Green Column: Electric Cars Remain Tough Sell in China

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

The pilot project, which could be replicated in other cities, underpins China’s ambitious plans to put at least half a million electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.

The country is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — which scientists say are causing global warming — from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. With the largest and fastest-growing auto market in the world, China’s carbon footprint can only grow.

To bolster China’s energy security, Beijing has pronounced electric vehicles a top priority. It has earmarked $1.5 billion annually for the industry for the next 10 years in the hope that it can transform the country into one of the leading producers of clean vehicles.

But even with government support and the enthusiasm of electric-taxi customers, challenges remain if electric vehicles are to gain broader acceptance and widespread use.

Charging stations are few and far between, repair shops are hard to find and the cars are costly. Even after generous government support, a Shenzhen electric taxi costs 80 percent more than the Volkswagen Santana that ordinarily cruises the streets of Shenzhen.

“The electric car is still too expensive, and we ended up paying a lot more than for a Santana, even with government subsidies,” said Du Jun, general manager of Pengcheng E-taxi, the operator participating in the pilot project.

Local automakers like SAIC Motor and Dongfeng Motor Group have pledged large investments in greener vehicles. Global automakers, including BMW and Nissan Motor, are also working with local governments to roll out such vehicles — in these two cases the Mini E and the Leaf, respectively.

China’s investment in the electric-vehicle industry has no comparable counterpart in the United States, although the U.S. Congress is considering a bill that would allocate $2.9 billion for a program to help develop the infrastructure for widespread use of electric cars.

Germany’s cabinet agreed on plans in May to encourage the country’s electric auto sector with billions of euros in subsidies, aiming to have one million of the cars on the road by 2020. The subsidies will double state support for research and development to €2 billion, or $2.9 billion, through 2013.

For China, however, hitting its electric-vehicle targets will mean quickly winning market acceptance for an untested technology.

“I think it’s going to be a very, very long time, because the Chinese consumer, at the end of the day, is very pragmatic and wants a reliable car with a gasoline engine,” said Michael Dunne, president of the industry consulting firm Dunne & Co. in Hong Kong. “They don’t want to be the ones experimenting.”

But he said that government fleets and bus companies were more likely to buy electric vehicles.

The Chinese government picked Shenzhen, along with 12 other cities, in 2009 to lead the migration to green vehicles. Shenzhen and Hangzhou are the only ones attempting to establish e-taxi fleets.

The state-controlled Pengcheng E-Taxi, partly owned by BYD, a major domestic manufacturer of green vehicles that is backed by Warren E. Buffett, was incorporated in March 2010. Fifty e6 cabs made by BYD hit the roads in the city three months later.

“People are really interested in the car,” said Zeng Xiweng, one of the top drivers in the company. “Over 90 percent of customers start asking questions, once they get in.”

“And it’s not just me,” he added. “All my colleagues have similar experiences as well.”

Daniel Li, a Shenzhen resident, recently took a ride in an electric taxi, one of the red cars with a wavy white band around the body that have been operating in the city for more than a year.

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Green Column: Hydropower’s Resurgence and the Controversy Around It

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Hydropower, a renewable energy source often overshadowed by excitement about wind and solar power, is enjoying something of a global resurgence.

Huge, controversial dam projects have recently made headlines in Brazil, Chile and Laos. Many developing countries, hungry for energy to supply their growing economies over the long term, are determined to keep building more modest-sized dams too.

Record amounts of hydropower capacity came online in 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which data are available, according to Richard Taylor, executive director of the International Hydropower Association in London.

“There has been, over the last decade, a dramatic increase in the deployment of new hydropower capacity,” Mr. Taylor said.

The private sector, he added, has become more willing to provide financing for projects, which include not only the construction of new dams but also the modernizing of existing ones in places like Europe and the United States. The biggest new dams can cost billions of dollars.

But the renewed attention to hydropower, which accounts for about 16 percent of the global electricity mix, comes with environmental red flags. More attention than ever focuses on people who face displacement, as well as the effects of new dams on land and fish.

In Chile last week, demonstrators protested against a government plan to dam two rivers that wind through a wild, remote part of Patagonia. Last month, officials from Southeast Asian countries failed to reach an agreement about a proposed dam project on the Mekong River in Laos, amid concerns from Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand about downstream implications.

