Chemical Engineering August 2013 - 5

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The greening of China
he AchemAsia exhibition and conferences (www.achemasia.de) are a
pretty good guide to trends in the chemical process industries (CPI) in
China. Held every three years, you can measure changes simply by studying
what is on show, and what delegates have come to hear. When the 15,000
or so attendees came to Beijing this past May, one of the biggest things on
their collective mind was environmental protection and water treatment.
Organizer, Dechema e.V. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany; www.dechema.de),
says that of 418 exhibitors, 116 were showing environmental solutions, while
135 were displaying water treatment technologies. The AchemAsia conference
program was no less focused on the environmental future. We have come
to think of environmental concerns as being at the bottom of the list for China
in its dash for growth. But that may be changing. Here's why:
First, China's business model is shifting fast. The last 30 years have seen
the country become the world's factory, based on low-cost production. Those
days are over. China's costs are rising rapidly, for labor, for raw materials,
and for energy. It no longer makes sense to import oil valued at $90-100/
barrel to convert it into cheap plastic goods for Americans and Europeans
to buy. There may be a transition period as commodity industries move inland
to the West of the country to take advantage of lower wage costs there,
but China's will have to become a high-tech economy. Nothing else will be
sustainable in the long-term. The shift to high-tech will be accompanied
by more efficient use of energy and resources, and a shift out of commodity
businesses. Expect to see the rise of materials science companies, focused
on and enabling the growth of sectors such as energy efficiency, renewables
technology, biotechnology, batteries, electric cars and semiconductors.
The second reason is that China is investing in alternative energy with
the same all-out ferocity that it once reserved for coal investments. Its current
five-year plan calls for a rise in the proportion of power generated from
non-fossil fuels of 3.4% to 11.4% of total energy use by 2015, to be accompanied
by a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 17% compared with
2010. Solar, wind, renewable fuels and nuclear all have growing shares of
the energy mix.
China also has big reserves of shale gas. The deposits are not in wide flat
beds like in the U.S., but are often affected by fault lines and other geological
features that make drilling difficult. The country lacks the technology to
recover shale gas over long distances from the well head and many basins are
in water-poor areas. But when these problems are overcome, as they will be,
we can expect China to shift its energy generation platform quickly to include
a significant proportion of gas, resulting in cleaner-burning fuel, with much
lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal, if it is managed properly.
Finally, you cannot forget that China is a centrally planned economy, at
least for now, and that the full weight of the state can get behind renewable
fuels, for example, without waiting for legal and incentive structures to come
into place, as would happen in the U.S. or Europe. And while five-year plans
are not reliable guides to what happens in practice, they do indicate intent -
in this case to go " greener. "
China's green shift will have implications for the CPI
around the world. We can expect more basic R&D and
process design to originate in China as it searches out
a high-tech future. We can expect a redrawing of the
world map of where high- and low-tech products are
made. Finally, as the wealth and power of China's 1.2
billion people starts to rise, we will see that China's decisions
today will affect the manufacturing standards
we adopt tomorrow.
■
John Pearson, CEO, Chemical Industry Roundtables
4 Choke Cherry Road, Second Floor
Rockville, MD 20850 * www.accessintel.com
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM AUGUST 2013 5
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Chemical Engineering August 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering August 2013
