The CEQ on FT.com: Potemkin goes green

The environmental toll exacted by China’s breakneck growth has put pressure on Beijing to make the country look cleaner and greener. But green initiatives collide with the hard fact that most local governments still value economic growth over everything else.

One handy solution to this conflict is the “eco-town” – massive development projects that claim to incorporate the latest and greatest in environment-friendly and energy-saving technology. Eco-towns enable local governments to demonstrate their environmental bona fides while getting on with business as usual. Western engineering and environmental technology firms are eager to help, either to improve their environmental branding or in the hopes of unlocking a huge new market.

The hype is immense, but the reality of most eco-towns is disappointing, according to a survey of big urban environment projects in the recent issue of China Economic Quarterly by Paul French, Shanghai-based research director for retail industry consultancy Access Asia. Worse, the obsession with creating green Potemkin villages diverts attention from simpler, boring, low-tech tactics in existing cities (e.g., requiring insulation for all new buildings) that would bring far greater environmental benefits at far less cost.

Huangbaiyu, a poor village in northeast Liaoning province, was chosen in 2003 as the site of China’s first “ecologically sustainable” model village. Things haven’t gone as planned. The project was sponsored by the Portland, Oregon-based China-US Center for Sustainable Development (CUCSD) and led by American “green” architect William McDonough and Deng Nan, daughter of Deng Xiaoping.

The main aim was to cut energy costs by building new houses out of hay and pressed-earth bricks (developed by America’s Vermeer Manufacturing) and incorporating full southern exposure, complete insulation, rooftop solar panels, radiant heat floors and pipes for bringing in cooking gas produced by a nearby methane-from-biomass plant.

The first 42 houses were completed in late 2006; only three used Vermeer’s eco-friendly bricks. The rest used bricks made of hay and compressed coal-dust – triggering a debate over whether the coal dust represented a health risk. Only one house had solar panels and none faced south.

The new houses were supposed to cost Rmb28,000, but actual prices soared to Rmb100,000, well beyond what villagers could afford. Now both the developer and the local government are refusing to provide additional investment, and many villagers are unhappy. The project’s future looks bleak.

An interesting contrast is provided by Rizhao, a rather ordinary city of 3m on the Shandong coast that has chosen not to build a ritzy enviro-suburb but simply to convert as much as possible of the city’s energy consumption to solar power.

Ninety-nine per cent of households in the city centre, and 30 per cent in the suburbs, have solar panels that power their lights and water heaters; about 6,000 households also use solar power for cooking. Traffic signals, street lights and most of the lighting in city schools rely on solar.

This impressive record was achieved not by an eco-city branding campaign or the enlistment of fancy foreign engineers. Rizhao went solar the old-fashioned way: with subsidies and cheap technology.

The municipal government heavily subsidised solar water heaters. The government estimates that running a solar water heater rather than an electric one will save the average household Rmb1,000 a year – around 5 per cent of average household income in the city. It ran campaigns across the city to highlight these financial benefits.

The government encouraged the use of hanging-type solar panels, which are cheaper and easier to install than traditional fixed panels. It also mandated that all new houses must incorporate solar panels.

The result has been a significant reduction in electricity and coal use: Rizhao has several times been listed by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) as one of the best 10 cities in China for air quality. The city also has experienced a boom in domestic tourism and a range of inward investment: Rizhao was chosen to host one of the International Sailing Federation’s World Sailing Championships, and both Qufu Normal University and Shandong Institute of Athletics are setting up new campuses in the city.

These contrasting cases suggest some simple lessons. Huangbaiyu shows that local community participation is crucial. Shannon May, a PhD candidate at the University of California at Berkeley who lived in the village during the project, noted that while CUCSD blamed the problems on “structural challenges,” local residents complained about lack of consultation. Villagers agreed that energy-efficient houses would be nice, but felt that other problems were more urgent: health care, education, care of the elderly.

In a country long addicted to “model village” flim-flammery, it is a close call whether the Rizhao example will win out over the Potemkin temptation. Shanghai has won scads of headlines for a massive eco-town proposed for the nearby island of Dongtan. The project – which bizarrely calls for the construction of a “sustainable city” on wetlands next to a bird sanctuary – has high-level backing from the British government, and the UK’s marquee engineering firm Arup is to handle construction. But several environmental organisations have pulled out of the project, saying its eco-credentials are overblown. Both Chongqing and Kunming have also begun touting eco-town projects, but few details are available beyond the inevitable “artist’s impressions.”

Developers and officials sometimes argue that the eco-towns can test new technologies and urban lifestyles which can then be extended to existing conurbations across China. The evidence suggests that planners would do better simply to focus on improving the places where people already live.