China’s 1.37 billion people, many of them fully connected to the internet, use an enormous amount of energy as they email, search the Web, or stream video. Indeed, the Chinese…
HONG KONG—The Chinese government has halted the expansion of wind power in its northern provinces where a large number of turbines are churning out power that’s being wasted. The move…
ZHANGJIAGANG, China—On a recent winter morning, Lu Shuhang, a senior executive of a textile mill here in this port city near Shanghai, went on the hunt for an invisible enemy.…
HONG KONG — With its slowest economic growth in a quarter-century and rising desire for clean energy, it is no surprise that China’s demand for coal has fallen far behind…
HONG KONG—China posted its slowest growth in a quarter-century in 2015, official data showed Tuesday, confirming a loss of momentum in the world’s second-largest economy that stands to worry economists…
HONG KONG — Last year, when her relatives came to visit Beijing, Wang Yuefei took them to photograph the Bird’s Nest, a stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics and…
HONG KONG — China’s nuclear power sector, once felt to be weakened after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, has regained its expansive mood. Yesterday, the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, gave a…
HONG KONG — With the dominating role of Chinese factories in the global solar supply chain, the label “Made in China” has adorned the majority of solar panels installed in…
HONG KONG — China’s largest automaker, SAIC Motor, has unveiled a multibillion-dollar investment plan in green car production and pledged to build hundreds of thousands of charging points, signaling the…
SINGAPORE — This is a rich island nation, and despite pressures to help combat climate change, it fully intends to stay that way. Standing on the peak of Jurong Hill,…
HONG KONG — China has made a big bet on renewable energy installation to wean the country off dirty fossil fuels and to meet its emission targets, but the latest…
HONG KONG — A powerful typhoon hit China this weekend, killing over a dozen and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. Typhoon Soudelor — named after a legendary…
SHENZHEN, China — The plaza outside Shenzhen’s Mass Sports Center looks like any you can find in Chinese cities. But if you look closely, you can still see a critical…
HONG KONG — After improving energy efficiency, piloting emissions trading and ramping up renewable energy expansion, China has also been moving on another frontier needed to help ease global warming.…
HONG KONG — China has long been accused of using too much water to produce energy, but now some of its coastal cities are compounding this problem by planning for…
YULIN, China — The streets of this northwestern Chinese city were once packed with Ferraris, BMWs and other luxury cars. Now, they are all gone. Average housing prices here have…
YULIN, China — At about 8:30 on a chilly winter morning, a factory outside this desert city is already getting busy. Its five-story office building is almost fully occupied. Trucks…
QINHUANGDAO, China — In 2009, Wang Zhen, a property developer in this northeastern Chinese city, made a risky decision. If it were proved wrong, Wang would lose millions of dollars…
BEIJING — Growing up in a family of bankers, Wang Tianju thought he would follow in his family’s footsteps and work in the finance sector, until he watched a movie…
SUNGAI NGIHIS, Indonesia — In 2009, Bambang Wahyudi, a new recruit of the Nature Conservancy, solved a puzzle that made many conservationists scratch their heads: how to get timber producers…
SUNGAI NGIHIS, Indonesia — At dawn, Peter Ellis leads a group of environmentalists heading into the tropical forests near this remote village on the island of Borneo. They drive for…
China has bet on solar energy as a cleaner alternative to coal, but whether installed solar panels can meet the country’s need for energy is becoming a troubling question. China…
With a goal to demonstrate the use of renewable energy, Greenpeace was giving some serious thought to installing solar panels on their building’s rooftop when the environmental group rented a…
BEIJING — China has made progress in its carbon trading pilot programs but still has a long way to go, government officials and industry players believe. China, the world’s biggest…
CHONGQING, China — At a 27th-floor apartment at a high rise of this southwestern Chinese city, Zhan Li is making lunch for her family. She steamed fish and fried pork…
Early last month, Hong Fuhai, an economics professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, received an unexpected question: Was it true that he and his colleagues said it is OK to…
Weeks before the harvest started last summer, Li Ping’s rice paddies were hit by extreme weather. Temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit baked Longtan village in north China for over a…
