Faces-my best of India

Yes I spent an hour adjusting these faces so each can have a show here and it took Picasa another hour to make the colliage. But I love it. The spendid smiles coming out of every Indian I encountered touched my heart, making one of the most colorful and spiritual part of my life journey. For them (no them vs us connotation here), life is just that smilable, however harsh and even "untouchable" as seen from visitors like me. The innocent and sometimes naughty eyes of the children are clear enough for you to see through the soul, which is as crystal and happy as the smiles.

these faces I found simplicity and contentedness. And of course, this is just the Indian answer, but worth contemplating for "sophisticated" folks like myself. We look for troubles ourselves because we are never satisfied with what we already got.

The land is only "!ncrediable" when the people there are incredible.

China's E-Bikes: Less-Than-Perfect Pioneers

http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20100119/ren163708_ENversion.shtml

China's experiment with electric bicycles is worth looking at because it represents the first-ever widespread adoption of an electric vehicle for commercial use. Their explosive development has posed all sorts of challenges, both in terms of regulation and pollution.

It's a big technological jump to cars from the smaller electric bikes, scooters and tricycles on China's streets today. But some of China's e-bike makers are already looking at how to take part in that transition, including Luyuan Group by leveraging their experience in battery technology and electric motors.

The e-bike phenomenon is so big the Asian Development Bank prepared a study looking at their impact on China's environment and transportation. Released last year, the study found that electric bikes are energy-efficient and perform much better environmentally when it comes to some forms of pollution, like the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, compared to alternatives like buses or motorcycles.

'This analysis shows that e-bike emissions, including material production and vehicle use phases, perform comparably to buses and significantly better than motorcycles and cars on most environmental metrics,' the report said. But they aren't perfect.

The biggest problem it found was with lead from batteries. Even though there's nearly a 100% recycling rate, because the batteries are replaced every few years, and China's lead industry is poorly regulated, lead emissions are two orders of magnitude higher than those from buses, their main competition.

Luyuan's outspoken chairman Ni Jie contests these claims. He says that China's coal-fired power-plants and coking plants emit far more lead than the battery industry. And he says advances in technology will make the batteries cleaner, especially as alternatives to lead like lithium become cheap enough to be universally adopted.

Chinese regulators have been especially worried about traffic safety problems, an area that the ADB didn't address in its report.

Ni claims that the rising fatality figures for e-bikes mask the truth. He says that e-bikes are safer versus bicycles or motorcycles when compared on a mile-by-mile basis. He also says that e-bike fatalities need to be grouped with motorcycles and bicycles figures. Overall, death rates have fallen for that group, he claims, because riders are switching from motorcycles and bicycles to e-bikes. E-bikes are slower than motorcycles, but more visible than bicycles, so are safer, he claims.

In the meantime, electric bikes are growing in popularity elsewhere, especially Northern European countries that already had a strong bicycle culture, such as the Netherlands, according to e-bike consultant Edward Benjamin.

And they're already making an appearance on the streets of New York--especially noticeable among food delivery.

India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia

Regardless that the blog now is about living in Denmark, China issue is almost an eternal concern of mine. I went to DIS to do some reading after I missed my field to Malmo, Sweden. And I found this article to justify my loss of the site visit. I am now thinking of focusing on China and its overseas ventures for my class "transitional economies" at Copenhagen Business School. The construction of the port is just one of the many oversea projects China commissioned during the past a few years, the ramifications of which is probably not yet fully perceivable, but duly worth looking into.

February 16, 2010VIKAS BAJAJ

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.

Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbors.

As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development.

But these initiatives are irking India, whose government worries that China is expanding its sphere of regional influence by surrounding India with a “string of pearls” that could eventually undermine India’s pre-eminence and potentially rise to an economic and security threat.

“There is a method in the madness in terms of where they are locating their ports and staging points,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary who is now a member of the government’s National Security Advisory Board, said of China. “This kind of effort is aimed at counterbalancing and undermining India’s natural influence in these areas.”

India and China, the world’s two fastest-growing economies, have a history of tense relations. They share a contested Himalayan border over which they fought a war in 1962. India has given shelter to the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet as China exerted control over it. And China has close military ties with Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars.

But the two countries also do an increasingly booming business with each other. China recently became India’s largest trading partner, and both have worked together to advance similar positions in global trade and climate change negotiations.

Chinese officials deny ulterior motives for their projects in South Asia. And top Indian leaders have tried to play down talk of a rivalry with China, saying there is enough room in the world for both economies to rise simultaneously.

As recently as the 1990s, China’s and India’s trade with four South Asian nations — Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan — was roughly equal. But over the last decade, China has outpaced India in deepening ties.

For China, these countries provide both new markets and alternative routes to the Indian Ocean, which its ships now reach through a narrow channel between Indonesia and Malaysia known as the Strait of Malacca. India, for its part, needs to improve economic ties with its neighbors to broaden its growth and to help foster peace in the region. Some of the shift in trade toward China comes from heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, which has hampered trade between the two countries. But China has also made inroads in nations that have been more friendly with India, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Moreover, protectionist sentiments have marred India’s relationships with its neighbors. South Asia has a free-trade agreement, but countries that are part of the pact get few benefits, economists say, because India and its neighbors refuse to lower tariffs on many goods and services to protect their own businesses. By contrast, the countries of Southeast Asia have minimal or no duties on most goods and services that they import from one another.

