South China's Guangdong Province, one of the country's biggest
energy consumers, is seeking help from foreign governments and
organizations to curb its appetite for resources, an official said
yesterday.
Xie Shichao, director of the Guangdong provincial economic and
trade commission's department of environment and resource
conservation, told a press conference yesterday that
representatives of the governments of the US, UK and Switzerland
and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as well as the
Asian Development Bank and some private companies were interested
in cooperating with Guangdong to develop energy-saving
projects.
Guangdong signed an agreement with the Swiss engineering firm
ABB to help local companies become more efficient. ABB will also
help analyze and audit local companies' energy-use.?
Meanwhile, Guangdong and the British Consulate General in
Guangzhou jointly organized a Sino-British Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) seminar in the first half of the year.
Both sides said they wanted to promote more projects under the
CDM.
"Guangdong's energy-saving industry has strong potential to grow
in the coming years," Xie said.
Guangdong lacks sources of energy and other natural resources
and so must invest more in energy-saving technology if it is to
continue its rapid economic growth, Xie said.
He said making the province more efficient is a long-term goal,
adding that Guangdong would shut some large companies that use a
lot of resources but generate few economic benefits later this
year.
Guangdong used 154 billion kWh in the first six months this
year, up 13.4 percent from the same period last year, according to
statistics from Xie's commission,
Of that, industry used 111 billion kWh, a year-on-year increase
of 15 percent.
The province also used more than 10 million tons of oil from
January to June, up 11.2 percent year-on-year.
Guangdong purchased more than 50.7 million tons of coal from
around the world in the first five months, up 9.9 percent from the
same period of last year.
(China Daily August 3, 2007)