PASSARA, Sri Lanka — In his tea garden up on the mountain, Piyasena Rajapakshe, 71, started his morning exercise by clouting tea bushes. He clouted here and there. Suddenly, one…
SULUR VILLAGE, India — For Aaruchamy Mayilchamy, the desperate yearning for modern transportation began last year, when the 62-year-old could no longer bear the pain in his knees after decades…
ASHRAYA NAGAR, India — This slum on the outskirts of Bangalore is a mix of poverty and modernism. Most huts here have no attached toilet or running water, but solar…
MUDUKATAVA VILLAGE, Sri Lanka — It takes a lot for a lifelong coastal dweller to be surprised by the sea. But a few months ago, when seawater suddenly fell from…
PUNATSANGCHHU, Bhutan — Traveling in this western Bhutanese valley is like going back in time before the Industrial Revolution, with only forests, rice paddies and scattered farming villages visible from…
THAMO, Nepal — Dawa Tshering Sherpa remembers the 1985 flood as if it happened just yesterday. At that time, Sherpa, a then-trekking guide living in this riverside village in the…
KATMANDU, Nepal — The streets of this crowded tourist city are like a slow-moving showroom of the auto industry, with packs of buses, cars, taxis and motorbikes chugging along. But…
XILINHOT, China — By many measures, this northern Chinese city is an ideal candidate for being China’s Wyoming. It has more brown coal reserves than any other Chinese region, and…
Once again, China’s ability to handle a changing climate is being tested. In 2013, rainfall in south China’s Yunnan province dropped 70 percent below average levels. This, combined with similar…
LIJIANG, China — After photographing Black Dragon Lake here for eight years, He Jiaxin knows of more places where he can get the lake to mirror the majesty of its…
SHANGHAI — On a foggy afternoon in early 2012, Kenn Ross heard his cellphone ringing. He picked it up, and that was the beginning of a multimillion-dollar dialogue. “We know…
With the calendar turning to 2013, the long-awaited next phase in a campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will soon take place in China. Five Chinese cities and two provinces…
SHANGQIU, China — This is not the equivalent of Silicon Valley. There isn’t a lab in sight or a high-tech industrial park in the area. What attracts most of the…
BEIJING — Jennifer Holmgren is a dream client for airlines that fly to China. She flies here from Chicago almost every two months, and China topped other countries as her…
KAIHUA INDUSTRIAL PARK, China — By many measures, this industrial park built to cater to solar businesses in eastern China’s Kaihua County appears to be dead. Roads are unimpeded by…
SHANGHAI — Seven years after Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea called on the world to combat climate change by saving vanishing forests in the tropics, the marriage between emissions…
SHANGHAI — When Jeff Huang hosted a visiting Chinese official in the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2011, he was impressed by the official’s interest in trading carbon dioxide. Unlike his…
BANGKOK — Hideki Sawano has attended many farewell parties recently. His team had 20 carbon traders in 2008; today, there are only seven. Working with Japanese trade giant Sumitomo Corp.,…
SHANGHAI — The blue automobile that taxi driver Shen Guiqin uses to carry riders around in northern China’s Tianjin City tells much about an unsung clean solution in the nation.…
SHANGHAI — A newly published government report presents a sobering view of safety issues in one of the world’s fastest-expanding nuclear power markets, saying that “the current safety situation isn’t…
SHANGHAI — China has a long and successful track record of scaling up its industrial growth by hitching it to a continent-size home market. This strategy turned China’s wind turbine…
ERDOS, China — Shenhua Group Corp., one of China’s coal giants, has built much of its success at the cost of climate change. Every year, the company digs hundreds of…
SHANGHAI — In 2007, Ren Junjie, an energy service company executive, came up with an idea for a business. He intended to persuade Chinese factories to use his money and…
SHANGHAI — In 2011, when China unveiled its 2015 target for offshore wind development, it was an ambitious goal by any measure. Europe, the global leader in this sector, spent…
SHANGHAI — The year 2012 is viewed as a catastrophic time in several Mayan theories as well as by a Hindu sect in India. And now, some carbon emissions traders…
SHANGHAI — After years of nurturing China’s wind power sector to become the largest in the world, the nation’s policymakers now appear to have second thoughts. A succession of government…
SHANGHAI — Take a guess: What do Coca Cola’s Chinese factory, Beijing’s most expensive commercial center and the office building of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology have in common?…
