Linxia is not the sort of place that figures large in accounts of China's economic miracle. A town of 140,000 people in the mountains of western Gansu, China's second poorest province, its dusty streets teem with people hawking vegetables, grains, and live animals for slaughter from the backs of carts. Like much of western China, it is remarkably diverse: Hui Muslims gather at pagoda-trimmed mosques, Han businesspeople preside over small shops, and Tibetan nomads barrel through town on motorcycles. But vibrant street commerce has not brought economic progress to the area, where annual income is below 1,100 yuan ($142), less than a third of the national rural average. Talk to any townsperson at length, and he will apologize for Linxia's lack of development.
What Linxia has in abundance, however, is sunlight—and, in ways that might seem incongruous with the area's economic conditions, people are putting it to good use. At Yuansheng Green Solar Power, a small store on a street otherwise devoted to hardware and tools, peasants living in remote areas where electricity is expensive stop to pick up solar water heaters and talk technology with owner Ding Yanlin. A few blocks away is the two-story Solar Supermarket, and spread out around the commercial district are three other independent solar-equipment dealers. In the rolling hills outside of town, Golden Yak-brand solar generator kits—small 20-watt photovoltaic panels providing enough energy for two high-efficiency bulbs—light the tents of nomads who are not hooked up to the grid. Solar generators, heaters, and cookers have become so popular in parts of rural Gansu that families have started giving them as dowry.
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It's a sign that, along with a quickly growing need for energy, an environmental consciousness is building here. Locals who installed solar heaters cite a desire to curb pollution as a reason for going green. At a time when China is grappling with major issues of energy security, environmental degradation, and growing consumption, can it capitalize on its growing adoption of renewable energy and engender a wide-ranging green revolution?
The stakes couldn't be higher.
The litany of environmental challenges that China faces is shocking, even by the enormous proportions of all things Chinese. The International Energy Agency predicts that this year or next China will surpass the United States as the world's No. 1 producer of greenhouse gases. As 14,000 new cars take to the road every day and a new coal-fired plant opens every week, China's CO2 emissions are on course to triple by 2050; the country's newest coal plants alone will cancel out the global emissions reductions sought by the Kyoto Protocol in the next five years. The glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, the source of the three major rivers that supply much of China's water, are shrinking by 7 percent a year, causing droughts and water shortages across the western part of the country. And in cities throughout China, temperatures this winter hit record highs.