In terms of solar power installed capacity, China’s top 10 solar power producers are: Qinghai,  Gansu, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Shaanxi provinces, and the Ningxia Hui, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet autonomous regions. Those provinces and regions account for almost 90% of the country’s output. Seven of those provinces and regions are in western China. Golmud in Qinghai province, has been labeled the Photovoltaic Capital of China due to a series of large projects. The province vowed to approve 1 GW of solar farms this year — one-third of the country’s newly added capacity. Solar power rationing has happened twice over the past year in Golmud, partly because the local grid was unable to absorb the solar-generated power, causing millions of yuan in losses for local solar farm developers. In 2011, China’s connected solar capacity was 2.12 GW, or nearly 70% of the installed capacity, according to the China Electricity Council. “The grid infrastructure in the western regions is not adequate to support solar connections,” said Zhang Qian at Canadian Solar. “More transmission lines need to be built.”

Royal Dutch Shell plans to spend at least USD1 billion a year exploiting China’s potentially vast resources of shale gas. China is estimated to hold the world’s largest reserves of the unconventional gas – which can be unlocked from ancient shale rocks by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. U.S. investor Wilbur Ross, CEO of WL Ross & Co, is in talks with Chinese companies to form a joint venture to participate in a long-awaited shale gas auction in China late next month. China is offering 20 blocks in eight provinces with a total area of 20,002 square km. More than 100 Chinese companies, from utility firms to real estate developers, have shown interest. China-registered domestic companies and Sino-foreign firms controlled by Chinese partners with registered capital of at least CNY300 million are invited to tender, the Ministry of Land and Resources said in a tendering circular. The auction will be held on October 25. Each bidder can only bid for a maximum of two blocks. In June last year, China awarded two out of four blocks in its first shale gas auction to Sinopec Corp and a Henan provincial company. The inaugural licensing round, for which only state-owned companies were invited, marked the start of commercial shale gas exploration in China, holder of the world’s biggest shale reserves. Private and foreign firms are being invited to participate in the bidding for shale gas exploration rights for the first time. But analysts said the lack of clarity on gas pricing, incentives and the regulatory framework means winners will be taking substantial investment risk despite the lure of China’s huge resource potential. Shale gas is a kind of natural gas trapped within sedimentary rock formations. Its low permeability has for long meant it could not be extracted unless the rock formations are fractured, which can now be done through modern drilling technology. China plans to pump 6.5 billion cubic meters of shale gas by 2015, according to the country’s 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015) on shale gas exploration.

The Standing Committee of Guangzhou’s People’s Congress confirmed plans to build five garbage incinerators by 2015, with one of the three planned for Huadu district to be completed by 2014, despite protests by local residents. The government has cut the number of incinerators it plans to build by 2015 from six to five, and reduced its daily-capacity target from 15,000 tons to 11,000 tons, but public opposition remains widespread. The city already has one incinerator, in Likeng, in the northern district of Baiyun, which handles 1,000 tons of refuse each day. Most of the rest of the 18,000 tons of waste the city produces each day end up buried in landfills, which already contain 40 million tons of garbage. While the scaling back of the city’s incineration plans can be viewed as official acknowledgement of public concerns, the government remains resolute in its determination to promote the burning of refuse both to solve its waste problem and to generate electricity. Xu Jianyun, Deputy Director of Guangzhou’s Urban Management Committee who is in charge of building waste-treatment facilities, said the city would have 20,000 tons of refuse a day by 2020 and had to reduce the amount being sent to landfills. Many people complained the incinerators will be built close to communities and could pose serious threats to residents’ health and the environment. Arguments over whether Guangzhou should have incinerators, and, if so, where, have been going on since 2009. The city government also needs to answer doubts about the fairness of the bidding process.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) warned in July that looser local supervision led to a decline in efforts to control pollution in some parts of the country in the first half of this year. “It’s hard to be optimistic about what was done to cut emissions in the first half,” said Zhang Lijun, MEP Vice Minister. “Pollution worsened and supervision loosened in some regions as some local authorities relaxed restrictions on emissions.” The areas most affected were predominantly in the country’s west, while eastern coastal cities are facing more difficulties in attaining their targets as the easiest measures have already been taken. In 2011, the country missed about half of the main targets it had set itself for energy conservation and environmental protection, including its target for energy intensity. But the lingering global recession and domestic efforts to restructure the economy have made the conditions for achieving those goals favorable, Zhang said. China plans to conduct a review of work it undertook to save energy in the first half of 2012, he added. From 2011 to 2015, China has set the goal of reducing its energy intensity by 16% and its carbon intensity by 17%.

China’s ambition to shift to a greener economy is expected to provide more than CNY2 trillion in investment opportunities over the next five years for the country’s burgeoning energy-saving sector, according to the five-year plan released by the Chinese government to promote the energy-saving and environmental protection industry, one of the country’s seven “strategic industries”. The plan is aimed at generating a total output of CNY4.5 trillion from the energy-saving and environmental protection industries by 2015. It is expected to stimulate more than CNY2 trillion in investment opportunities across the industry. The plan highlights important areas of the sector, including the application of semiconductor lighting, industrial waste utilization, water desalination and the promotion of related technology and infrastructures. Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said recently the nation will invest more than CNY2 trillion in promoting energy-saving and low-carbon projects by 2015. There is a potential to save 400 million tons of standard coal equivalent by 2015, which could stimulate investment of more than CNY1 trillion, according to the plan. Investment in sewage and garbage treatment operations, as well as de-sulphuring and de-nitration could exceed CNY800 billion by 2015. The output of environmental services could surpass CNY500 billion during the same period.