Beijing 2008 Olympics is in our foreseeable future, 1,500 days and nights away. The most significant world sporting event also represents enormous business possibilities which include those generated by environmental protection as Beijing promises to present a ��Green Olympics��.

Outlook of the market

The capital city came up with the idea of ��Green Olympics�� when it launched the bidding to host 2008 Olympics. Since then, environmental protection has been on the top agenda of the municipal government which has been seeking to build an image with clear water and blue sky. An investment of 100 billion yuan is expected to go to environmental protection and resources recycling.

On the blueprint of the city, by 2008, gas will fuel 90 percent buses and 70 percent taxis. With a sewage treatment capacity of 2.8 million tons on a daily basis, more than 90 percent of the sewage will be treated and 50 percent be reused.

Garbage, with 50 percent of it classified before collection, will cause no harm to the environment after treatment and 30 percent of it will be transformed into resources. 50 percent garbage produced from Olympics will be reused. A green belt of more than 23, 000 hectares will line along the five rivers and ten avenues in the city.

The downtown area will be dotted with 12,000 hectares of green buffer zones. 40 to 50 percent of land for Olympics project is spared for greening. There will be 760 hectares of green land in the Beijing Olympics Park. A clearer sky, cleaner water and greener land will be great dividends to local residents and visitors from around the world.

Clean energy will be widely used for Beijing Olympics. Power from wind farms at a price higher than that from grid will supply 20 percent of electricity for gyms and stadiums. Solar energy will illuminate 80 to 90 percent of street lights and heat up 90 percent bath water in and around those gyms and stadiums. More than 160 geothermal wells will be drilled to operate geothermal air-conditioning system.

A head start

Attracted by the enormous business opportunities brought about by the vision of Green Olympics, foreign investor just cannot wait to cash in on China's environmental protection.

As a sideline of IFAT, the largest expo for environmental protection in the world, IFAT China was held recently in Shanghi. It presented a bright outlook for China's environmental protection market to visitors around the world. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan, China will inject 85 billion USD into its environmental protection campaign which accounts for 1.3 percent of the country's GDP. Besides that, Beijing and Shanghai as hosts of 2008 Olympics and 2010 World Expo respectively will bulge their budgets of environmental projects and technologies.

IFAT China served as an ideal platform for 252 businesses from 17 countries, including China, Germany, Israel, Japan, and US. who are eager to march into China's environmental market. They brought sophisticated technologies for environmental protection and customized solutions for China market.

Italy has a plan of investment of 100 million euro in China's environmental protection. It has scooped up 5 projects with Beijing addressing the problems of auto tail gas, transport pollution, environment monitoring and wastes incineration. Negotiation is under way between China and Italy on another four projects including sand storm prevention in Beijing and Inner Mogolia.

The big China market with bright prospect justifies these foreign environmental businesses' China strategy.

The bill of environment

China's economy has grown at a staggering speed for years at the cost of energy consumption and environmental pollution. During the 10 years between 1990 and 1001, oil consumption doubled while natural gas consumption jumped 95 percent and copper consumption by 189 percent. However, China is endowed with only 1.8 percent, 0.7 percent and less than 5 percent of world's total reserves of oil, natural gas and copper respectively.

China spends 2.4 times energy as much as world's average energy consumption for unit production value. And pollutants emission takes place with higher intensity in this process. For example, for a point in GDP, the emission of oxynitride is 61 times as much as that in US and the emission of sulfur dioxide is 68.7 times as much as that in Japan. That is to say, with a large population and scarce resources, we are consuming too much for our output. Our gains have cost us more natural resources and make more damages to the environment than others.

After monitoring the 7 major water systems around the country, the State Environmental Protection Administration found 30 percent of water lost value of use in 2003 and 360 million rural population had no access to drinkable water up to standard. 60 percent cities under watch have lightly and heavily polluted air. The environment in these cities were overloaded with Sulfur dioxide by 81 percent. Acid rain, covering one-third of China, is falling down on more land with higher density than ever.

Environmental and resources problems are not only challenging the whole society. Enterprises have been trapped into so-called ��green barriers�� in recent years as many countries impose strict technical standards for environmental protection on imported products in terms of design, production, packaging, transportation, consumption, disposal and recycling. Any failure to comply with any of these standards will cause the denying of the access to the market. Examples can be found in China's export of spinach to Japan, honey to Britain, jackets to EU. Chinese exporters suffered heavy losses in these cases.

Companies' performance on environmental protection is normally accessible at web sites of many big businesses in foreign countries. Many of them issue environment accounting reports besides financial statements. World's top 100 began to prepare reports on environmental protection as early as 1995.

Companies are motivated not only by building an image of caring about environment, but also by the market. Environmental accounting gives them a clear idea about how efficiently they have used the resources available to them. On this basis they make assessment on economic, social and environmental returns on their investment. But in China, environment accounting professionals find it hard to get a job.

Wait-and-see?

It is widely recognized that paper-making is one of the major sources of China's industrial pollution. According to the annual report for 2002, this sector makes 18.2 percent of total industrial drainage, but only 53.8 percent of its drainage was up to the standard due to many businesses' reluctance on sewage treatment.

In fact, experience of advanced paper-makers have proved that the harmony between the industrial development and environmental protection is possible. Indonesia's APP, one of the world's top 10 in the industry, has integrated the whole process from logs to pulp and paper and their efforts on environmental protection for each part of the chain have been justified by higher economic returns.

For example, they offer quality seedlings and technologies to farmers and purchase logs at a favorable contracted prices. This practice secures their material supplies, improves environment, and brings more income to local farmers. Thanks to these measures, APP was immune from any losses that many of its peers in the industry have suffered from much raised costs due to pulp price hikes in the international market since last year.

According to Xu Shaoming, APP's General Manager for Logs and Pulp, their pulp plant in Indonesia does not live on external energy. Instead, power, steam and chlorine generated in the process of pulp production are enough to operate their facilities. Surplus chorine is even transported to Singapore to purify the water there.

Their joint venture in China, Golden East Paper in Jiangsu Province, has repeated their success in environmental protection. Wu Xingfang, General Manager of Golden East, said his company has invested 900 million yuan on environmental protection facilities so far and still secured their competitive edge in the market. He attributed this to their rewarding investment in environmental protection.

Their drainage per ton of paper stood at 17.9 percent of the national standard in 2003, which saves more than 70 million yuan for the company per year. ��Our experience has evidenced that investment on environmental protection is nothing like loss-making business��, said Wu proudly.

by People's Daily Online