Beijing rudely awakened from green
dream By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China's resolve to abandon its
decades-old habit of pursuing economic growth at
any cost and instead promote energy conservation
and environmental protection has stumbled because
of resistance from development-minded local
officials and powerful interest groups.
In
an embarrassing blow to China's top leadership,
which has cast itself as an advocate of green
development, the country missed its
much-publicized goals of reducing energy
consumption and pollutants last year. Despite a
target of cutting energy use per
unit
of gross domestic product (GDP) by 4%, consumption
actually increased by 0.8% in the first half of
the year and indices for the main pollutants
continued to rise.
Last year was "the most
grim year for China's environmental situation",
Pan Yue, deputy head of the State Environmental
Protection Agency (SEPA), said in a statement last
week. "The goals set out by the cabinet at the
start of the year have absolutely not been
achieved."
After nearly three decades of
breakneck economic growth, China has some of the
most polluted cities in the world. All of the
country's major rivers are dangerously
contaminated, with millions of people lacking
access to clean drinking water.
There was
a pollution accident once almost every two days
last year, Pan admitted, with authorities
receiving 600,000 environmental complaints. The
number was up 30% over 2005.
The failure
in energy-saving and pollution controls is seen as
a result of the diehard attitudes of local
officials who continue to tie their career
achievements with GDP growth figures. After
extolling the virtues of rapid economic growth for
27 years, Beijing is struggling to reverse the
tide of its blind pursuit by establishing a "green
development index" as a performance indicator.
The new green GDP index attempts to
account for environmental degradation and resource
depletion caused by economic development. Over the
past two years, green GDP projects have been
launched in some 10 Chinese provinces and
municipalities, including the capital and the
northeastern port hub of Tianjin.
Yet
central-government officials have conceded that
such projects have met with resistance by local
civil servants.
"A lack of economic
motives is the fundamental reason for the local
governments' weakness in reducing energy
consumption and improving environmental
protection," Chen Qingtai, a senior economic
official under the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference, was quoted recently by
the state news agency Xinhua.
The failure
has prompted Beijing to get tough with penalties
for polluters and energy wasters. Last week the
country's environmental watchdog targeted major
state companies and provincial governments that
missed their targets in 2006.
Four of the
country's top power firms will not get
environmental approval for any projects until they
solve pollution and energy-consumption problems in
their existing plants, Pan Yue announced. Without
such approval, construction of new plants is
illegal.
Four industrial cities were also
penalized for lending support to local projects
that violated environmental standards and caused
serious pollution, according to SEPA. The watchdog
said it will suspend approval for all new projects
in the four cities.
The new crackdown is
bolder than SEPA's previous attempts to safeguard
environmental standards because for the first time
it targets big state firms, including large steel
and power companies.
"It is the first time
since the establishment of the administration
[SEPA] that such penalties have been meted out to
punish those administrative regions, industries or
large enterprises," Pan said.
The target
list covers 82 projects with a combined value of
more than 112 billion yuan (US$14 billion). Top
power companies such as China Huaneng Group, China
Huadian Corp and China Guodian Corp, which
represent the bulk of the country's
hydropower-generation capacity, are named and
shamed for failing to install devices to remove
sulfur and shut down unsafe generators.
Pan said some enterprises had promised to
cut pollution and energy consumption when their
projects were banned by SEPA, but failed to do so
once the local governments relaxed their
environmental controls.
One example is the
city of Tangshan, whose 70 steel factories account
for one-tenth of the country's output. According
to Pan, 80% of these steel factories, the majority
of them small plants, were never approved by SEPA.
In the future, highly polluted cities such
as Tangshan will be carefully scrutinized when
applying for permission for new construction
projects, Pan said.
China wants to reduce
energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20% in the
five years from 2006 to 2010. To get back on tack
with its targets this year, Beijing is considering
higher export taxes to curb exports of
energy-intensive or polluting goods, and tax
breaks for energy-saving products.
China's
state banks are also joining Beijing's crusade
against polluters. The People's Bank of China, the
central bank, is working on a green scheme that
would evaluate the eligibility of companies for
loans based on their environmental performance.
Enterprises that have poor environmental
records risk having their applications for bank
loans rejected, according to Su Ning, the bank's
deputy governor.
"This [move] will
encourage enterprises to think more about the
effect their operations have on the environment,"
Su said at a press briefing in Beijing last week.
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