China's love affair with the car shuns green vehicles

Country overtakes the US to become world's largest automobile market, as global sales pass the 1bn mark

Jonathan Watts in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 August 2011 09.08 BST

Beijing used to be famous for the millions of bicycles thronging its streets. But it is the success of the motor car there and in other Chinese mega-cities that has now tipped the number of cars in the world over the 1bn mark.

According to a report by the trade journal Ward's, 35m new cars and lorries were sold worldwide last year – the second-biggest increase ever recorded. That is 95,500 extra vehicles being added to the global traffic jam every day.

Almost half of the new growth is in China, which recently overtook the US as the world's biggest car market thanks to the sales of 13.8m new passenger vehicles. Despite the surge in sales, car ownership in China is still only half the global average.

But hopes that the country will also become a pioneer in the shift towards "clean car" technology have suffered a setback as the Chinese show little sign of interest in electric and hybrid vehicles despite ambitious government plans. Last year, Toyota managed to sell only one Prius – the world's most commercially successful hybrid car – in the fastest-growing market. Sports utility vehicle sales, by contrast, are surging.

This is not just affecting Toyota. It had been hoped that government subsidies and policy support would help China's manufacturers, such as BYD, to leapfrog better established overseas rivals by mass-producing electric cars.

But BYD has scaled back its ambitions after failing to find a market because of costs, safety concerns and underdeveloped battery technology. Reflecting the lack of progress, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao recently published an article in a Communist party journal calling for a rethink of China's "road map" towards alternative powertrain vehicles – those that do not rely only on a conventional internal combustion engine.

In a report earlier this week, IHS Automotive, a Shanghai-based consultancy, said the takeup for such vehicles was far behind the government's time-frame. It noted, too, the lack of interest in the Prius, which has witnessed sales in China fall from about 200 in 2009 to just one in 2010. It is not known who made that solitary purchase – industry analysts said it was unlikely to be an individual as there is little technical support for the model. "It may be a domestic rival that bought the hybrid to strip it down and see how it works," said one industry observer who did not want to be named.

Among registrations of new passenger cars were 850,000 SUVs – a rise of 24% – including 425 Hummers. Since then car sales have flattened but the luxury sector is still surging.

Thanks largely to its business in China, Mercedes announced earlier this year the highest monthly worldwide car sales in the company's 110-year history. BMW, Audi and Rolls-Royce are also recording strong sales which have pushed China to the forefront of their global strategies.

This runs directly opposite to the government's stated goal of creating a more equal, environmentally friendly nation, suggesting a change of strategy may be needed. The state is unlikely to completely abandon its promotion of "clean" car technology, but it may have to revise its plans.

The government's current aim is to put 1m "new energy" vehicles on the roads by 2015 – electrics and plug-in hybrids – but this now looks overambitious. Despite subsidies of 60,000 yuan (£5,700) for pure electric vehicles and 50,000 yuan (£4,700) for plug-in hybrids in five pilot cities, there have been few buyers because regular cars are still cheaper and more reliable. According to IHS Automotive, electric vehicles sales are unlikely to reach a tenth of the state's target over the next five years. Rather than jump directly to electric cars, it now expects bureaucrats to pay more attention to hybrid cars and fuel-efficient conventional vehicles. Although "in the long term pure [electric vehicles] may still become mainstream, it is welcome to see the government slowly but surely recognising that its targets are inflated," IHS noted.

Many are still betting on the Chinese market. GreenTech Automotive of the US recently announced a venture with Shengyang ZhongRui to create a plant in Inner Mongolia with capacity to build 300,000 electric and hybrid cars a year.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of cars and motorcycles in China increased twentyfold. In the next 20 years it is forecast to more than double again, which means there will be more cars in China in 2030 than there were in the entire world in 2000.

The big brands argue that there is room for growth. Only one in 16 Chinese people owns a car, which is less than half the global average. If the country were to match the three-in-four ownership levels of the US, that would mean an extra 900m vehicles.

Given the frequent traffic congestion and smog even at current levels, it is hard to imagine that ever happening. Even if all the new cars were hybrid or electric, the congestion would be incredible. Beijing has already begun restricting new licence registrations. Sales have flattened.

