'm quite happy to accept that we cannot predict one way or the other how successful this is going to be in the long term. What I like and admire is that plans are being made, and that they are ambitious plans, and if successful will have a large impact not only on China, but on the rest of the world - setting a new standard.

US policy is abysmal? We're not the ones that use coal for 65% of energy production and have no widespread plans for clean coal.

Again - they are at the beginning of a move to work this out. China are still developing their industry, countries like the US and UK have been industrialised a long time. We have had our quick and cheap growth phase using coal. What impresses me is that China is thinking ahead in way I have yet to see evidence of elsewhere.

http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=2559&language=1

I expect the process to cease because the CCP doesn't want more people moving inland to the cities, because city municipal services are already strained, and coastal population density is considered to be too high.

How does stopping people moving to existing cities amount to preventing them moving to new cities built for them?

This is why I don't understand the Chinese government using a Shanghai suburb as as shining example of the new policy.

Why not site the prototype where it is easily shown off? Of course there is an element of propaganda in this - show me any government initiative in which there is not an element of propaganda. If Dongtan succeeds more people will see it because of where it is, and that will help in raising investment in the cities which follow, as well as encouraging people to move there.

Again, the Chinese government's own movement restrictions.

So you think they are going to build new cities to help the economy continue growing and then stop people moving into them? In what way would that benefit anyone? They are taking this process forward because they know that 300 million people will move into cities over the next 20 years, and that this is necessary to allow the economy to continue growing.

Uh huh, and all of China's rural population could stay off the grid with similar electricity output as is seen in cities? The site also doesn't say much about the cost or actual power output of such a system.

The point is that it is viable and already being used.

Your link seems to indicate such a system is used mostly for heating the home, not for electricity.

Yes. Homes are currently heated with coal, so providing an alternative form of heating reduces pollution and also reduces demand for other forms of energy which maybe used to replace coal. For instance, if a village has this kind of heating system either a communal one, or individual ones, then their demand for coal and electricity (two other possible heating methods one dirty one cleaner) would be reduced. If this heating system is used in conjunction with other sustainable generation equipment then the overall demand for electricity is reduced.

Also, digging a trench a few hundred feet long is a little harder than "digging a few feet into the ground" as you originally stated.

I made no comment about the length of the trenches, I believe you were objecting to the viability of rural communities digging as deep into the ground as is required on conventional geothermal heating. Digging a trench a few hundred feet long is well within the capacity of any able bodied rural inhabitant. Farmers will be undertaking similar activities all the time digging drainage ditches and emptying silted up ones.

Again, coal, like wind and solar resources, isn't necessarily where the population is, and is often in harder to get to. Also, pipes and pumps and digging holes tend to be more expensive than wire and telephone pole.

http://www.american.edu/TED/chincoal.htm

I thought we were talking about rural locations? Pipes and pumps and digging holes may be more expensive than wire and poles, but that is not comparing like for like. That is comparing a method of transmission with a method of generation. This system would only be usefull in a situation where you had a mine near to several villages. In other situations the other methods could be used.

In any case we are discussing hypotheticals here. China have not yet announced any such plans to bring sustainable power to rural areas. At the moment in terms of their sustainability policy they are focussing on building cities. If they can crack the cities, the countryside will be a much easier problem.

Why is it the government's job to make a plan for how we're supposed to buy energy? When fossil fuels get too scarce, I'll buy power from an electric company that uses renewable sources.

Well you can take that view if you wish, but those who fail to manage and plan the changeover from one system to another are going to be left behind. Personally I would prefer to have a government that is looking into and planning for these kind of things, but them I am in favour of large government and I seem to remember from previous conversations that you are not.

Who says there will be enough electricity from sustainable sources to go around?

Take a course in Chinese history or Chinese politics. Which problem that I've shown you isn't a problem that Chinese leadership has to seriously face when implementing new policy? What exact molehill am I making a mountain out of?

I didn't say any of the problems you mentioned were not problems, just that they were not necessarily as significant as you seem to think.

