NPR   Asia

China Shuts Down Tens Of Thousands Of Factories In Unprecedented Pollution Crackdown

Rob Schmitz, Heard on Morning Edition         October 23, 2017

A woman wearing a face mask walks on a street as Beijing is hit by polluted air and sandstorms on May 4.     Andy Wong/AP

In the gritty industrial town of Yiwu, workers prepare jeans to be dyed in a vivid range of colors.

Two months ago, this factory — and this entire city, located in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang — was a much quieter place. Inspection crews from the environmental bureau had shut businesses down, cutting electricity and gas so that they could determine who was following China’s environmental laws and who wasn’t.

The boss of this factory, who asked that his name not be used for fear of punishment by local officials, says he’s never seen anything like it.

“It had a big impact on our business,” he says. “We couldn’t make the delivery date since we [were] shut down. It’s not just our factory. All the factories out here had this issue.”

This is happening across the country: Entire industrial regions of China are being temporarily shut down, and the unusual sight of blue skies is reappearing as environmental inspectors go about their work. After decades of doing little about the pollution that has plagued much of the country, China’s government may be finally getting serious about enforcing its environmental laws.

“So, basically, you’re seeing these inspectors go into factories for surprise inspections,” says Gary Huang, founder of 80/20 Sourcing, which connects foreign clients with China’s supply chain. “They’re instituting daily fines, and sometimes — in the real severe cases — criminal enforcement. People are getting put in jail.”

In the past year, China’s Ministry of Environment has sent inspectors to 10 provinces, where they’ve reprimanded, fined, or charged officials in more than 80,000 factories with criminal offenses. Entire swaths of Eastern China have halted production, prompting some companies to move entire supply chains to countries like India and Bangladesh to meet their orders.

“It’s a huge event. It’s a serious event. I think many of us here believe it will become the new normal,” says Michael Crotty, president of MKT & Associates, a company that exports textiles from China. Crotty says in his nearly two decades in China, he’s never seen a crackdown of this magnitude. “The consumers of China don’t want red and blue rivers. They don’t want to see gray skies every day.”

China’s crackdown reminds Crotty of 1970s America after the Clean Water Act was passed.

“At that time, we in the textile business saw many dyeing and printing houses shut down because they couldn’t comply with the regulations. We’re seeing a similar process taking place here in China, and it’s much, much bigger. The disruption is larger,” he says.

Crotty’s colleague Archie Liu, general manager of MKT & Associates, estimates that 40 percent of China’s factories have been at least temporarily shut down in the latest spate of inspections. He says that’s a good thing.

“After all, factories will be better, more sustainable, and more socially responsible after being inspected,” he says. “It’s better for our supply chain. Then we can tell Walmart, Costco, and other retailers of ours that we’re qualified and that everything we make for Americans are environmentally friendly.”

After a quarter century of living in China, Shanghai environmental lawyer Peter Corne is gleefully celebrating the new environmental crackdown.

“This is better than a 100-percent pay raise for me,” says Corne, managing partner at Dorsey & Whitney’s Shanghai office. “I was just dreaming about it. I never thought it would come true.”

Corne says what’s most promising about this new enforcement are the new fees that are being imposed when factories, whose emissions are now monitored in real time, discharge more than the law allows.

“The implementation will be totally different,” Corne says. “It won’t be the environmental bureau that’s implementing anymore. They’ll just be monitoring. It will be the tax bureau that’s implementing it.”

This is crucial, says Corne, because China’s tax bureaus are powerful entities backed up by rigorous laws that, when violated, are typically met with aggressive local enforcement. Corne’s confident the economic hit will be temporary as companies that specialize in clean tech get a boost from so many factories now being forced to comply with much stricter laws.

But in the short term, that’s little consolation for businessmen like Michael Crotty.

“So, short-term, the disruptions are pretty significant, and the timing, quite frankly, is difficult,” Crotty says.

Difficult, because these shutdowns have impacted supply chains producing goods for the upcoming Christmas season in the U.S. Crotty thinks Americans will see an increase in prices on the shelves this holiday season due to the breadth of China’s factory shutdowns.

But, he says, it’s a small price to pay for a cleaner China.

Yuhan Xu contributed research to this story.

HuffPost

From Impact

These 5 U.S. Towns Are Powered Entirely By Renewable Energy

“For too long, dirty fuels have jeopardized the health of our communities and put our children’s future at risk.”

Alison Moodie on assignment for HuffPost     October 21, 2017

Robert Nickelsberg via Getty Images. An array of 366 solar tracking devices in South Burlington, Vermont.

