April, 2008:

Annemarie Evans – SCMP – Updated on Apr 07, 2008

A hundred cyclists campaigned yesterday for a cycle path along Victoria Harbour by cycling along the waterfront – or rather, the limited parts of it they could get to.

Led by Ho Loy, the heritage activist and failed Legislative Council by-election candidate, marshals from the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance and Hong Kong Cycling Information net and a contingent from the Civic Party, they made their way from Cadogan Street in Kennedy Town over to Sheung Wan.

Some also planned to cycle back to Planning Department offices in North Point, to post a letter outlining the need for a harbour cycling path.

Civic Party leader Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, who saw the cyclists off at the start, said that unlike the New Territories there were no facilities for cyclists on Hong Kong Island.

“Why should a cycle path be seen as a luxury item? Why does everything have to be about the dollar sign?” she said.

Ms Ho said the Eastern District Council had asked the Planning Department for a boardwalk under the Island Eastern Corridor, which could easily double alongside a cycle path.

Organisers were unhappy with the way police split the group into batches of 10 cyclists on the road. “They forced us to start up separately,” said alliance member Martin Turner. “If we’re all in one group, it’s much safer. It would also have been less trouble for the police.”

A police community relations officer said the riders needed to split up in order not to block traffic.

Frenchman Richard Ferge, 36, and his English wife, Stani, are staying in Hong Kong for two weeks having taken several years off work to cycle around the world.

“It’s quite challenging to cycle here,” Mr Ferge said. “It’s not an environment with cyclists in mind. Particularly in Europe, people in cities are returning to the bicycle. But here and in Shanghai they have moved from the bicycle to the car.”

Legislator Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, who cycled with several other members of the Civic Party, said: “I think a bike path along Hong Kong Island is something people long for, so we’re in support of that.”

Timothy Chui – Monday, April 07, 2008 – The Standard

Forty cyclists became pathfinders yesterday when they carved a route from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan through congested streets to dramatize their fight for a harborfront cycle path.

The group included conservationist Ho Loy and Civic Party lawmakers Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, Mandy Tam Heung-man and Audrey Eu Yuet- mee.

They stopped off at the North Point headquarters of the Planning Department to deliver a letter from the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance and Hong Kong Cycling Information.net.

The HKCA and HKCI want a bicycle path included in the department’s seafront promenade blueprint.

Eu said the government’s policy of squeezing every dollar per square foot has left out considerations such as allowing more open space for the public on the south side of Victoria Harbour.

“We’ve been indoctrinated into an air-conditioned city environment to the extent that a cycle path is a luxury.”

Cycling enthusiast Dick Chan Tak- hung, 50, said: “The town isn’t bike friendly and forcing riders off sidewalks into sharing the road with car drivers is dangerous.”

Without providing adequate cycling networks, the government has put cyclists in harm’s way, Chan added.

There were two fatalities last year. A seven-year-old boy was killed in April and a 13-year-old boy the following month after being struck by vehicles while cycling.

Kandy Wong in Shanghai – Updated on Apr 07, 2008 – SCMP

For cement makers, it’s all about price and pollution. The mainland is experiencing surging steel and coal prices. But cement industry executives who met in Shanghai last week said the price of the basic raw material for buildings and toll-roads was only half that of international prices.

“A higher price will give investors a fair return,” said Tom Clough, a member of the executive committee of Switzerland’s Holcim, one of the world’s largest cement producers with a 40 per cent stake in A-share listed Huaxin Cement.

The average price for thermal coal rose 20 per cent last year and analysts said steel prices would increase 25 per cent this year on soaring demand for iron ore. But the average price for cement only rose 7 per cent last year to 600 yuan (HK$667) per tonne.

Industry executives said they needed higher prices, and not just for shareholders.

“Many Chinese cement companies need funds to upgrade their technology and enhance environmental protection,” said Mr Clough.

The cleaner way of making cement is the modern dry process. Limestone and other materials, such as sand, iron ore and clay, are put in a rotary kiln at temperatures as high as 1,450 degrees Celsius to produce black and nodular clinker, the precursor of cement.