One example of mountains out of molehills is the issue of siting the cities. Pick a good place for sustainable energy, be it solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal, or wind, or any combination of the above, build a city in conjunction with industries looking to expand and find workforces, and people will come.

Another example is your treatement of the problem of one system of sustainable energy not being suitable for a particular area. What you appear to be arguing is that their plans won't work because there are too many areas in China which cannot support ANY of the systems I have mentioned, whereas I am saying there are bound to be areas where some systems are not suitable but the chances of finding lots of areas where none of them work seems remote to me.

Realism has no relation to being disparaging or admiring, realism has everything to do with evaluating the goals and the resources being allocated to meeting those goals versus other ends, and seeing whether or not Chinese plans are realistic. On even this most basic level of analysis, the plans are not.

You have not yet demonstrated that. Your argument runs to: They are not doing it now, so they can't be planning to do it later; there are some areas where some renewable systems wont work therefore it is impractical; they cannot actually carry projects through because the peasant who want these cities and the jobs they will bring will block them; and despite having the quickest growing economy in the world along with low wages and a high tax rate, they will somehow not have the money to undertake these plans.

I just think that you haven't come up with any good reasons why they can't do it, and I am not sure why you are so keen to try?

Show me that China has made greater, more intelligent investments in green energy. If it's such a scream, prove me wrong.

No you made the claim - tell me all about how the US is so far ahead of China?

Why should a nation have to come up with an energy plan? If the US Congress would quit pushing through idiotic energy plans, we'd have a lot better luck in having the market come up with solutions.

You are asking me why a country should plan for the future? Seriously?

You mean solutions like ethanol? You are welcome to as many 'market driven' solutions as you like. the market chooses what it can make the most money from, not what is best for the country or consumer - hence ethanol the market solution which has been accepted by the government and is being funded despite being an awful solution for the country and consumer and being incredibly profitable for the corporations providing it.

It's also not representative of how such a policy would look in China as Dongtan is a well-funded coastal suburb of Shanghai.

Why wouldn't the rest of the cities proposed by the central government be well funded? And why if they are going to replicate this kind of technology 400 times on a massive scale will the cost not drop? A prototype is always expensive.

We'll wait and see then.

That is all we really can do. That is what I plan to do, but I still welcome the initiative.

The nations have vastly different population growth rates, so we are not comparing like with like.

It is a fair comparisson of what a similarly sized initiative would be whatever that initiative was. A plan to reduce pollution by helping 22% of current population to live and work more sustainably in the future is what China is proposing. I have seen no such proposal from the US.

As I said, we'd be better off if the US government didn't have a plan, and allowed real world market prices to bring the costs of green technology below that of fossil fuels.

How are the subsidies handed out by the Government on solutions like ethanol preventing the market from bringing down the cost of green technology? The fact is that there is currently no advantage to the market to do so so they do not. There is much for the consumer to gain however, but as usual their wants come second to profit.

The fact Congress blows tens of billions on energy proposals is a good sign that the US has a plan, but like China's it isn't really workable.

The only evidence I have seen of a plan is that they hand over this money to private companies to aid 'research' and the companies take the money and come back with a pig in a poke like ethanol which suits them but noone else. The plan is 'let the market sort it out' and we'll give them some money to help them along. That is indeed a poor plan. And it has yet to be proven that China's plans are unworkeable.

At least Congress' bad plan doesn't try to plan for building cities that people might or might not move to and figure out the consumer habits and energy market 35 years from now.

Congress' bad plan doesn't really try to do anything other than hand over wads of cash to companies already turning record profits in return for very little in the way of sustainability.

They provide the consumer with cheap energy, they do what they advertise, nothing more.

Except they don't. Energy is anythign but cheap, and is becoming more expensive by the minute, yet the technology exists to change that, it would just reduce profit margins..

Moving to what you say is an economically better form of power should be a no-brainer for the average citizen, just go for the cheaper source of power. So if green energy really has a lot of growth potential, and really is cheaper, the market will reflect these successes.

Except who is providing it when they can make more profit from other more expensive less sustainable sources? The market if it were free might do so, but the energy market is somewhat cornered by giants