CHINA WATCH Not long ago, Greenbang covered the news about China’s green initiative: China: no bank loans for polluters, but we were rather sceptical about how it would be implemented. Well, although we remain doubtful about the real impact of this, it seems more has been done about this.
CHINA WATCH Australia and China yesterday signed a partnership agreement that will pave the way for the installation of low-emission coal energy technology in Beijing next year. Signed by China Huaneng Group, a China’s state-owned energy enterprise, and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science
People from the fashion, clothing and textile industries met with the UK government this week to discuss ways to making the clothing industry more sustainable. Along with this, Defra, the department for environment, food and rural affairs is setting up a sustainable products and materials, along with a range of
CHINA WATCH China plans to spend around $265bn – 2 trillion yuan – on renewable energy by 2020, in a bid to reduce its dependence on coal. And it hopes that much of this will come from the market, rather than the state, according to a top energy planner. “We expect the
This month’s Wired has a great article about a new set of ‘eco-capitalists’ that are raising funds to buy up large tracts of rainforest in Borneo and elsewhere–in order to do nothing at all with it. As the piece explains: They’re investments. The return will come from
On the subject of packaging, it seems Wal-Mart has woken up to the message of cutting waste–on the fine principle that it also happens to be good business. Last year, the company announced plans to cut packaging by 5% by 2013, trimming a nice $3.4bn from the bottom
In a bid to improve its environmental impact, Coca-cola has announced a new plastic bottle that uses 5% less plastic than before–and others note that the company will open a $60m recycling plant in 2009 that could recycle up to 2 billion bottles a year. We can hardly even
CHINA WATCH More than 750 industrial firms have been closed down or ordered to improve their environmental standards following a two-month campaign by an environmental watchdog, aimed at cleaning up China’s rivers. Of the 1,162 firms investigated, 400 were closed down, 249 had their operations suspended and have
Climate Change Capital (CCC) has announced that it’s launched a €200m fund that will invest in clean energy and the “low carbon economy”. It reckons it’s one of the largest such funds in Europe. All the details here: CPE targets the high growth clean technology areas of clean
We’ve just discovered Carbon Catalog, an independent directory of offset projects and providers around the globe, handily delivered via a Google map. You can click on either projects (green pins) or providers (blue pins) and get basic details and a link through to them. What a great idea. AutoblogGreen
CHINA WATCH China plans to up its use of biofuels to help reduce its reliance on petroleum, reports Reuters. It will use 2 million tonnes of bioethanol from non-grain feedstocks and 200,000 tonnes of biodiesel a year by 2010, it reckons. The non-grain bit is the important part here,
US solar tech firm SolFocus seems to be doing well for itself. They tell us that they’ve just secured $52m in new funding (a good chunk of which is for Europe) and they’ve just opened their doors in sunny Madrid after snapping up Inspira, a local company that
