If you read no other article this week, please read this article from the New York Times on the scale of the pollution problem in China:

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

Now I’m no eco-hector, but I have the feeling that this is the true price of the cheap Chinese products that are flowing around the word.  However, its clear that this is a problem created by Chinese government and Chinese business. The factories that pollute so much are completely inefficient, as pointed out in the article. They waste resources like water, which are still cheap, despite their increasing scarcity. The government refuses to impose surcharges and subsidizes fuel oil.

Chinese steel makers, on average, use one-fifth more energy per ton than the international average. Cement manufacturers need 45 percent more power, and ethylene producers need 70 percent more than producers elsewhere, the World Bank says.

The article also points out the lack of thermal insulation in Chinese buildings. This topic was discussed several times when I worked at the China-U.S. Energy Efficiency Alliance: the Chinese governments would build buildings that were not adapted to the climate in the area. And there was a blanket date on when heating and cooling would start in buildings, which had some in the south sweltering and some in the north freezing and many times when the heating and/or cooling were unnecessary.  The article also discusses the institutional problems in China, including the catastrophically understaffed environmental ministry and the non-existent ministry of energy.

So it isn’t all doom and gloom, here is a two-year old old, but in-depth article on how the building industry in China is embracing green standards like LEED. The Greening of China’s Building Industry

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