“Harper is the last leader of the Group of Eight to visit China, and Chinese leaders have barely visited Canada since Harper took office,” said Jin Canrong, vice dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China.

In a fit of excitement, the Chinese government has dropped the pork ban on Canadian pork that has been in place since the word “Swine” was attached to the word “Flu” that somehow showed up on an Albertan farm.  Now that everybody’s got H1N1, I guess the ban just doesn’t seem so important now.  Or maybe it’s the warming relations.  Regardless, I guess the Prime Minister is probably licking his lips at the thought of a nice Canadian pork chop or – even better – some Canadian yu xiang rou si.  I sure am.

And what do we hope to accomplish?

Well, as the Toronto Star astutely points out, “Harper is no visionary Pierre Trudeau, or Jean Chrétien Team Canada deal-seeker.”  That’s not big news.  The interesting bit is that:

Canadian officials are working overtime to keep expectations in check. It’s all about “building relationships and strengthening ties” as Canada prepares to chair the Group of Eight next year, host the G-20, and mark 40 years of diplomatic relations with China.

Well, let’s see what happens.  It seems that China is willing to give everybody a chance, even guys like Stephen Harper who have hugged the DL and seem to enjoy poking China in the eye about human rights.  So, let’s see if Harper has gotten the message and does actually manage to open up a new phase of warm and happy feelings between China and Canada.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2009-11/26/content_9058050.htm

BEIJING: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the announcement on Thursday at a regular press conference.

How will other world leaders (especially political ones) view this?

Or maybe the next story we’ll here is that Hu Jintao will attend?  After all, China has just announced it’s 40-45% reduction in energy intensity by 2020 targets.

Anyway, even if Stephen Harper comes, what will he bring with him?  Here’s Canada’s position on the Environment Canada website.

Update: China Daily reports today that Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the Copenhagen talks

Four streams:

1. Biofuels
   1. Forest-based products
   2. grassland conversion and land use change
   3. second generation biofuels and policy implications
2. low carbon fuel standards
   1. how to incorporate the ecological risks of low carbon fuel standards into effective climate change mitigation policy?  Is this problem solvable?
3. Registries
   1. What are the practical issues for registries in developing countries?  How do you deal with incomplete data, and what level of precision is needed?
   2. Why should organizations in developing countries join registries?  What’s the benefit and what are the drawbacks?
4. Arctic peoples
   1. What role do arctic peoples have in defining their own vutures?  How will their cultures help them to adapt?  What innovative strategies or tactics are emerging in these places tha could be mimicked in the south?
   2. What are the major changes going on in the arctic?  What can science tell us, and what is traditional knowledge telling us?  Does the difference matter?
   We’ll start posting introductions to these topics over the next few days leading up to the conference, and post regularly as they are discussed throughout the event, Dec 7-19.

At the height of this ridiculous blockage in China, I couldn’t access Canada’s website in Beijing: I tried on my own computer and my office computer, took my Ipod Touch and laptop to various locations around the city, and had the same result of other blocked sites.   I even tried to get there using the GPRS internet on my mobile phone.  No luck.  I had spoken to a journalist in Beijing, and for some reason he could go to canada.gc.ca, but others I asked to test for me couldn’t.  Really bizzare.

Anyway, I’m glad that the site is back, there is some information I need on there.  But the more disturbing question is: why was a national website allowed to be blocked in China?  If it’s a snub, I’d like to know why… if it was just carelessness on China’s part, well…I think Canada needs to reevaluate (again) it’s position in China.  If it was carelessness, Canada’s profile is clearly still not high enough to warrant being on a “White list” with China’s censors.

Canada has the ability to be a leader in so many ways with respect to global issues, if it has the desire.  But if our national website is blocked to 1/5 of the world’s population in China, it’s going to be very hard to do anything at all.

September 21, 2009's airforce flyby rehearsal

In fact, last Friday night, everyone with an office along Chang An Jie was kicked out around 3 p.m.  in preparation for the 60th Anniversary of the PRC parade rehearsal.  I stayed late…but on my way home, geez, I saw it all…tanks, armoured carriers, missile launchers, missiles, every kind of artillery you can imagine… oh it’s going to be a heck of a show on October 1.    And if the weather stays the way it is today…what a grand tribute it is going to be to 60 years of the PRC.  Too bad I won’t be here!

We’re looking forward to more rehearsals!

Now, if only we could get the Canadian government website working again in China…..

