Cleaner, greener industry

CHINA: China is cleaning up its act. The government has ordered more than 2,000 unsafe, heavily polluting or inefficient plants to close down within the next two months. Environmental groups see this as an important breakthrough.

China has replaced the US as the world' s largest energy consumer. Chinese businesses use 20 to 100 per cent more energy than industries in the US, Japan or the rest of the world, according to the World Bank.

The government is now eager to cut down emissions to improve efficiency, save the environment and to restrict the use of their energy resources. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has published a list of factory names in 18 industries, including 762 cement factories, 279 paper mills, 175 steel mills, 192 coking plants and several aluminium mills.

"It's going to happen,"  says Yang Ailun of Greenpeace

"There is no doubt this announcement is significant, especially because it is complete with real consequences; if they don’t meet the target they will be barred from obtaining loans," Alex Wang of the Natural Resource Defence Council told The Guardian. Other penalties could be the revocation of sewage treatment licences or the refusal of business licenses.

The move has been welcomed by environmental campaigners. Yang Ailun of Greenpeace said: "I think if they have actually announced it and named companies, for sure it's going to happen. In the longer term, to shut down the most energy-inefficient facilities doesn't just make environmental sense but also economic sense."