Alternative energy

• Through development of new energy and renewable energy resources, China is expected to increase its total usage of renewable energy equivalent to 478 million tons of standard coal by 2015. This means the reduction of 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
• More than half of the solar companies listed in China predict their profits will slump in 2012.
• First Solar, a U.S.-listed clean energy developer, has reached an agreement with Zhenfa New Energy Science and Technology Co to supply two megawatts of thin-film solar modules for Zhenfa’s solar projects in Xinjiang. The cooperation will establish First Solar’s first commercial demonstration project in China.
• Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology, China’s largest wind-turbine maker, is studying new projects to take advantage of Australia’s 2020 renewable energy target. Australia is set to install as much as 8,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power by the end of the decade, and Goldwind was “looking to be a serious participant”, said John Titchen, Managing Director of its Australian unit. Goldwind, which entered Australia in 2009, started construction last month on a 165.5 MW wind farm in New South Wales state, the second project in the country to use the company’s turbines. The farm is scheduled to start operating in 2014.

Pollution

• Thermo Fisher Scientific’s sales of air quality monitoring products in the Chinese market have been growing, and account for 25% to 30% of the company’s global sales, said Marc Casper, President and CEO. The company is a major supplier of equipment to monitor PM2.5 levels in China, and Casper said it has a market share of 80% to 90% in China.
• Qinghai Lake’s wild fish population has dramatically risen in the past decade, to an estimated 35,000 tons – about 13 times its 2002 level. But environmentalists have warned that the lake’s ecological system is still being threatened by human activity, and that the level of fish is only a tenth of what it should be.
• Readings of PM2.5 in the city of Lanzhou, one of China’s most polluted, will be available for public scrutiny this month. Lanzhou is among the first of 74 Chinese cities required by the Ministry of Environmental Protection to publish daily reports on PM2.5 by the end of the year. Shanghai began using the new standard last month. Experts said terrain and climate factors, and Lanzhou’s reliance on petrochemical industries and its winter heating, have worsened pollution. The city will ban about half its vehicles from downtown roads on days with high air pollution from next year.
• Beijing Municipal authorities sent more than 330,000 cars to the scrap yard by the end of last month – more than twice the original target of 150,000 vehicles for the whole year. Traffic authorities said they were under pressure to improve the city’s air quality by getting rid of old vehicles whose emission levels exceeded those of newer models. It was unclear how many official government vehicles were among those scrapped. About 5.15 million cars are registered in the capital.
• Environmentalist Liu Futang was found guilty by a local court in Hainan province of illegally profiting from self-published books that exposed pollution scandals, most of which he gave away or sent to friends. Liu, 65, was sentenced to three years in prison, but given a full reprieve, and fined CNY17,000. The conviction and plea deal will effectively silence the vocal activist, who has repeatedly revealed environmental degradation caused by government-backed projects in Hainan.
• About 98% of Beijing’s 120,000 registered recyclers come from three provinces – Henan, Anhui and Hebei – the Beijing Resource Recycling Association reports. The actual figure is more like 200,000 if the unregistered are counted, according to Beijing University of Technology Researcher Cheng Huiqiang, who specializes in the economics of recycling. About 4.67 million tons of recyclable waste were collected from the 6.35 million tons of trash Beijing produced in 2010. Cheng says 3 million tons of empty water bottles are thrown away in China a year. If all these were recycled, 18 million tons of crude oil could be saved.
• China is experiencing its largest ecological deficit ever – caused by decades of high economic growth and rapid urbanization – as total emissions of carbon and other pollutants far exceed the capacity of its ecosystems, according to the “China Ecological Footprint Report” by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).  “[Although] China’s ecological footprint – or the demand the country places on the natural environment – is lower than the global average, the nation is already consuming 2-1/2 times its bio-capacity – the capacity to regenerate natural resources and absorb carbon emissions,” the report said. Only six provinces and regions – Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Hainan and Yunnan – enjoyed a bio-capacity surplus in 2009.
• Beijing will take 30% of official vehicles off the road when the daily intensity of PM2.5 exceeds 500 micrograms per cubic meter, according to an emergency plan against heavy pollution that was released by the municipal government. In addition, industries related to metallurgy, construction materials and chemicals must reduce production and cut emissions by 30% during pollution emergencies. Earthwork construction at building sites will also be suspended.
• Two former Deputy Directors of the Environmental Protection Bureau in Jiexiu city, Shanxi province, have been jailed for taking bribes from polluting firms. Gao Runsheng was sentenced to eight years for taking CNY1.76 million, while Bai Shihe received a three-year sentence for taking CNY65,000.

Greenhouse gas emissions

• China Petrochemical Corp (Sinopec) announced it started supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Beijing’s double-decker buses from the beginning of this month to help reduce carbon emissions. Sinopec’s Beijing branch now has three filling stations in the capital. They have provided 500 metric tons of liquefied natural gas to buses on about 5,000 occasions so far, the company said. Buses can reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by 30% by using LNG.
• Two grass-roots environmental activists have run an advertisement in The New York Times calling on China’s new leaders, including Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, to honor Beijing’s commitments on tackling pollution and fighting global climate change. Veteran environmentalist Wu Lihong, from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, and activist Chen Faqing, from Zhejiang, jointly paid more than CNY100,000 to place the advertisement. A similar one in the People’s Daily had been rejected, they said.