As President Donald Trump stands his ground on fossil fuels and works to roll back America’s climate and clean energy policies, cities around the country are committing to renewable energy ― and a handful already get all their power from sources such as wind and solar.

Over the past decade, five locations ― Aspen, Colorado; Greensburg, Kansas; Burlington, Vermont; Kodiak Island, Alaska; and Rock Port, Missouri ― have successfully made the switch to 100 percent renewables.

Since Trump was elected in November, the number of cities and towns that have committed to using only clean power sources has more than doubled, with 46 cities, including Atlanta and San Diego, promising a move in that direction, said Jodie Van Horn, campaign director for the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 initiative. The campaign, which launched in 2016, is challenging 100 U.S. cities to commit to 100 percent clean energy.

“For too long, dirty fuels have jeopardized the health of our communities and put our children’s future at risk,” said Van Horn. “Now cities are not only our best offense, they’re also our best defense against Trump’s destructive policies.”

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Cities play a key role in reducing carbon emissions, since they account for roughly 75 percent of global C0₂ emissions. It’s becoming easier for cities to clean their air as renewable energy continues to become more affordable. Once extremely costly, wind and solar will become the cheapest sources of electricity globally by 2030, according to research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

While cities’ pursuit of 100 percent renewable energy is an “admirable goal,” the feasibility of every city achieving this target depends partly on the city government’s mandates and how they define what “100 percent renewable” means, said Michelle Davis, senior solar analyst at GTM Research.

Even the five towns that have already made the transition had different ideas about how to reach this target, Davis said. So one city’s path to 100 percent renewable energy could look very different from another’s.

“It’s one of the main areas of criticisms of most of these renewable energy targets and policies ― it is not consistent from state to state and city to city exactly how an entity claims they are meeting certain renewable energy goals,” Davis said.

Another challenge lies in who runs a city’s electric grid, she said. Some grids are run by municipal utilities, which means the city can decide whether it wants to integrate cleaner energy options. However, other cities have grids that are run by a statewide monopoly utility. These cities don’t have jurisdiction to make those decisions.

But as clean energy technologies continue to become more affordable and efficient, a 100 percent renewable power target should be within reach for most cities.

“Right now the cities that are doing it are ones where ‘the right conditions’ ― already a good energy mix, rich ― are in place, but this doesn’t need to persist,” said Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Cities can all essentially source green energy and use offsets to fill gaps until more clean generation comes online.”

1 Rock Port, Missouri

Bill Grant / Alamy Stock Photo

In 2008, Rock Port, a small farm town in northwest Missouri, became the first community in America to be powered entirely by wind energy. Four large wind turbines are connected to the power grid and provide Rock Port’s 1,300 residents with more electricity than they can use.

2 Greensburg, Kansas

EMMANUEL DUNAND via Getty Images

A rural hamlet in south-central Kansas, Greensburg is the little town that could. When a tornado devastated Greensburg in 2007, half the town’s population of 1,400 left. Those who stayed decided to rebuild their community with sustainability at its core. Greensburg met its 100 percent renewable energy goal in 2013, harnessing the very thing that decimated it: wind. They also used solar and geothermal technologies. The city buys its electricity from a 12.5 megawatt wind farm just outside of town, which provides more energy than the town needs, allowing it to sell the excess.

“The wind that destroyed Greensburg is also the wind that would make us energy sustainable,” said Mayor Bob Dixson.

A big hurdle was cost. Rebuilding with an eye on going green would set the town back 20 percent more than if it had stuck with conventional energy sources and building materials. But the investment is paying off in the long term: Greensburg now saves $200,000 annually in energy costs for its largest buildings, which are all LEED certified.

3 Kodiak Island, Alaska

Wolfgang Kaehler via Getty Images

Since 2014, Kodiak Island in southern Alaska has been 99 percent powered by wind and hydro. A decade ago, Kodiak got the majority of its power from hydro, but it was still burning 2.8 million gallons of diesel a year to make up the energy shortfall, at a cost of $7 million annually. So the island’s electric utility company set an ambitious goal that 95 percent of the community’s power would come from renewable energy sources by 2020. Kodiak succeeded in meeting its target six years ahead of schedule. It was a steep learning curve. The city bought three 1.5 MW wind turbines in 2009, but installing them was a challenge. “There was not a lot of information back then on how to keep the grid frequency and voltage steady with an influx of variable wind power,” Kodiak Electric Association CEO Darron Scott told the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. “It was uncharted territory.”