Furthermore, the website has been blocked for a couple of days, at least…and it’s still not fixed.  The people I contacted at the embassy didn’t seem to know much about it, but maybe I contacted the wrong people, so I won’t blame them.

What’s going on on canada.gc.ca?

The Alberta government is trying desperately to make sure that oil sands oil doesn’t get blocked from the US market when new fuel policies come into effect.  As it stands, oil from Alberta’s oil sands will likely be blocked from California under the world-leading Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

In its efforts, the Government of Alberta commissioned two studies (TIAX – Executive Summary and Full Study -  and Jacobs - Executive Summary and Full Study) to analyse the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with various types of crude oil – including crude processed from Canadian oil sands.  They found that some oil sands oil has lifecycle emissions comparable to some conventional crude oil (although most oil sands results turned out to be considerably higher than most conventional crude oils).  The attached image, from the Jacobs consultancy report, summarizes the findings.  Note that 70 gCO2e/MJ gasoline, which make up the bulk of the emissions, are embodied in the actual fuel.  The variation seen in this image is attributed to different production life cycles.  “Thermal” and “mining” refer to different development styles for oil sands in Canada.

Now, these reports have come under considerable criticism from organizations who don’t want to see oil sands / tar sands oil flowing into the US anymore, such as the Natural Resource Defence Council’s blog on the issue.  Honestly, this isn’t the interesting discussion for me.

The interesting thing for me is that different conventional crude oils have different lifecycle GHG emissions, possibly differing up to 10%, such as in the case between Arab Medium and Bonny Light, as illustrated above.

This means that any transport sector GHG emission analyses that assume one value for crude oil WTW emissions might be off by several percentage points, depending on the difference between the assumed weighted average of crude oil LCA GHG emissions, and the actual weighted average.

I like advanced biofuels as a means of reducing lifecycle GHG emissions in the transport sector, but if significant emission reductions can be achieved by simply shifting sources of crude oil from one supplier to another, this is also an important consideration to make, given that advanced biofuel technology is not quite commercialized yet.

It would be incumbent on China energy analysts to understand the relative sources of crude oil to China, and to undertake LCAs on each of those sources so as to minimize GHG emissions from the transport sector during this time of transition to alternative sources of energy.  Similarly, analyses on different sources of coal should be undertaken in order to accomplish the same lower carbon shifting of conventional energy sources.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sinocanadian

Thanks!

Where in the past, waste-to-energy meant simply burning trash to create heat for steam turbines, gasification uses ultra-high temperatures and a zero-oxygen environment to break materials into their basic atomic elements, and recombine the carbon into carbon monoxide which is useful for all sorts of chemical and energy reactions, including conversion into fischer-tropsch liquids, methanol or through combustion, to electricity.

Combustion produces nasty by-products such as dioxins which have made waste incineration not just politically unpopular, but also dangerous for public health.  Gasification, on the other hand, completely destroys hazardous organic chemicals, while making other contaminants relatively easy to collect.  In the meantime, gasification collects all the carbon into a useful energy product, meaning that there are no direct carbon emissions resulting from the destruction of garbage.

So far, gasification hasn’t made a big spash in China outside the coal-to-methanol sphere which, let’s admit, is not exactly a low-carbon energy.

But let’s look at this.  China is interested in energy security — particularly petroleum security.  It’s got lots of garbage.  It’s interested in a low carbon economy.  Waste-to-fuel would seem to be a key technology for reducing GHG emissions from the transport sector, which China (and the rest of the world) are struggling immensely with.

There’s got to be a place for Canada somewhere in this equation.

What needs to happen?

As it stands right now, the fuel supply in China is tightly controlled.  Only 5 plants can produce bioethanol and sell it into the PetroChina / SinoPec fuel distribution networks. The reason for this is that the government is worried about all of China’s food supply being used to make fuel ethanol by small, uncontrollable companies.  Government doesn’t even want to deal with small biodiesel producers, who barely make a dent in China’s diesel demand.

In order to sell clean fuels to market, some policy changes need to be made, which will allow particular, certified producers of clean fuels to sell their fuels into the national fuel distribution system.  Such a policy should include criteria for fuel sustainability, technological and economic feasibility, lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, etc.  It should also include a verification system so that companies can be monitored to ensure that food is not being used to make ethanol to sell into the distribution system.

If change is going to happen, we need a good policy analysis with a complete policy suggestion (which iCET is currently working on), a technology provider, and importantly, an investor who is ready to put his/her money where his/her mouth is.  It’s the best way to get a meeting with the powers that be, and the best way to make change for cleaner transport fuels in China.