Canada’s British Columbia is promoting offshore renminbi bond issuances in Hong Kong and Singapore. The province plans to have CNY500 million worth of bonds issued in the offshore renminbi market. The offering will take place in January at the earliest. It would be the first time a foreign government has used this new and increasingly popular means to raise capital. The money raised will be used on utility projects, schools and hospitals. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said more than CNY500 billion worth of renminbi deposits were held in Hong Kong in 2012, up from CNY63 billion in 2009. The increase has been driven largely by the fast development of yuan-denominated trade settlement. In 2011, the offshore renminbi market expanded 5.5 fold, becoming 22 times larger than it was when it was established in 2007. Since 2010, more than CNY250 billion worth of renminbi bonds, also known as “dim sum” bonds, have been issued. The main types of offshore renminbi investors include commercial and private banks, fund managers, insurance companies and corporate treasuries. Most of them are from Hong Kong and Singapore, and more are coming from Taiwan, Europe and North America. The largest pool of renminbi liquidity is now in Asia. The Canadian province’s interest in the offshore renminbi market stems from its support for internationalizing the Chinese currency, a goal that can only be achieved if an efficient, liquid and global bond market is well developed.

Foreign life insurance companies in China expect to grow their premium income by up to 30% over the next three years, international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said in a report. The optimistic prediction is based on their current market penetration of just 2%, a strong rise in premiums, and the relative strength of China’s economy, according to PwC’s Foreign Insurance Companies in China 2012 Survey. Premium income growth is anticipated to be as much as 20% over the next three years, for companies specializing in foreign property and casualty insurance, according to the report. PwC figures show that the 27 foreign life insurance companies have a 4.3% market share, and the 21 foreign property and casualty companies have a 1.2% market share. Foreign life insurance companies said they expected their overall share to increase to around 5% by 2015, while foreign property and casualty insurers believe their share will remain the same in the next three years. The figures are actually significantly lower than the 10% to 20% total market share foreign life insurers had originally forecast when they were surveyed in 2007. Compared to the rest of Asia, China remains an underinsured market. Despite the strong ongoing premium growth, penetration rates are still below most other Asian markets, at around 2% overall, the same as for the property and casualty sector. The report suggested that as foreign insurers grow their business in China, considerable additional capital will be needed. The 18 life insurance respondents forecast that the current capital of CNY54 billion will increase to CNY83 billion by 2015. More than half of the respondents said there is a continuing trend toward bancassurance, while direct marketing and tele-marketing are also important distribution channels. Selling through agents was the channel to see the biggest decline, with two-thirds of respondents believing it to be losing traction after reaching its peak of 3 million agents in 2010. Nine of the 14 life insurance respondents said they planned to lay off between 20% and 40% of their agents this year, while three participants said they would dismiss up to nine in 10 agents in their network, the China Daily reports.

Hong Kong is expected to overtake London by 2015 and surpass New York by 2016 to become the world’s biggest financial center, reflecting a massive shift in the balance of power in the financial world and a remarkable turnaround since the financial crisis. By 2015, the number of financial service jobs in Hong Kong – which was less than half the London number in 2005 – will have overtaken London to reach 248,000, according to the latest report by the London-based Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). By 2016, Hong Kong will have 262,043 financial professionals, compared with 252,543 in New York. Between 2008 – the year in which the global financial crisis set in – and 2012, the number of financial jobs has grown 12% in Hong Kong, compared with a 23% decline in London and a 10% fall in New York over the same period. Western cities are losing their lead because of “the more dynamic growth of the Asian economies, which has created a booming demand for financial services”, the report said. “Hong Kong will be boosted by the internationalization of the renminbi,” the report added.

China’s smaller banks boosted sales of wealth management products (WMPs) to account for more than 85% of the CNY3.5 trillion of offerings in the first nine months of this year, raising credit risks and deposit costs, Fitch Ratings said. Joint-stock, city and rural lenders boosted their share of the CNY12 trillion wealth management market to 48% from 32% last year, Fitch said in a report. The yield on 2019 bonds sold by Evergrowing Bank, which Fitch said had the most outstanding products of any non-rated bank, has risen 29 basis points in this half year to 7.38%, according to ChinaBond data. Globally, finance companies pay an average 2.62%, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indices. Funding costs are rising as banks, whose WMPs offer higher returns than benchmark deposit rates, try to dissuade households from moving their savings elsewhere. The sales are transforming the stable and cheap deposit base that has supported lenders into one that is “more mobile, expensive and short-term”, creating repayment risks for smaller banks, Fitch said. The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CSRC) warned lenders about the risks of offering the high-yield investments last year and banned them from selling ones with maturities of less than one month. The regulator also prohibited banks from paying investors the expected rate of return by using profits earned from other business segments. The products, which are sold with few details about the assets backing them, are raising concerns that banks will face losses, according to Fitch. The China Banking Association Specialist Committee on Wealth Management Products was set up to tighten standards over the sale and risk management of the investment products. As of the end of September, the amount of outstanding wealth management products distributed by Chinese banks had reached CNY6.73 trillion, an increase of 47% over the end of 2011, Du Jinfu, Chairman of the Discipline Commission at the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said at a press conference.