The central government is encouraging mainland cement companies to adopt the dry process because it can be upgraded to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming.

But only about 55 percent of the industry uses this technology. The rest use a much older, cheaper technology, heating up limestone and coal in a simple big burner to producing cement, releasing sulphur and carbon dioxide into the air.

“Cement companies should always be aware of energy efficiency and emission reductions,” said National Development and Reform Commission official Jia Yinsong.

“The 59 low-temperature, heat-saving electricity generating machines used for the cement companies last year saved 1.4 million tonnes of coal and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 3.64 million tonnes.”

One way Beijing is attacking the pollution problem is consolidation.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission suggested early last year that the cement industry should be led by 12 pillar companies. It is a policy that would require industry consolidation to eliminate small, polluting companies.

But Huaxin Cement chief executive Li Yeqing has a different goal.

“The top 12 are already here in terms of capacity, but not in terms of performance and profitability,” he said. “What we need is modern ideas from global players by transforming technology into quality and performance because big cement companies should aim to be national brands.”

Mr Clough agreed. “China should have a slight change in mentality about big being impressive,” he said. “They should be concerned about profitability.”

Cameron Dueck – Updated on Apr 05, 2008 – SCMP

Insurance companies have begun selling environmental insurance policies on the mainland, marking what could be the start of a trend towards more responsible corporate behaviour and broader government requirements for industrial companies to buy pollution liability coverage.

Environmental insurance forces companies to clean up their act because a company must improve its environmental security before it buys coverage, and thereby a system of requiring such insurance raises pollution standards.

Insurers will not cover a company which is not already showing an attempt to reduce the risk of environmental damage.

“The petrochemical, oil and gas companies clearly have exposure, as well as the manufacturing sector. We’ve also placed policies in the real estate sector in partnership with banks, the high-end commercial or residential projects,” said Jim Finnamore, regional environmental practice leader at insurance broker Marsh. Insurers and brokers declined to provide the names of policy buyers.

Foreign companies such as ACE Group, AIG and Chubb Group are leading the push along with state-owned People’s Insurance Co of China (PICC).

“We have sold a few policies, but I’d say that by the end of the year we expect our business in this area to be much more significant,” said Karl Russek, who heads ACE Group’s international environmental risk business.

ACE is the largest shareholder in Hutai Insurance, which last month became the first local firm to gain approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission to offer environmental coverage on the mainland. The company is offering coverage for both first-party clean-up and third-party claims with limits up to US$25 million.

“The early customers have been multinationals that have large consumer brands which are globally sensitive or have financing tied to environmental requirements,” Mr Russek said.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa) in February introduced a “green insurance system” requiring industrial companies to buy insurance against potential environmental damage. That CIRC-backed plan will try to provide closer monitoring of companies and help victims obtain compensation, particularly if the polluting firm was unable to make amends or if it declared bankruptcy.

Sepa said it would introduce the programme on a test basis in several regions with the goal of having a nationwide system in place by 2015. Insurers predict the pilot will be launched within months in one of the heavily industrialised southeastern provinces.

“The regulators are actively soliciting from the insurance industry for suggestions on how the programme should be structured,” Mr Russek said.

The extra cost of buying yet another form of liability insurance may keep local companies from signing up until they are forced to do so.

“We’ve developed a product for hi-tech companies, which has been approved by CIRC and we’re now discussing that product with some clients,” said Shao Yunzhou, director of liability insurance product development at PICC. “But at the moment a lot of companies can’t afford the high premiums, so we’re now researching other options, like low-limit coverage.”

China’s system of mandatory environmental insurance is expected to be similar to that of countries such the United States and Germany. While mainland industrials may not operate as cleanly as their counterparts in Europe, the key thing that insurers need in order to start underwriting is clear and consistently enforced rules.

“Provided there is a standard, we can underwrite to that standard,” Mr Russek said. “While it’s clear there’s not the same history of regulation in China as there is in some places, one should not doubt the seriousness with which Sepa is approaching this.”

The agency has introduced a green securities policy to force firms to undergo environmental inspections before raising capital and a green credit policy to limit bank lending to energy-intensive and polluting industries.