India has had some success in establishing closer ties with Sri Lanka, with which it has a strong bilateral trade agreement. But China has become a partner of choice for big projects here like the Hambantota port. China’s Export-Import Bank is financing 85 percent of the cost of the $1 billion project, and China Harbour Engineering, which is part of a state-owned company, is building it. Similar arrangements have been struck for an international airport being built nearby.

Sri Lankan officials want to turn Hambantota, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami and is the home constituency for President Mahinda Rajapaksa, into the second-largest urban area in the country after the capital, Colombo. (It is the ninth-biggest today.) The government is also building a convention center, a government complex and a cricket stadium.

Sri Lanka needs foreign assistance to make those dreams a reality, because the government’s finances are stretched by a large debt it accumulated in paying for a 25-year civil war that ended in May. In 2009, the country borrowed $2.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Rajapaksa has said he offered the Hambantota port project first to India, but officials there turned it down. In an interview, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States, said the country looked for investors in America and around the world, but China offered the best terms. “We don’t have favorites,” he said.

Still, Sri Lankan officials have refused to disclose information that would allow analysts to compare China’s proposals with those submitted by other bidders. The country has also kept private details about other projects that are being financed and built by China, including a power plant, an arts center and a special economic zone.

The Sunday Times, a Sri Lankan newspaper, recently estimated that China was involved in projects totaling $6 billion — more than any other country, including India and Japan, which have historically been big donors and investors in Sri Lanka.

Harsha de Silva, a prominent economist in Colombo and an adviser to the country’s main opposition party, said the Sri Lankan government appeared to prefer awarding projects to China because it did not impose “conditions for reform, transparency and competitive bidding” that would be part of contracts with countries like India and the United States or organizations like the World Bank.

Other analysts say China is winning big projects here and elsewhere in the region because its companies offer lower costs. Chinese companies are also competitive because they have acquired a lot of expertise in building large infrastructure projects in China, said Jerry Lou, Morgan Stanley’s China strategist.

In 10 years, Chinese companies have become the biggest suppliers to ports of cranes used to move shipping containers, displacing South Korean and Japanese companies, he said. “They are running at very high efficiency and at the lowest costs,” Mr. Lou said. “China is a game-changer, rather than a new player in the world’s construction industry.”

India is starting to respond to China’s growing influence by becoming more aggressive in courting trade partners. India recently signed a free-trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and South Korea. Officials have even begun talking about signing a trade deal with China to bolster exports.

India’s chief trade negotiator, D. K. Mittal, acknowledged that the country’s economic ties with its neighbors were not as strong as they should be and blamed political distrust between the countries. But he said leaders were now determined to improve economic relations, something he said was highlighted in a recent agreement with Bangladesh.

In that deal, India agreed to sell electricity to Bangladesh, provide it with a $1 billion line of credit for infrastructure projects and reduce tariffs on imports. Bangladesh agreed to allow Indian ships to use a port that is being redeveloped by China. “The political leaders have to rise above and say, ‘I want this to happen,’ ” Mr. Mittal said in an interview. “That’s what the leaders are realizing.”

A study tour to Western Denmark/Norther Germany

I just came back from the first study tour DIS organized to Western Denmark/Norther Germany. All photos and descriptions were uploaded while I was having a fever (no better thing to do anyway). Yes the indestructible healthy Yiting was sick right after I came home from perhaps spending too much time outside with the bloody wind? Anyway, here is the link to the photos:

http://photo.163.com/photo/superwangyit/#m=1&ai=196251485&p=1&n=40&cp=1

I could have spent a whole night writing fruitfully about what was going on in the picture in both Chinese(for my folks at home) and English, but I apologize for not doing that.
In a nutshell, it was a warming-up to a deeper understanding of Danish culture and even its origins, as well as a very intricate relationship Denmark shares with Germany, which has been cited as an exceptional for international relations studies. "Memory and Identity", the overarching theme of this course, was slowly unfolding itself through our visits. The Vikings, the Folk High Schools, Symbolism...those are what makes Denmark Denmark-- the more you dig in, the more you find it fascinating.

Dong Energy: 'Clean' Denmark's dirty secret

II decided to chill out of my intensive investigation into Dong Energy, the biggest energy producer in Denmark, by looking its corporate social responsibility report. And then I found this Guardian article. Gaurdian is a genius, no wonder the Chinese government blocked it. You can see it yourself how fancy its termed "responsibility report" is.

http://responsibilityreport.dongenergy.com/page.dsp?area=12 (this is an old one, you can find the latest from 2008 from http://www.dongenergy.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/NEW%20Corporate/PDF/responsibleenergy2008UK.pdf)

State-owned Dong Energy trades on its green image at home while outsourcing the dirty end of its energy portfolio with coal-fired power stations elsewhere in Europe.

