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Yangtze River Delta

Due to its rapidly growing industries and social development, China is facing immense energy and environment challenges. The International Energy Agency expects China to overtake the US around 2025 to become the world’s biggest spender on oil and gas. China has traditionally used fossil fuel energy, but with their rapidly growing energy consumption, China is becoming increasingly more interested in other sources of energy and environmental matters.

Being the world’s second-largest energy consumer and with challenges such as desertification, water shortage, air pollution and electricity rationing, China is keen on exploring and investing in technologies and knowledge that can help ease these challenges.

Shanghai’s energy and environment goals in its 5-year development plan ending this year is to:

• cut the energy consumption in unit GDP production to about 20% by 2010
• keep the investment into environment protection projects at 3% of the city GDP
• more than 80% of household and industrial waste should be treated before being discharged into local rivers, 80% of urban sewage treated, and 85% of the year rated good-air days

With a large part of the population in Jiangsu province depending on healthy and clean waters to produce aquatic products, there is growing efforts to clean and protect the rivers and lakes from pollution.

China's photovoltaic industry has developed at the rate of more than 40% per year. Jiangsu, which accounts for 70% of China's capacity, has more than 70 photovoltaic enterprises and nearly 500 supporting enterprises. Enterprises in the city of Nanjing account for a relatively large part of Jiangsu's photovoltaic production. In January 2010, Taiwan's Sun Well Solar Co Ltd. signed an agreement with Nanjing New High-Tech Zone to build a US$600-million manufacturing base that will have an annual production capacity of 300 MW of thin-film solar cells by 2015. It will be the first thin-film solar manufacturing base in Nanjing. Reportedly, the plant will use a process that will require only one-fiftieth of the raw silicon needed by traditional technology to make the same products. Sun Well Solar was founded by CMC Magnetics Corp in 2008 and is now one of Asia's largest thin-film cell producers.

In recent years, the Zhejiang government has focused on developing and securing the organic farming and the surrounding nature. Furthermore, they have concentrated their energy saving efforts on further utilisation of solar energy, biogas systems and wind and hydro power. Zhejiang is one of the provinces advanced in the utilization of multiple-source power generation including hydro, thermal, wind, tide and nuclear power.

Zhejiang is one of the pioneers in China on energy and environment issues and this combined with the province’s sound purchasing power, presents a huge commercial potential for the energy sector.