"Green growth" now looks a less likely prospect than a simple market slowdown.

Carbon credits for farming endorsed

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Australia's parliament yesterday endorsed the world's first national scheme that regulates the creation and trade of carbon credits from farming and forestry, complementing government plans to put a price on carbon emissions from mid-2012.


The laws, the first major bills passed by the government with the Greens' support in the Senate since the Greens took the balance of power on 1 July, are a precursor to the carbon-price legislation to be put before parliament later this year.

Land use including agriculture accounts for 23 per cent of Australian emissions. REUTERS

Energy-saving 'setsuden' campaign sweeps Japan after Fukushima

Neon lights are switched off, trains are running slower and billboards flash energy savings as Japan looks to alternative sources of energy beyond nuclear power

Suvendrini Kakuchi in Tokyo for IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 August 2011 12.24 BST

After decades of not bothering to switch off the lights in unoccupied rooms in their Tokyo home, Masayoshi Sakurai and his children now meticulously make sure they do.

"My wife used to badger us to switch off the lights because she was worried about high electricity bills. Now all of us have begun saving energy, by reducing the use of air-conditioners, turning off the computer and so on," explained the corporate employee.

Sakurai is part of a growing movement in Japan, led by a media campaign called 'setsuden' (power saving in Japanese), that has begun to spread support for limiting electricity consumption.

"Public support is strong for setsuden mostly because they fear power blackouts of the type caused by the disastrous Fukushima nuclear accident," says Kazuko Sato, of Soft Energy Project, a non- government organisation that lobbies for renewable energy expansion.

Sato told IPS that the energy saving mood sweeping the country is a new trend in Japan that gives an opportunity to push for clean energy over national policy that favours nuclear power.

She explained that the challenge facing green activists is to link the setsuden mood to banning nuclear energy.

"To push renewable and safe energy to the national forefront and reduce Japan's reliance on nuclear energy, it is important to sustain the current public setsuden mood. I am worried that the public support could be temporary," she said.

Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind provide for less than two percent of Japan's total power consumption.

Tokyo, a bustling capital famous for its neon lights, has now turned into a city of darkened buildings and slower running trains. Billboards at major crossings flash daily rates of power consumption that tell whether the city has conserved sufficient energy to avoid a blackout.

Hisayo Takada, energy expert at Greenpeace Japan, a leading environment organisation, says such developments are important but do not necessarily translate into public anger against nuclear power.

"The public setsuden sentiment is merely symbolic. Everybody is joining the bandwagon as an expression of solidarity at a time of distress. What is more important is to create a deeper front against dangerous nuclear power," she told IPS.

A massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 destroyed Japan's largest nuclear power plant at Fukushima, forcing the government to review the national policy on nuclear energy that currently meets 30 percent of the national demand.

Japan has 54 nuclear reactors of which only 15 are in operation currently, with some of them set to undergo stress tests as a precaution after the Fukushima disaster.

As a result, the total electricity supplied by the ten major utilities in July dropped by almost nine percent, or 83 billion kilowatt hours, in comparison to supply in 2010, according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies.

Well-known Japanese author Kazutoshi Hanto, in an interview on Japanese television, likened the current power-saving efforts to 1945 post-war Japan when people worked hard to rebuild their country.

"National unity in the form of setsuden mirrors the early post-war diligence of the Japanese who worked single-mindedly to rebuild the country.

"There are new ideas and efforts rising from the worst nuclear disaster in Japan," Hanto said.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan is pushing a national goal to generate 20 percent of electricity from alternative energy sources such as solar and wind. Japan will legislate to mandate utilities to buy electricity generated from these sources at prices set by the government.

Such steps are long overdue, environmentalists say. There is also increasing interest among equipment manufacturers to develop energy saving products.

Major companies such as Toshiba Corp and Mitsubishi Electric Corp announced collaboration last month to promote next generation energy-saving housing that will use solar panels and home appliances linked to a computer network to save power.

The fear that the Fukushima accident is threatening massive radiation contamination has led to rising opposition in Japan to nuclear power. Its operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, is struggling with huge compensation payments.

"The difficult times we face today present an opportunity which we must not miss. Post-disaster Japan has to change and we can only do this through a long-term approach to develop a safer Japan," Sato said.