Events
How Many Light Bulbs Does it Take to Change China? — China’s Strategies for Lowering Energy’s Environmental Footprint
October 03, 2013 // 12:00pm — 2:00pm
Webcast
Coming Soon
There will be a live webcast of this event.
In 2007, the Chinese government answered the call by the Global Environment Facility to begin banning all inefficient light bulbs. According to a 2008 study by China’s Energy Research Institute, if China pursues a LED-heavy switchover by 2020 (which now appears likely), approximately 85 TWh of energy could be saved, roughly equivalent to the Three Gorges Dam’s annual output. This phase out is but one of the energy efficiency strategies that helps support China’s ambitious energy goals in the 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans. The energy efficiency, low carbon development, and ambitious renewable energy targets in these plans have been prompted not only in an effort to promote energy security, but also to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from coal.
The speakers at this CEF meeting will go well beyond light bulbs in discussing China’s sweeping, comprehensive and aggressive measures to improve air quality by capping coal consumption and better regulating pollution emissions from coal-fired power plants. These measures build upon China’s recent adoption of PM2.5 standards and requirements for cities to publish PM2.5 data in real time. In December 2012, the National People’s Congress issued a law to require regional multi-pollutant air quality plans that affects 113 key Chinese cities and requires them to:
- Set up key emission control areas by 2015 and mandate emission reductions for major pollutants, including PM2.5;
- Create coal-free zones in all key control areas that encompasses at least 80% of the city’s geographic area; and,
- Establish caps on the total quantities of coal that can be consumed, and reduce these quantities by 2015 and 2020.
At this meeting, Christopher James (Regulatory Assistance Project) will talk about these and other new comprehensive and stringent air quality measures targeting the energy sector. Jeremy Schreifels (U.S. EPA) will focus on emission trends in NOx, a key precursor of PM2.5, and China’s 12th Five-Year Plan reduction targets for NOx emissions from power generation. He will highlight some of the costs and potential of emissions trading to lower NOx. Darrin Magee (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) will briefly explore radical end-use efficiency and large-scale hydropower as two options for addressing electricity production and carbon reduction needs in China. Darrin’s talk draws on his involvement with the Rocky Mountain Institute’sReinventing Fire: China project and his research on large-scale hydropower development in China over the past decade.
LOCATION:
6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center
Event Speakers List:
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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Principal, The Regulatory Assistance Project
- Darrin Magee //Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Hobart and William Smith College
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