DUJIADUN, China — Liu Changxiong has been farming in this southwestern Chinese village for more than a decade, but his years of experience aren’t of much use these days. Last…
SHANGHAI — China started 2012 with a policy revision and pricing reform on shale gas, as part of an effort to lure more companies into finding and developing this unconventional…
SHANGHAI — As if China didn’t have enough problems with its voracious appetite for fossil fuels. Rapidly changing patterns of energy use by China’s small-town dwellers — who account for…
BEIJING — In 1983, when the United Nations was calling for countries to discuss how to satisfy human needs while preserving nature, China faced a dilemma. The nation wanted to…
SHANGHAI — China has set ambitious goals for itself to develop hydropower to help mitigate the risks of climate change, but increasing extreme weather events likely rooted in climate change…
SHANGHAI — After decades of getting its millions of citizens off their bicycles and into modern transportation, China is now struggling to make a big policy U-turn. Last month, southern…
TIANJIN ECO-CITY, China — Three years ago, this coastal area fit perfectly into the dictionary definition for “wasteland.” Its soil was too salty to grow crops. It was polluted enough…
SHANGHAI — Some 1,000 years ago, the Chinese named this city “Shanghai” based on its location. It literally means “above the sea.” Those pioneers probably never imagined the situation that…
CHONGQING, China — Wandering around in downtown Chongqing, it is hard to imagine that this is a city that is going green. Vehicles clog roads in every direction. Construction cranes…
SHANGHAI — For Jin Liang, a typical Chinese who watches his utility bills carefully, each scorching hot summer day posed a dilemma: Should he switch on his air conditioner, or…
XIKOU VILLAGE, China — The muggy summer afternoon started like any other for Mao Juxian — with a sink full of dishes to wash at her riverside diner. But within…
SHANGHAI — It is an annual tradition for Chinese to race dragon boats at the end of each spring, but this year, the tradition has run aground. Many streams and…
HANGZHOU, China — In one of this nation’s most popular tourist cities, famed for the beauty of its surrounding mountains, willow trees, lotus blossoms and ancient stone-arch bridges, a new…
SHANGHAI — As the world’s largest fossil fuel consumer, China is trying to use more clean energy, but it has a major handicap to overcome: Its current electric grid can’t…
ROU HAL, Cambodia — With a desire to one day become a doctor and save lives, 12-year-old Phat Sopwa devotes most of his time to study. After dark, though, his…
SHANGHAI — One aspect of this country’s high-speed economic growth is that Chinese are getting richer and prefer to have their own cars. After decades of streets crowded with bicyclists…
SHANGHAI — When professor Chen Hongbo tried to promote carbon trading in China three years ago, he found himself under fire. As developing countries like China aren’t obliged to limit…
At Image Tunnel, a wooden loft known as Shanghai’s smallest cinema, everything is done differently. The owner rarely hangs posters. Movies are projected on a wall rather than a theater…
BEIJING, China — Death in China isn’t what it used to be. In 1993, when Dr. Li Songtang drove patients to his brand new hospice care facility in Beijing, a…
SHANGHAI, China — When word got out two weeks ago about China’s monster traffic jam, an amazing thing happened: drivers continued to willingly flock to the Beijing-Tibet expressway at the…
SHANGHAI, China — Hired by Chinese businesses, Adi Talmor robs, kidnaps and does his general best to make thousands of workers suffer. But Talmor isn’t a criminal; he’s a consultant.…
Chinese wafer supplier Huantai Silicon has suspended its partnership with the country’s solar cells and panels giant Suntech Power on their joint venture Glory Silicon, and will jointly build a…
For years, China and the West drew a clear boundary in the global auto industry: Western auto giants dominated the technology and designs, while the Chinese companies focused on the…
Unlike most arts troupe directors, Zhao Chuan, founder of underground theater troupe Grass Stage, the name borrowed from China’s ancient wandering troubadours, has never bothered recruiting beautiful actresses. Instead, he wants…
If you’re greeted by, “No seats for you! Get out of here” don’t just chalk it up to Shanghai’s (lack of) service, turn tail and run. Like the Soup Nazi…
They are Chinese. They never went to university. They barely speak Hebrew or even English. But nobody can challenge their knowledge of Jewish history – at least not on the…
SHANGHAI, China — Sales of Chinese solar modules, which accounted for nearly one third of the global market share, were shadowed in the wake of the financial crisis. However, what…