Fred Pearc guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 September 2009 12.55 BST

Smoke bellows from the chimneys of Belchatow power station, Europe's largest coal-fired power plant. Dong has plans to build coal-fired plants in Germany and Scotland. Photograph: Peter Andrews/Reuters

The Danes like to think of themselves as green. Denmark is home to the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas. And today, the giant state-owned energy company, Dong Energy, opens the world's largest windfarm.

But the Danes have a dirty secret. For Dong Energy, while greening its image at home, is busy building coal-fired power stations elsewhere in Europe. First in Germany, and now in Scotland.

We in the rich world are used to the idea of our big companies dumping their dirty and anti-social industries on the poor countries. But now European companies are doing the same to us. Rather as if Scotland were a banana republic somewhere in the developing world, it is the recipient of Dong "outsourcing" the dirty end of its energy portfolio.

Dong, which began as a North Sea oil and gas company before buying the country's electricity utilities, trades on its green image in a country that likes to be thought of as green. Its website announces that the company is "part of the solution" to climate change, and it lovingly pictures its efforts to "move energy forward" on a sea of wind turbines.

Today Denmark's king and prime minister will both be on hand as the record-breaking 209-MW Horns Rev 2 windfarm opens off the west coast.

But Dong also sees itself as a diverse energy provider, and wants to grow in the coal business, too. It would be unlikely to get permission to build a new coal-fired plant at home, however. The Danish government last December proposed that the EU should limit carbon emissions from new power plants to 500g per kilowatt hour – far too low to accommodate a coal-fired plant.

So, what it cannot do at home, it is intent on doing abroad. It is planning to build a giant 1600MW coal-fired plant at Greifswald in northern Germany.

And now in Scotland, Dong is to take a 75% stake in a new joint venture with local company Peel Energy to build a similar behemoth at Hunterston, west of Glasgow.

It would be the first new fossil-fuel burning power plant in Scotland for 30 years – a real step backwards for the country that has pioneered wind power in Britain.

I have written about Scotland talking green and building for coal before. The Scottish Nationalist government is keen to end the country's reliance on nuclear power, and to that end they are covering the glens in wind turbines and dotting the coastline with coal-fired power stations. Dong's new Hunterston plant would be built next to a nuclear power station.

But Dong, like many coal companies, is keen to give the dirtiest fossil fuel a makeover. For instance, it says it will add some biofuels to the coal in the boiler to create a "super-efficient multi-fuel power plant". Both the German and Scottish plants will this way reduce emissions by 20-30% compared to conventional coal power stations, it says.

But sorry, it will still burn coal. Burning coal produces roughly twice the CO2 emissions of even another fossil fuel like natural gas. So that 20-30% cut still leaves it among the dirtiest plants around. WWF estimates the new plant's carbon emissions will be 6.9m tonnes a year. So it would still be outlawed by the proposed new EU rules.

The other greenwash favoured by coal-burners is to hold out the prospect that emissions will soon be cleaned up and buried under ground using carbon capture and storage.

Dong says the construction plans for the £2bn Hunterston plant "include the development of carbon capture and storage", but adds the caveat "once the CCS technology has been fully developed."

As I have written before, that's quite a caveat. By some counts, that day will not happen till towards the end of the plant's lifetime, if at all.

Dong Energy may be an efficient coal-burner. But dressing that accomplishment up as a green technology is greenwash. When it goes on the coal trail, Dong looks like part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Two New Roles for Windmills

Never thought installing windmill as an ornament, but heck, why not, especially the ornament can light up some lightbulbs and playing out the modern "tilting at the windmill" story?

January 29th, 2010

Wind turbines, formerly the “eyesores” of real estate developer chagrin, are coming into their own in the innovative new world of design and urban planning. The idea of an off-the-grid renewable power source for your home or city, along with the inspiring, simple elegance of the machines themselves, have recently prompted some cool new ideas that promote a sure feeling of restored hope. I’ve cataloged two of them below.

Design maven Philippe Stark has unveiled two new single-family windmill prototypes for the European market that he’s fittingly titled “Revolutionair.” At 2500 – 3500 Euro a pop, some critics say that the 1KW capacity of these turbines isn’t sufficient – that’s about 10 conventional lightbulbs at peak production, and probably only a couple lightbulbs on average if the wind ain’t blowin’. Good thing they’re beautiful to look at and a great conversation piece, who cares how well they work! If it’s Stark design it’s going to be folks who drop 3K on a lamp who are going to be making this particular investment for the time being (”Honey, sculpture or turbine? Turbine!”). Until the Ikea version comes out, there’s no harm in getting the wealthy and the design community inspired by the wind.

If Stark’s turbines are the small scale, what about urban-scale? Norwegian design firm On Office has announced their plans for Turbine City off the coast of Norway. At the base of each of the mega-turbines in this resort-at-sea is a museum, a posh dayspa, and lodging for eco-tourists who want to spend some time in the most futuristic place on earth. The whole city is built to operate on renewable energy – giving hope that there’s a future for eco-tourism that will help make “sustainable” sexy for all.

via Inhabitat