4 Burlington, Vermont

SeanPavonePhoto via Getty Images

Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, achieved 100 percent renewable electricity in 2014 when it bought a hydropower facility on its outskirts. Burlington, which once relied heavily on coal, is now powered by a combination of energy from burning wood chips, wind, solar, landfill methane and hydropower. During times of high demand, Burlington might use a small amount of power that comes from fossil fuels, but it generates and trades enough renewable energy during the year to effectively cancel out that usage. The city estimates it will save $20 million over the next two decades.

5 Aspen, Colorado

aimintang via Getty Images

Aspen is a winter ski destination for the mega-rich, and it’s also one of the greenest towns in America. Ski resort towns have been hit hard in recent years as warmer winters mean less snow, so they’ve been ahead of the curve in tackling the effects of climate change. Aspen committed to a 100 percent renewable energy target in 2007 and achieved its goal in 2015 using primarily wind and hydropower. It wasn’t an easy road getting there. The city already had two hydroplants – built in the 1980s – to draw power from, and by 2014 it was using around 80 percent renewable energy. To close the final gap, Aspen decided to buy wind power from other states rather than resurrect a third hydroplant, which would be too costly.

EcoWatch

By Oil Change International

Air Pollution Kills 9 Million, Costs $5 Trillion Per Year

Air pollution in China. V.T. Polywoda / Flickr

By Andy Rowell     October 20, 2017

“For decades, pollution and its harmful effects on people’s health, the environment, and the planet have been neglected both by Governments and the international development agenda. Yet, pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and death in the world today, responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths.”

So begins the executive summary of the landmark Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, just published. It continues: “The substantial health and economic costs of pollution globally can no longer be ignored.”

The introduction to the report is stark: “Pollution is one of the great existential challenges of the Anthropocene epoch … Pollution is now a substantial problem that endangers the health of billions, degrades the Earth’s ecosystems, undermines the economic security of nations, and is responsible for an enormous global burden of disease, disability, and premature death.”

Some of the statistics and findings are startling. People are not just dying—they are getting sick and living with years of disability. This has an economic toll. The “welfare losses due to pollution to be more than US$4.6 trillion per year, which is equivalent to 6.2% of global economic output.”

If the message was not unambiguous enough: Air pollution “threatens the continuing survival of human societies.”

The impact on health is immense: Air pollution was responsible in 2015 for 19 percent of all cardiovascular deaths worldwide, 24 percent of ischaemic heart disease deaths, 21 percent of stroke deaths, and 23 percent of lung cancer deaths.

However, the burden is disproportionately on the poor and the world’s most vulnerable. More than ninety percent of all pollution-related mortality is seen in low-income and middle-income countries.

Children are also “at high risk of pollution-related disease and even extremely low-dose exposures to pollutants during windows of vulnerability in utero and in early infancy can result in disease, disability, and death in childhood and across their lifespan.”

The commission points the finger at the fossil fuel industry: “Pollution is intimately linked to global climate change. Fuel combustion—fossil fuel combustion in high-income and middle-income countries” is a key driver of pollution and “coal is the world’s most polluting fossil fuel, and coal combustion is an important cause of both pollution and climate change.”

“We fear that with nine million deaths a year, we are pushing the envelope on the amount of pollution the earth can carry,” said professor Philip Landrigan at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-led the commission.

Landrigan told the Guardian that the scale of deaths from pollution had surprised the researchers and that two other “real shockers” stood out. First was how quickly modern pollution deaths were rising, and secondly, “The current figure of nine million is almost certainly an underestimate, probably by several million.”

Landrigan added, “We always hear ‘we can’t afford to clean up pollution’—I say we can’t afford not to clean it up.”

Instead of cleaning up pollution and pioneering a clean energy future, the Trump administration is promoting dirty fossil fuels, including coal. Gina McCarthy, former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, criticized the Trump administration after the report was released: “Now is not the time to go backwards in the U.S. Environmental protection and a strong economy go hand in hand. We also need to help other countries, not only for the benefit it will bring them, but because pollution knows no boundaries.”

It does not have to be this way. “This Lancet Commission should inform policy makers and serve as a timely call to action. Pollution is a winnable battle … Current and future generations deserve a pollution-free world,” the commission said in an editorial.

The time to act is now.

ThinkProgress

Pollution kills more people each year than war, AIDS, and malaria combined

According to a landmark new study, the U.S. tops the list of developed countries with the highest rate of pollution-related deaths.

Natasha Geiling         October 20, 2017

Pollution in Delhi, India. (CREDIT: AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)

A landmark new study on the public health impacts of global pollution found that toxic air, water, and soil are responsible for the deaths of nine million people each year, more than the number that die from war, hunger, malaria, and AIDS — combined.

