By forcing many inefficient steel and cement plants to close, the economic crisis is providing an opportunity to restructure China's energy inefficient economy, said Dr. Yang Fuqiang, chief representative of the Beijing office of the Energy Foundation, a US-based non-governmental organization.

Dr. Yang, just back from the Global Climate Summit in California made the remark at a workshop on the low-carbon economy and the current financial crisis held in Beijing on November 21, 2008.

An economic slowdown could help China realize energy-saving and emission control targets that the government might have previously struggled to achieve, said Dr. Yang. Lower energy prices provide a great opportunity to implement a fuel tax, which will help to curb oil consumption and encourage a move to clean energy in the long run,.

Black worries

But the fall in the price of oil may have a negative effect on the clean energy industry as investors adopt a wait and see approach against a background of cheap fossil fuels, warned Dr. Yang.

Furthermore, the global economic crisis will make it more difficult to raise investment funds to finance conversion to a low-carbon economy, Yang said.

To combat the economic slowdown, China has announced a 4-trillion-yuan bailout plan and has announced many new investment projects.

Local governments have followed suit with their own plans which in total may reach a gigantic 10-trillion-yuan. Most of them are infrastructure projects.

Many of the projects will be energy and resource intensive, repeating the process by which China spent its way out of the 1997 Asia financial crisis, said Ms. Wu Changhua, Greater China director of the Climate Group, adding "the task of industrial restructuring should not be ignored in the rush to invest."

Cooperation on road to a greener future

Dr. Yang called for the world to use the occasion of the Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland on December 1-12, 2008, to boost cooperation on energy efficient technologies.

Countries should pool their scientific resources to work on new clean energy solutions, such as cutting the cost of renewable energy, and developing CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology, Dr. Yang said.

More exchanges are needed between governments, to increase mutual trust and avoid misunderstanding, Dr. Yang urged.

China has the best technology in the coal-to liquid and gasification sectors and can make a major contribution to a global low-carbon development path.

Furthermore, China's supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants are 10-15% more efficient than their competitors, and are a technically feasible way to implement clean coal technology, Dr. Yang added.

(China.org.cn by Wang Zhiyong November 23, 2008)