While the agency has been spinning its wheels in trying to launch these policies its success rate could change after Beijing last month elevated the status of Sepa to ministry level, creating the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Agence France-Presse in Yamagata – Updated on Apr 04, 2008

Skier Kazumi Furukawa can vividly recall the time three years ago when she stood on Mount Zao and looked down at fir trees turned into glittering crystals.

“The sky was cobalt blue and I could see the tiny snow crystals on the tips of the tree branches,” Ms Furukawa, 56, remembers with a smile.

But these days, the natural phenomenon is growing rarer, and scientists say the culprit is beyond Japan’s control – industrial pollution from China.

Mount Zao is whipped every year by wet winds from across the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, that form hoar frost – layers of ice and snow that shine like crystals on trees. The Japanese call them juhyo, or ice trees.

Skiers from Japan and other Asian nations regularly fly to the 1,600- metre mountain just for a glimpse of the juhyo, which local people describe as little monsters for their intricate twisted shapes.

Fumitaka Yanagisawa, an assistant professor of Yamagata University who has studied the juhyo for nearly two decades, warns that the frost is increasingly mixed with acid, spelling danger for the trees’ future.

This year, he recorded the highest levels of acid so far, “which could have severe ramifications on the ecosystem”, he said.

Looking at satellite data, he and another professor, Junichi Kudo of Tohoku University, concluded that the acid in the trees came from sulfur produced at factories in Shanxi province .

Since he first wrote about his research in a scientific journal in 2006, elementary-school teachers have asked him to give lectures to local children.

“It’s hard to explain this kind of scientific evidence to children, but finally they seem to come up with the same question: `What are you going to do about the problem?'” Professor Yanagisawa said.

He regretted that he had no good answer.

“The pollution comes from outside Japan. There’s a limit to what local residents here can do.”

Mount Zao is only one example of pollution hitting Japan from China, where factory emissions are causing international concern as China’s economy surges ahead.

Some schools in southern Japan and South Korea have occasionally curbed activities because of toxic chemical smog from China’s factories or sandstorms from the Gobi Desert caused by deforestation.

Environmental ministers of China, Japan and South Korea agreed last year to look jointly at the problem, but Tokyo has accused Beijing of secrecy.

“About yellow sand, I am not quite sure how and why it can be regarded as a national secret,” Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita said in February.

Scrap import tariffs on green machines, Paulson tells Beijing

Bloomberg – Updated on Apr 04, 2008

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has urged the mainland to drop tariffs on environmental equipment, saying trade barriers are hindering efforts to clean up a country that the World Bank says has 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.

“There’s something that doesn’t seem economically sensible and morally right” about charging a tariff on clean technology, Mr Paulson said after his speech on energy and the environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences yesterday.

“In China, I hear from government officials about the need for US technology to help clean up China’s rivers and control pollution from China’s many smokestacks, but that technology can be expensive, in part due to tariffs and non-tariff barriers,” he said. “We have a shared interest in resolving these dilemmas, and we can solve them.”

He said imported water membrane technology could help reduce river pollution from power plants.

The Ministry of Commerce did not immediately comment.

Mr Paulson said China and the US – the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – must work together to cut their dependence on oil and increase energy security.

The nations signed a deal in December to ensure imports and exports met environmental protection law standards, and pledged to co-operate to promote alternative fuel technologies for cars. Since then, they have been fleshing out the accord, Mr Paulson said.

He praised efforts to reduce the amount of energy used per unit of gross domestic product, but said more needed to be done. He urged Beijing to lift price controls on electricity and fuel which he said upset “the natural equilibrium of markets to match supply and demand”.

Washington this week rejected Beijing’s proposal for developed countries to contribute a percentage of their GDP to offset the impact of climate change.

Mr Paulson is meeting leaders appointed to the cabinet last month to prepare for the next round of bilateral talks on economics and trade. He and mainland leaders have also discussed topics ranging from the authorities’ response to unrest in Tibet to the strength of the yuan. Yesterday he described the rise in value of the mainland currency as “good”.

The mainland’s economy grew 11.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year and was the biggest contributor to global growth last year, according to International Monetary Fund estimates.