The study, published on Friday in the Lancet, warned that pollution is so dangerous it “threatens the continuing survival of human societies.” According to the study, which pulled data from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ongoing Global Burden of Disease project, pollution accounts for 16 percent of deaths worldwide — 15 times more than deaths from war and conflict, and three times more than deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

“This is an immensely important piece of work highlighting the impact that environmental pollution has on death and disease,” Maria Neira, the WHO director of public health and the environment, told the Guarding. “This is an unacceptable loss of lives and human development potential.”

Most of these nine million deaths occur from pollution-related diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, and lung-cancer. The majority occur in developing nations, where rapid industrialization combined with lax regulations translate into higher exposure to toxic air, water, and soil pollution for residents. But the study found that pollution-related deaths do occur in industrialized nations, with the United States and Japan topping the list for most “modern” pollution-related deaths, from things like fossil fuel-related and chemical pollution.

According to the study, outdoor air pollution from things like cars or industrial activity is responsible for some 4.5 million deaths each year, nearly half of all pollution-related deaths — a number that experts estimate will only increase in the coming years, with air pollution deaths in southeast Asia expected to double by 2050. Another 2.9 million deaths come from indoor air pollution, from things like wood-burning stoves, which are still used throughout the developing world for heat and cooking. Toxic water is responsible for another 1.8 million death each year; sewage-laced water, for instance, is often linked to illnesses like cholera or parasitic infections. Workplace pollution — prevalent in industrialized countries — accounts for some 800,000 deaths each year.

Researchers warned that nine million could be an underestimate of the true number of deaths due to pollution each year, as the link between pollution and certain diseases — like dementia or diabetes — is an area of emerging science. Researchers also pointed to the unknown impact of hundreds of widely-used chemicals and pesticides prevalent in the environment, which could increase the total number of pollution-related deaths.

According to the study, while sources of “traditional pollution” — like wood-burning stoves and toxic water — have declined in recent years, sources of “modern pollution” — largely defined as pollution from industry — has increased at a stunning rate.

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Two new studies support findings that polluted air causes dementia.

The study also linked pollution deaths to lost economic output, finding that on average, pollution-related deaths resulted in a 6 percent hit to global GDP (a loss of $4.6 trillion each year). In developing countries, pollution-related deaths were linked to a 1.3 percent loss in national GDP, compared with a .5 percent loss in developed countries.

“What people don’t realize is that pollution does damage to economies,” Richard Fuller, head of the global pollution watchdog group Pure Earth, told the Associated Press. “People who are sick or dead cannot contribute to the economy.”

The report comes as the Trump administration looks to roll back a number of pollution-related regulations in the United States, from stricter limits on ozone pollution from industry to limits on toxic discharge allowed for coal companies. Before coming to the agency, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt sued the EPA to stop stricter regulations on the limits of allowable mercury and ozone from industry, and questioned the EPA’s science on the relationship between methane emissions from the oil and gas industry and air pollution.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is currently considering two Trump administration nominees to the EPA that would have an outsized-impact on the agency’s work regarding air and water pollution — William Wehrum, who is currently nominated to lead the EPA’s air and radiation office, and Michael Dourson, who is currently nominated to lead the EPA’s chemical and pesticides office. Wehrum has questioned the consensus view on climate science, while Dourson has spent years working with chemical companies to argue for less protective standards for chemical and toxic control.

But going back on pollution regulation will only worsen the public health threats faced by residents of developing and developed countries. According to the Lancet study, while sources of modern pollution have been increasing, the drop in traditional pollution shows that regulations and pollution controls can in fact have tangible public health and economic benefits.

“Now is not the time to go backwards in the U.S.,” Gina McCarthy, EPA Administrator under the Obama administration, told the Guardian. “Environmental protection and a strong economy go hand in hand. We also need to help other countries, not only for the benefit it will bring them, but because pollution knows no boundaries.”

EcoWatch

Electric vehicles are gaining momentum across the globe. National Geographic‘s Years of Living Dangerously sent Ty Burrell to meet with a mechanic to find out why.

EcoWatch

Electric Vehicles Will Soon Be Cheaper Than Gas Guzzlers

By Lorraine Chow     September 27, 2017

Good news for car drivers looking to go electric. In a handful of years, these zero-emission vehicles will be cheaper than traditional gas guzzlers, according to a new report from investment bankers Cowen & Co.

The analysis, compiled by Cowen managing director and senior research analyst Jeffrey Osborne, determined that electric vehicles will cost less than gasoline-powered cars by the early- to mid-2020s due to falling battery prices as well as the costs that traditional carmakers will incur as they comply to new fuel-efficiency standards.

