Day 2: Solar Thermal and Project Incubation

Spain's huge solar thermal plant

On Thursday, we went to this really cool solar thermal power facility. There are a few others in the world, like the really huge and famous one in Spain. This one that we went to is the largest in China and part of a demonstration project run by the.

The whole facility creates about 8.83 MW, but does not feed to the grid. I have no idea how they consume that much energy on-site. It is enough capacity to power 3,000 homes. The field of about 100 large mirrors, which adjust direction as the sun moves across the sky, is about 10,000 sq meters or 100 meters by 100 meters. It is expensive and we had lots of questions about scaling it up. There are plans for a big installation in the desert of Gansu Province. It cost 35,000RMB/kW for this facility (construction, maintenance, and human resources, but not the geographic footprint/land).

The permanent tower is 120 meters tall, but incomplete. They will dismantle the other tower (62m) when it is ready. It felt like we were in Middle Earth. The way the tower is constructed, it twists in this otherworldly way towards the heavens. Here are some pictures that I snapped before we were asked to stop taking photos. Unfortunately, you cannot see the beams

This is the crew: a South African, a French woman, an Australian, a Chinese, an Irishman, a Dutchman, another Irishman and then another Frenchman, a British of Indian origin, Founder and organizer Yan Mi (pronounced Yummy), a Spaniard, me, and a Portuguese woman, who decided to stand fsr away from me.

Nice sunglasses, dude! Are you about to get burned up? Because there is a brick behind you that is...

Steel plate and brick (turned into ceramic) that were burned by the solar oven.

Gandalf the Grey and Merlin were having a meeting in the upper chamber so we could not climb the tower.

After the tour, we took the bus to a hutong and quite famous Beijing restaurant. This fish is not, surprisingly, made of tofu, but rather from milk.

After lunch we went to the Beijing International Technology Transfer Center. That was okay. It is a fascinatingly opaque way for the government to funnel money to projects that it likes. This is the release from their opening:

On January 26, 2011, the launch ceremony for the International Technology Transfer Network (ITTN) was held in Beijing International Hotel Convention Center.

Jointly initiated and established by more than 40 highly recognized technology transfer and innovation service institutions from 15 countries, including the Beijing Technology Exchange & Promotion Center (BTEC) and the International Technology Transfer Center (ITTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the ITTN is committed to providing an open innovation service platform in support of international technology transfer, and aims to pool global innovation resources and drive regional innovation and development.

Afterwards, we wandered past the National Center for the Performing Arts.

This is the rear end (so to speak) of the Great Hall of the People.

Finally, here are a couple of blurry photographs of "the opiate of the masses," which is my term for the flag-raising and lowering ceremony at Tianan'men where thousands of people gather each morning and evening to watch the PLA and plain-clothes police officers participate in a martial exercise. They don't fold the flag in a triangle like American troopers, but sort of grab at it and pull it into a big knot.

Day 1- The GreenTree Hotel and Green SMEs

I took the train from Qingdao to Beijing, leaving at 10:27AM and arriving just after the scheduled time of 4PM. From there, I took Line 4 and Line 13 to an area of Beijing know for its universities. I saw, from the window of Line 13, the GreenTree Hotel so I decided to walk there, but they could not find my name on the reservations' list. I was starting to get worried when they told me that there are 17 GreenTree Hotels in the city. I got into a cab and 21RMB later (and a couple of phone calls from the cabby to the concierge) found myself at the right place around 6PM. I am rooming with a man from Barcelona.

There are three people, who will join as soon as possible, stranded in Shanghai due to a typhoon. My friends from work, Jason and Dom, are in the Philippines. This weather is scary. It is pouring in Changchun again, but here it is nice weather, relatively (relative humidity is 85% or so).

The people who have arrived include a girl named Alice (my li'l sis' name) from Australia; two smiley boys with the map of Ireland on their face, to whom I awkwardly announced that I had been reading William Butler Yeats on the train; a sharp fellow from South Africa, who has been in Beijing for six months learning Chinese; an analyst for Shell of French origin and a male classmate of hers from France, as well; a Dutchman; an East Indian from London; and a Chinese woman from Dalian, who seems very educated and well-connected.

After a nice welcome dinner, we headed to a Beijing Energy Network BEER event where a gentleman reported on the Impact Report of Green Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It was a first of its kind attempt to explore and develop a methodology to evaluate the business, environmental and social performance of green SMEs in seven green sectors and evaluate the contribution that green SMEs have made to China’s economic transformation. It also highlights the challenges to the development of green SMEs and discovers their needs as well as explores different ways in which SMEs can realize “environmentally friendly” and “resource-saving” development.

The report is based on the Impact Performance Indicators System developed for SMEs in China, jointly developed by New Ventures Global (part of WRI), the Institute for Environment and Development, and the Information Center of MIT. 

 

One of the companies (aka SMEs), named Landwasher, has created a new waterless flush toilet that allows rural villages in China to use the by-product (aka night spoil or humanure) to fertilize their crops. While most of these toilets are probably not replacing toilets that do use water, the claim is that if the 10,000 that they have in the market were each used 100 times per day, there would be 1.64 million tons of water saved annually.