The Importance of China forSustainable DevelopmentMartin AbrahamDepartment of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606;mabraha@utnet.utoledo.edu (for correspondence)

Published online 26 August 2005 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ep.10094

At the end of May, I had the good fortune to attendthe NSF-supported Joint China–USA Green ChemistryWorkshop held in Beijing. The goal of the workshopwas to identify the science drivers and implementationchallenges of green chemistry in countries as complexas the United States and China. During the workshop,organized by Robin Rogers from the University of Ala-bama, twelve scientists and engineers from U.S. aca-demia and industry had the opportunity to discuss withtwelve Chinese counterparts the role of green chemis-try in the development of sustainable technologies. Wefocused on issues of energy, clean solvents, novel ca-talysis, renewable resources, eco-efficiency, and thelike; in short, those elements that are central to theprinciples of green chemistry and to the principles ofsustainable engineering. I came home from the meet-ing with two quick and fundamental impressions:1. Although China is still an underdeveloped econ-

omy, the issues of sustainable engineering are thesame in China as they are in the United States.

2. Together, China and the United States can deter-mine the role of sustainable engineering in the eco-nomic growth and development of the planet.

This month, I would like to expand on these two pointsas we explore the importance of China for sustainabletechnologies.

Although more of an impression than a fact, eco-nomic data provide evidence in support of the secondpoint; that is, the importance of both the United Statesand China for sustainable growth. The United NationsDevelopment Program provides statistics for numerousindicators that can be used as proxies for energy, econ-omy, and the environment [1], some of which are re-produced as Table 1. The United States has the largestand most technologically powerful economy in theworld, with a per capita GDP (2002) of $36,006. TheUnited States also provides the single largest contribu-

tion to CO2 emissions in the world (23.1%), at 19.8metric tons per person in 2000, and China provides thesecond largest contribution (11.5%) but only 2.2 metrictons per person. However, China has roughly one-quarter of the world’s total population (1295 millionpeople in 2002) and the largest GDP per capita growthrate at 8.6% per year. Thus, we establish China and theUnited States as two very significant economies withinthe world, as well as two major contributors to globalpollution.

Over the past decade, China’s economy has grownat an average annual rate of nearly 9%. China is nowthe world’s largest producer of coal, steel, and cement,the second largest consumer of energy, and the thirdlargest importer of oil [2]. Now, the Chinese economy isexpanding into the United States. Some specific exam-ples in the news recently include the sale of IBM’s PCdivision to the Chinese distributor Lenovo Group, theeffort by the Chinese petroleum company CNOOC topurchase Unocal, and the sale of Maytag to the HaierGroup, China’s largest appliance manufacturer. Asthese two economic giants become more effectivelymerged, it becomes more evident that these new inter-national megacorporations will be able to effectivelycontrol new engineering technologies that influenceglobal sustainability.

China’s economic growth has led to environmentalconcerns, in that economic growth has been accom-plished with almost no regard for the environment, aformula that does not seem to be sustainable [3]. Envi-ronmental injury costs China 8–15% of its annual grossdomestic product. In the north, encroaching deserts areprompting human migrations that swell overburdenedcities, whereas in the south, factories have closed pe-riodically for lack of water [4]. While I was in China, Irecall someone stating that the desert has moved to theoutskirts of Beijing, and only extraordinary measuresare keeping it from actually overtaking the city. Can the© 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers

SUSTAINABILITY

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Chinese economy continue to grow without placingeven greater burdens on the global environment?

How has the growth of the Chinese economy influ-enced sustainable development? What is happening inthe United States and China to address these concerns?During our Workshop, we discussed many of theseissues, with the goal of understanding how our twocommunities could work together to advance knowl-edge and support sustainable technologies. The Chi-nese delegates indicated two major areas of interest forthe research community: energy availability and CO2emissions. In both the United States and China, cleanchemical processing is also a major research focus.

Over the next several paragraphs, I further explorethese issues.

World energy consumption is projected to increaseby 54% from 2001 to 2025 [5]. The United States con-tinues to rely heavily on fossil fuels, with petroleummaking up about 40% of the total U.S. energy supply.Although there is increasing interest in developing re-newable resources, the consumption of renewablesactually declined from 1999 through 2003 [6]. In Chinaand the developing world, coal remains an importantfuel for the production of electricity and is expected tocontinue to dominate energy markets in developingAsia. Energy is one of the four critical research areas for

Table 1. Summary of environmental and economic indicators for the United States and China [1].