These factors, Osbourne notes, will spur EV adoption from 1 percent of all global sales this year to 3 percent in 2020 and 7.5 percent in 2025.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported similar findings in May.

“Falling battery costs will mean electric vehicles will also be cheaper to buy in the U.S. and Europe as soon as 2025,” the report said. “Batteries currently account for about half the cost of EVs, and their prices will fall by about 77 percent between 2016 and 2030.”

Osbourne pointed out that a number of major car brands are hopping onto the electric bandwagon to compete in a space carved out by industry disrupter, Tesla.

“We see the competitive tides shifting in 2019 and beyond as European [car makers] roiled by the diesel scandal and loss of share to Tesla in the high margin luxury segment step on the gas and accelerate the pace of EV introductions,” he wrote.

Volvo Cars announced in July that every car it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor, marking a “historic end” to the internal combustion engine.

And earlier this month, Volkswagen Group, the world’s biggest automaker, announced plans to offer an electric version across the company’s 300 models by 2030 and will be rolling out 80 new electric cars under its multiple brands by 2025. The German company, which is trying to rebound after its emissions-cheating scandal, is investing more than 20 billion euros ($24 billion) in zero-emission vehicles to challenge Tesla.

Not only that, the Cowen report comes as an increasing number of countries such as China, Scotland, France and India announced intentions to ban diesel and gasoline cars in order to cut fossil fuel emissions.

EcoWatch

By DeSmog 

China Is Showing the World What Renewable Energy Dominance Looks Like

By Ben Jervey         October 4, 2017

The growth of solar energy continues to outpace forecasts and this growth, according to a report published Wednesday by the International Energy Agency, (IEA) “is a China story.”

While China today is far and away the global leader in solar generation, a decade ago, the country had just 100 megawatts of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed. That’s nothing. For reference, it’s actually less than is currently installed in the city of San Antonio. By the end of 2016, China had increased its solar PV capacity by nearly 800 times, with more than 77 gigawatts currently installed.

China’s solar dominance is only going to keep growing, according to the IEA report. As Dr. Paolo Frankl, one of the lead authors on the report, said on a call to reporters, “In one year, China will install the equivalent of the total history of solar development in Germany.”

The stunning growth trajectories reflected in the IEA report show how quickly the transition to renewables can be underway when aggressive policies cut through the barriers to growth.

The Renewables 2017 report takes a deep dive into renewable energy deployment across all industries and throughout the world, but the dominance of solar PV stands out. As a whole, renewables represented nearly two-thirds of new electricity capacity additions last year, far outshining coal and natural gas growth. For the very first time, solar PV additions grew faster than any other resource, surpassing coal growth.

Put simply: The world is now building more solar than coal generation, a trend that looks to continue, regardless of any uncertainty in current American energy policy. Most new demand for electricity is being supplied by renewable resources, with solar providing the most.

“The star is really becoming solar PV, which becomes the leader in renewable growth,” said Frankl.

The report forecasts out the next five years of renewable energy growth, a short time-frame that is easier to project than some forecasts—like, say, the Energy Information Agency—that are routinely criticized. Over the next five years, the IEA anticipates renewables growing by roughly 1,000 gigawatts. “That is half of the total capacity of coal fired power plants worldwide,” said Frankl, “and it has taken 80 years to build all of those.”

Did you get that? Over the next half decade, the world will install half as much renewable energy as the current entire global capacity of coal power.

As China is proving, there is a dramatic shift in how emerging economies are powering their development. From the report:

Along with new policies that spur competition in several other countries, this Chinese dynamic has led to record-low announced prices of solar PV and onshore wind, which are now comparable or even lower than new-built fossil fuel alternatives.

Developing countries are now looking to renewables as engines of economic growth. This includes India, which according to this year’s forecast, will soon leap ahead of the European Union with the third largest growth in renewable capacity, after China and the U.S. “Soon—and, we hope, very soon—African countries may see the next wave of development supported by cheap renewable power,” the IEA report anticipates.

Despite the clear trajectory of global energy supply towards renewables, as reflected in this IEA report, the Trump administration is currently threatening tariffs on cheaper Chinese solar panels and has just proposed a bailout for uneconomical coal plants. “What would the tariff accomplish?” Frankl asked rhetorically. He then answered, “One thing is for sure: they would make U.S. PV much more expensive than it is today.” Because Chinese companies account for more than 60 percent of global PV manufacturing—and thus set global PV prices—and American companies produce relatively little to the global market, it’s hard to project how the proposed tariff would effectively rescue the American companies. Rather, it would slow PV deployment in the U.S. at precisely the time the rest of the world is pivoting aggressively to solar.

Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.