BIZCHINA> Review & Analysis
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BIZCHINA> Review & Analysis
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The price of green revolution
By Fu Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-18 07:49 Liu Junsheng, a researcher for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said the impact is obvious as many Chinese factories are labor intensive and energy inefficient. "These closures will be long lasting and will continue to cause unemployment," said Liu. "Fortunately, China has put a basic social security umbrella in place and those who are unemployed can now benefit from jobless allowances. It is about time the leadership began to balance the short-term losses with the long-term environmental welfare of future generations." The urgency, and delicacy, of the situation is one Hu is all too aware of. During his private talks with Obama, he likely reiterated China will "notably cut" carbon intensity by 2020, although a concrete target is still unknown, and no doubt commit his country once again to raising the share of non-fossil fuels used for primary energy to 15 percent by 2020. "China's actions are much faster than international negotiations," said Dennis Pamlin, a visiting Swedish scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who is actively involved in low-carbon innovation projects and closely observing the global climate change talks. Despite the job losses, the actions to cut carbon emissions have also created new opportunities. Himin Solar Group, a rising force in green energy, plans to establish a "solar valley" in East China's Shandong province and has already enrolled around 1,000 graduates this year. To meet its growing workforce demand, the company has also set up a college for technical and business management training. There are about 6,000 solar factories of varying scales nationwide, creating an urgent need for 200,000 skilled workers, said the China Association of Renewable Energy in a recent report. With an abundance of cheap, unskilled labor, China faces mounting challenges in shifting workers from traditional high-carbon industries into green jobs. Any move towards low-carbon development involves job losses in traditional industries, said Gregory T. Chin, an assistant professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, who specializes in studies on China's role on the global stage. "But the key challenge is acquiring and integrating the new technologies needed to make the shift, while minimizing employment loss and maximizing job creation." So how can those working in traditional factories be guaranteed jobs with green energy enterprises? That would take retraining a large portion of the industrial workforce, according to Chin. "One challenge would be the coordination of such retraining programs," he added, pointing out that some of the programs would have to be handled by the green energy companies. Some segments of the workforce would need to rely on public sector retraining support, however, which could be costly. It would also require new government-corporate partnerships to devise financing solutions for retraining programs and technology transfers, said Chin. He warned it would be a painstaking process for China to realize its low-carbon aims.
Meanwhile, the necessary changes in lifestyle that would accompany a shift to low-carbon lifestyles will take time to build, especially outside advanced or developed economies. "It will likely take more than a generation to really see the embedding of the new mindset in many parts of the developing world," added Chin. Jean-Pierre Lehmann, a professor at the world-renowned Institute of Management Development in Switzerland, said China's growth model would ultimately have to change if the country is to achieve its energy goals, and the difficulty will be in persuading all stakeholders to follow suit, especially "ignorant provisional officials and irresponsible entrepreneurs". (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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