Miracles Where the Sun Shines

Living in Beijing right now has made me rather ambivalent toward China’s environmental policies. It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the PRC isn’t the poster country for eco-consciousness. Almost everybody drinks their water either boiled or from a bottle, and a blue sky day in Shanghai or Beijing is a rare day indeed. To its credit, however, the planet’s largest consumer of energy is attempting to clean up its act through measures such as a nationwide plastic bag ban or putting on a Green Olympics, and, most inspiring—or paradoxical—of all, being home to several solar cities. And no, these solar oases are not showpieces, developed solely for admiration during the Olympics. Here are but a few of the most well-known.

Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan province, has been referred to as China’s “Solar City,” although it is not by any means The solar city. But with more than half of the city’s 4.7 million inhabitants all using solar hot water systems, and nearly every single apartment complex sporting at least a few on their rooftops, it’s not an undeserved title. Yunnan Normal University’s Solar Energy Research Institute, founded in 1971, houses laboratories focusing on solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, biomass energy and environmental engineering. Yunnan Normal is also home to one of China’s three National Solar Water Heating Testing Centers, which provide free testing services to the solar industry in order to facilitate product certification. Thanks to government incentive programs encouraging technology development, updated building codes and product certification centers over the past thirty years, the solar thermal industry has matured as nicely as it has up to this point. Thanks to a ruthlessly competitive domestic market, low manufacturing costs and China’s abundant sunlight (even Beijing receives lots of sun, for all its smog!), the price of a typical solar hot water heater—not including installation fees—fell to 1,600 rmb (~$235 US now) by 2007. There are clothes that cost more than that.

In more recent developments, there’s also the northeastern city of Weihai, in Shandong province, which hopes to become the largest solar city in the world. With help from Australia’s BP Solar, China seeks to emulate Australia’s Solar Cities initiative, which was responsible for the solar development of a Sydney suburb and the city of Adelaide, among others. There’s a lot of official hoo-hah in BP’s press release, but the figure that stands out most from it is the deployment goal of 100MW of solar PV, solar thermal and “energy efficiency applications.” Announced in April, the project is apparently still in the fuzzy planning stages—as evidenced by a lack of online information—but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more details as they surface.

And now, the best for last. Behold, the pride and joy of China’s State Environmental and Protection Agency (SEPA): Rizhao, a coastal city of three million in Shandong province whose name means “sunshine.” Both Renewable Energy World and Inhabit profiled it last year, but a city in which 99 percent of its inhabitants use solar water heaters and whose traffic, street and park lights are all powered by PV cells deserves a second (or third) look. What originally first came as a shock to me is the fact that Rizhao incomes are not high. Considering that America’s model “green” cities—San Francisco, for one—are hardly the playgrounds of the poor, I was surprised when I read that per capita incomes in Rizhao are lower than the Chinese national average and even lower than neighboring Shandong cities. But then it made sense: Rizhao’s mayor, Li Zhaoqian, wanted to increase the city’s efficiency and save on energy costs, and save he did—as of 2007, the city reduced 52,860 tons of CO2 emissions from solar water heaters alone and saved about 9,333 rmb ($1,807 US in 2007, $1,372 now) annually.

The city now stipulates that all new buildings must incorporate solar panels, and strongly encourages government buildings and officials’ homes to be the earliest adopters. Although the municipal government played a large role in Rizhao’s successful solar development by raising public awareness of the benefits of solar through campaigns and education, Rizhao’s going solar was also a consequence of provincial governmental policy and the growth of its local solar industries. Because the local government lacks the financial power to provide the costly subsidies required to subsidize solar panel end users, Shandong’s provincial government subsidizes instead the research and development of the solar hot water industry in order to lower unit costs. In Rizhao, a solar water heater now costs roughly 4 to 5 percent of an urban household’s annual income and 8 to 10 percent of a rural household’s income. The provincial government works with local solar panel companies to lower costs, as well. Not bad, considering how China’s environmental disaster is in large part due to provincial officials’ refusal to comply with national environmental laws in order to turn a profit.

Since Rizhao went solar in the early 1990s, it has not only been designated by SEPA as China’s Environmental Protection Model City, but has also attracted increasing amounts of foreign investment and tourism. It has also played host to several international and domestic sporting events and has attracted several high-profile Chinese universities and professors to build campuses, complexes and homes on its soil.

Of course, a similar success story occurring in the U.S. would be difficult to come by in the same manner. Labor and materials, after all, aren’t quite as cheap here. Yet, with the right support in the appropriate industries and development of low-cost, high-efficiency daily appliances, perhaps an otherwise unremarkable little city in the U.S. can undergo a similar transformation as well.