That all being said, this is a huge step for China, and hopefully other more industrial-focused cities will soon follow suit.

Great piece, by the way ;)

for example, a company called Solar Systems is about to build the world’s biggest solar electricity plant in the state of Victoria in Australia, but they’re not just big cells pointed at the sky. the actual PV cell is very small (and very efficient, from NASA i believe) but there is a wide field of mirrors around it that point at the PV cell and thus increase it’s efficiency massively. also, less energy and money are required to build a whole bunch of mirrors than the equivalent amount of PV cells. also in Australia, the ANU along with a commercial partner have developed much cheaper solar cells, called Sliver. not sure if they’re on the market yet, but they’re a comin’.

but generally, PV cells are seriously inefficient, more inefficient than coal even, which is really saying something!

as for hydrogen, it is a total waste of energy to use it in an internal combustion type engine, for the two very simple reasons that internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient (about 20%) and because it actually takes more energy to *make* hydrogen than you get from the hydrogen itself. then there are the added issues such as it being extremely difficult and energy intensive to store safely, and it begins to look pretty dreadful. however, hydrogen powered fuel cells aren’t so bad, they’re much more efficient than internal combustion engines. however, you can also run a fuel cell off ethanol, which is easier to manufacture than hydrogen.

also on the issue of solar, solar thermal is pretty good. it isn’t anywhere near as expensive to set up as solar photovoltaic is for a start and it just uses the sun’s heat to do what coal or natural gas already do, power turbines which generate electricity. the added bonus of this is of course the fact that you can couple a solar thermal power plant to a combined cycle natural gas generator which can up production if necessary at any given moment.

not sure about hydro, apparently there are very few sites left in the world that are suitable unfortunately.

just to bring up another point about the lack of understanding about the science behind various forms of technology. the next time someone poo-poohs a nuclear power plant because of the dangerous radioactive waste it produces, tell them that a coal powered station pumps radioactive waste directly into the air we breathe at 10 times the rate of a nuclear plant.

i’m not saying nuclear is good (though thorium deserves to be looked at, it decays after about 500 years and you can’t make bombs out of it, precisely the reason it wasn’t used for electricity generation in the first place unfortunately), obviously being exposed to nuclear radiation is bad. but people shouldn’t just point the finger at nuclear power plants with regard to endangering our health and safety, coal not only produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide it is also radioactive.

back to the original topic though, it is great that China is being so proactive. if only the governments of Australia and the US were as proactive, but they’re still obsessed with China being “bad” but really, they’re much, much worse.

A private business in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) has done that very successfully in the city’s old landfill. (The new landfill is quite ‘green’ and won’t have the same level of gases although likely they’ll utilize them as/when.)

it takes more than better technology and design to solve our problems, especially for developing countries with such complex socio-economical environments. designers must also function as (or cooperate with) social activists, economists, ambassadors, even politicians, to bring about changes.