An additional environmental issue — one that has caused mounting concern in recent years — is climate change. Changes in rain or snowfall patterns can drastically affect the amount of power a dam produces and also the amount of sediment flowing through the river.

Prolonged droughts are already taking their toll. Brazil, which gets about 80 percent of its electricity from hydropower, experienced a bad drought about a decade ago, and Chile has struggled with drought, too, according to Deborah Lynn Bleviss, a professor in the energy, resources and environment program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

A 2009 drought took a toll on countries including Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Brazil, she said.

“All have had impacts on hydropower capacity in these countries,” Ms. Bleviss said in an e-mail.

The region around Three Gorges Dam in China, the largest hydropower project in the world, is coping with a severe drought that has closed part of the Yangtze River to shipping, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.

Small hydropower projects are especially vulnerable to climate change, according to Leandro Alves, who heads the energy division for the Inter-American Development Bank’s infrastructure and environment department, because they may not have enough reservoir storage capacity to compensate for decreased precipitation.

However, some dams may get more water, not less, as the climate changes. In a summary report on renewable energy released last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the effect of climate change would vary depending on a project’s location.

“For hydropower the overall impacts on the global potential is expected to be slightly positive,” the report states.

“However, results also indicate the possibility of substantial variations across regions and even within countries.”

In Norway, which gets nearly all of its electricity from dams, climate change on balance may benefit hydropower plants. “The studies have uncertain results, but the main result is that climate change on average will lead to more rain and thereby better production capability in Norwegian power plants,” said Tor Arnt Johnsen, who heads the analysis section of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, which is part of the Ministry for Oil and Energy, in an e-mail.

However, he noted, climate change is expected to lead to substantial weather variations. Thus, in especially dry and cold years, the dams are likely to produce less electricity, which could result in high electricity prices and the need to import power.

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Green: A Critique of Barton's Air Quality Claims

In March, the Environmental Protection Agency, acting under court order, proposed the first national standard for emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

The standards, which have yet to be made final, are expected to force the closings of dozens of aging coal plants and require the installation of expensive clean-up technology at newer plants, and industry groups and Republicans in Congress have vowed to fight them.

One of those leading the charge against the rules is Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who found himself under fire on Tuesday by public health advocates for comments sharply questioning the public health benefit of controlling mercury, particulate matter and other emissions from power plants.

At a Congressional hearing in April, Mr. Barton suggested that an E.P.A. estimate that the pollution control rules would prevent 17,000 premature deaths per year had been “pulled out of thin air.”

The numbers must be exaggerated, Mr. Barton said, because “to cause poisoning or a premature death, you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body.”

“I am not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that is not going to happen,” he said.

“You are not going to get enough mercury exposure or SO2 exposure or even particulate matter exposure,” Mr. Barton continued.

In a letter to Mr. Barton on Tuesday, the physician leaders of the American Lung Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association and other health groups pointed to a broad range of peer-reviewed studies that “establish a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.”

The doctors’ letter noted that mercury is particularly hazardous to fetuses and young children, in whom high concentrations can impede brain and nervous system development.

In an interview, Georges C. Benjamin, a former emergency room physician and executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that Mr. Barton’s focus on poisoning deaths revealed a lack of understanding of the dangers of ambient air pollution.

“That isn’t how these things affect human health,” Dr. Benjamin said.

Rather, he said, high levels of particulate matter, ozone and other pollutants contribute to cardiopulmonary and respiratory disease, triggering heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks.

The E.P.A.’s estimate that the new pollution controls would prevent 17,000 premature deaths was based on an in-depth analysis of life expectancy, mortality and pollution exposure data, he said.

“These numbers are based on the best science that we have,” he said.

Dr. Benjamin suggested that if Mr. Upton had further doubts about the health threat from air pollution, he could observe the impacts in person at hospitals in his district, on days when air quality was poor.

In 2008, the Fort Worth-Arlington area, where one of the congressman’s district offices is located, experienced 27 days when air quality was rated unhealthy for the elderly, children or those with chronic illnesses, according to E.P.A. data.

“Just stand there and watch, and see who comes in,” he said. “This is not a hard test to prove.”