China Environmental Law

. . . and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of a Carrefour boycott. 
Let’s hope on this beautiful day at least some of the angry netizens we’ve been reading so much about will step away from their keyboards, leave their caves, and enjoy the sunlight. Real unfiltered sunlight today in Shanghai; no smog, [...]

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China’s Standardization Administration announced (English here, Chinese here) on Friday that it had released 46 new national standards on “energy consumption issues ranging from coal-fired power to household induction cookers.”
These standards are specifically designed to improve the implementation of the newly amended Energy Conservation Law (the subject of several previous posts) that went into effect [...]

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Oh I know I’ve probably reeled in quite a few new readers with this post’s title, and I’m sorry to disappoint those hoping for a review of the Meteorology Law. Because of the press of other business, all I can do today is direct you to a very nicely written article by Tom Scocca in Plenty Magazine about China’s [...]

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The newly amended Energy Conservation Law governs the construction of commercial and residential structures-areas that were not covered in the original act which dealt primarily with industrial facilities.  Now, any “fixed asset investment” project (industrial, commercial, or residential) is subject to “a system for evaluation and examination of conservation” (Article 15):
The authorities charged with project [...]

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Like the swallows to Capistrano, blue-green algae returns to Tai Lake.  The algae lacks the punctuality of the swallows, however, arriving it seems earlier and earlier every year.
In past years blue-green algae would appear in Lake Tai in July or August but last year it was detected at the end of May. This year the algae [...]

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There’s a great post today by Bill Powell at The China Blog about President Hu Jintao’s speech at the Boao Forum for Asia in Sanya.  You can find the complete text of the speech here. It is remarkable, as Powell points out, for giving only the slightest nod to the “Green Asia” theme of the Forum. [...]

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The Xiamen PX plant episode will, in my opinion, come to symbolize a turning point not only in China’s environmental history, but in its political history as well.  The story itself has everything: shady Taiwanese businessmen, public protests, middle class angst over property values, beleaguered local officials caught between a rock and a hard place, [...]

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We have previously introduced China’s Renewable Energy Law, so let’s now take a closer look at some of the policies and plans which support this law.  The main policy pronouncement is found in the National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) Medium and Long-Term Development Plan for Renewable Energy (the “Plan”)(see right sidebar under “Laws & Regulations”).
From [...]

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SEPA (now MEP) enacted regulations (effective on October 15, 2003) that govern the “environmental administration” of “new chemical substances.”  These regulations are applicable to ”activities in relation to the manufacture or import of new chemical substances and their environmental management undertaken within the territory of the People’s Republic of China” (Article 2). I have added a [...]

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We recently reviewed the provisions of  the newly amended Energy Conservation Law which apply to operating manufacturing facilities. Today, we’ll look at the regulations and policies which apply to these operations.  The Medium and Long Term Energy Conservation Plan (the “Plan”)(under “Laws & Regulations” in the right sidebar) noted that as of 2004 “the lack [...]

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