Xiamen style
By Daniel Batten,
New Zealand’s next big opportunity is on display—in China
[Strategy]
Three events from 2006: Silicon Valley started investing heavily in renewable technology, the film An Inconvenient Truth was released, and the British Stern Review predicted a global depression resulting from climate change unless one percent of global GDP is invested in countering it. It’s not surprising that many influential Kiwis claim the ‘next big opportunity’ for Kiwi ingenuity is in renewable technology. Writing this column from Xiamen in China’s Fujian province, I am now convinced.
Visitors to Xiamen feel they’re witnessing the future of the modern small city. Critically, Xiamen is embracing the business of renewable technology. It’s a tiny city relative to the size of its country in comparison with, say, Auckland, but in other ways it has interesting parallels with what could be Asia–Pacific sister cities in New Zealand. Xiamen is a temperate and attractive coastal city of 1.6 million, ‘small’ but progressive. Our cities are often lauded for their liveability, and Xiamen was received a United Nations award for its quality of life. New Zealand tends to be a test bed for some of the world’s new technologies, and Xiamen has for many years been officially regarded as a model city for the rest of China.
Xiamen, like many of China’s cities, is a juxtaposition of old and new: great wealth adjacent to decrepit dwellings; Audis whiz by applecarts; megastores straddle markets; untuned buses billow past unbalanced bicycles carrying their own weight in recycled cardboard.
The modernisation of China itself is a paradox that defies generalisations. On one hand, its hunger for more power generation has seen the establishment of gargantuan open coal pits and led nations such as New Zealand to reinvigorate their own coal production—which is exported on massive sea barges to China. On the other, there’s evidence of awareness at the highest level that a better solution must be found, and found quickly. News about China’s environmental initiatives seems slow to filter through to the West, so here’s an inside view of how Xiamen is providing an example that New Zealand could emulate.
“Xiamen is providing plenty of evidence of the future of business opportunity in renewable technologies. New Zealanders like to see themselves as leaders in innovation, so I challenge Kiwis to add elbow grease to elegant rhetoric and grab the opportunity.”
For each of the last three days there has been an item on the Xiamen local news about government and business getting behind renewable technologies:
- A move has been made to recycle demolition material and reuse it in new buildings.
- To improve air purity all new buildings use an ingenious air-filtration system that functions very much like an urban lung.
- Xiamen city has mandated the use of photo-voltaic construction materials (a single construction sheet that has the dual function of being the walls and roof of your home and also generating electricity) in all new apartments from 2008.
Some background on the solar industry: the world’s best solar technologies are still three times more inefficient than traditional electricity generation—but consider the trajectory: 20 years ago the best solar technology was ten times more inefficient than it is today. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Economic Development says wind has already become a more cost-effective means of generating electricity than coal, and as carbon taxes are more widely imposed, a solar tipping point is imminent. Today, some of the most advanced and price-competitive solar technologies in the world come from China.
In a post-Inconvenient Truth age, there are many opportunities to apply the principle of efficiency to positive business and environmental effect, from the simple to the ambitious.
For example:
- Tweak exercycles with a dynamo that convers the effort of gym customers into electricity to make fitness centres self-sufficient.
- Plumb bathrooms so shower wastewater is recycled for use in toilet cisterns or irrigation.
- Use simple measures and incentives—some social, some technological—to encourage widespread carpooling instead of investing billions in unsustainable new roading projects. (When I was a consultant to the Auckland Regional Council I found that an increase in vehicle occupancy from 1.2 to 1.4 would solve almost all of Auckland’s most chronic and expensive traffic congestion problems).
- Apply Timaru’s system of three recycling bins (organic, recyclable and non-recyclable) to the rest of the country.
- We have Trade Me. What about ‘Share Me’, a website that allows people to share resources such as lawnmowers, tools, vacuum cleaners and vehicles?
The hard bit, as always, is not the idea (which usually turns out to be identifying an existing idea anyway), it’s making a viable business model out of it. But when ethical businesses outperform their peers on a number of metrics, and with plenty of examples of products like New Zealand’s demand for Fair Trade coffee jumping 240 percent last year, tomorrow’s businesses will be EEEsy, incorporating the three ‘E’s of ethical, environmental, and economic trade. Just remember, no business is sustainable if it doesn’t have a profit-making model.
Xiamen is providing plenty of evidence of the future of business opportunity in renewable technologies. New Zealanders like to see themselves as leaders in innovation, so I challenge Kiwis to add elbow grease to elegant rhetoric and grab the opportunity. We have a more pristine natural environment than China, a global reputation as clean and green, a penchant for ingenuity and, according to an Australian wind expert I met, New Zealand is the windiest country in the world (he was talking about roaring 40s gales, not hot air). Finally, we have more sun than the English, who are investing much more than we are per head of population in solar technology. Let’s start cranking our natural assets to our advantage in an age that is calling for leadership in this vital area.
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