Human development indexMonitoring human development:

enlarging people’s choices

IndicatorsUnitedStates China World

Total population (millions) 1975 220.2 927.8d 4,068.1 Te

2002a 291 1,294.90d 6,225.0 Te

Annual population growth rate (%) 1975–2002 1 1.2d 1.62002–2015a 1 0.6d 1.1

Population with sustainable access to animproved water source (%) 1990 100 71 � �

2000 100 75 82f

Internet users (per 1,000 people) 1990 8 0 0.52002 551.4 46 99.4

Research and development (R&Dexpenditures as % of GDP) 1996–2002c 2.8 1.1 2.5

Researchers in R&D (per millionpeople) 1990–2001c 4,099 584 1,096g

GDP per capita (US$) 2002 36,006 989 5,174GDP per capita annual growth rate (%) 1975–2002 2 8.2 1.3

1990–2002 2 8.6 1.2Electricity consumption per capita

(kilowatt-hours) 1980 10,336 307 1,5732001 13,241 1,139 2,361

Carbon dioxide emissions 1980 20.4 1.5 3.4Per capita (metric tons) 2000 19.8 2.2 3.8

Carbon dioxide emission share of worldtotal 2000 23.1 11.5 100.0 Th

Notes:a Data refer to medium-variant projections.cData refer to the most recent year available during the period specified.dPopulation estimates include Taiwan, province of China.eData refer to the total world population according to UN (United Nations). 2003. World Population Prospects1950–2050: The 2002 Revision. Database. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. NewYork. The total population of the 177 countries included in the main indicator tables was estimated to be 4,063million in 1975, and projected to be 6,217 million in 2002 and 7,188 million in 2015.

fData refer to the world aggregate according to UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). 2003. The State of theWorld’s Children 2004. New York: Oxford University Press.gData refer to 1996.hData refer to the world aggregate from CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center 2004. Trends: ACompendium of Data on Global Change. [http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/trends.htm]. March 2004). Datarefer to total carbon dioxide emissions, including those of countries not shown in the main indicator tables as wellas emissions not included in national totals, such as those from bunker fuels and oxidation of non-fuelhydrocarbon products.

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China in the country’s next five-year plan, as research-ers strive to develop ways to use less energy and fewernatural resources [3]. There appears to be increasinguse of hydroelectric and other renewable resources,but these remain small scale and isolated. The growthof the Chinese economy is putting increasing stress onthe world’s energy markets, which should providegreater impetus to take advantage of new and cleanertechnologies, to seek new energy sources, and also toinstall more energy efficient manufacturing processes.

Another major driving force in sustainable engineer-ing is the application of renewable resources for theproduction of chemicals and fuels. Greater use of re-newables, both for chemical manufacture and energyproduction, will decrease CO2 emissions because therenewable materials derive their carbon through CO2from the atmosphere. Toward this end, researchers atthe National Renewable Energy Laboratory have pro-posed a future built on a biorefinery that integratesbiomass conversion processes and equipment to pro-duce fuels, power, and chemicals from biomass. Thebiorefinery has the advantage of taking carbon dioxidefrom the atmosphere, coupling it with energy from thesun, and producing energy and chemical products in aclean and renewable cycle [7]. China, which is thebiggest agricultural country in the world, can providethe raw materials to support biorefinery processes.Conversion of 1% of available straw stalk and 10% ofrice husks for gasification and power generation couldprovide a total installed capacity of greater than 2million kW [8]. Interest in biomass processes in China isgrowing, as evidenced by the more than 180 represen-tatives from political, academic, and business circleswho attended the 2005 Chinese biomass engineeringforum to discuss developmental trends in internationalbiomass science and technology. According to the re-port, published in the newsletter of the Chinese Acad-emy of Engineering, the time is ripe to develop China’sbiomass industry and China must not miss the oppor-tunity to take advantage of its resources [9].

Now, let’s turn to one final topic in sustainableengineering—cleaner chemical processing and in par-ticular, benign solvents. Within the United States, be-nign solvents typically would include ionic liquids,supercritical carbon dioxide, and water. All of theseareas were represented at the workshop, and in eachcase, new developments showed how these benignsolvents could be used for chemical reactions or sepa-rations. For example, Prof. Rogers, the workshop orga-nizer and 2005 recipient of the Presidential GreenChemistry Challenge Award, described his work dem-onstrating that ionic liquids could be used to dissolvecellulose, which opens a new arena for homogeneouschemistry in which cellulose is selectively converted to

an economically preferred product. Similar interestingwork is going on in China. For example, at the Re-search Laboratory of Green Chemical Engineering andTechnology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof.Suojiang Zhang and colleagues are working to developa systematic platform to bridge the gap between thefundamental understandings of ionic liquids and theirindustrial applications. In a similar vein, Prof. BuxingHan, from the Institute of Chemistry in the ChineseAcademy of Sciences, is evaluating applications of su-percritical fluids and ionic liquids in chemical reactions,material science, and extraction and fractionation.

In short, the United States and China are both deal-ing with similar sustainability issues: energy needs,greater use of biomass resources, and cleaner chemicalprocessing. Research labs in government, academia,and industry are committing vast resources to the de-velopment of new technologies in these areas. As twoof the world’s most important economies, both ofwhich are growing at significant rates, these two na-tions clearly have a significant influence on the con-sumption of natural resources and the generation ofwaste. By working together, these nations have thepower to dictate the agenda of sustainable engineeringfor many years to come.

LITERATURE CITED1. United Nations Development Programme (2004).

Data taken from http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/,accessed July 19, 2005.

2. Zakaria, F. (2005). Does the future belong to China?,Newsweek, May 9, available online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7693580/site/newsweek/.

3. Baum, R.M. (2005). Perspective on China, C&ENews, May 23.

4. Lynch, D.J. (2005). Pollution poisons China’sprogress, USA Today, July 4.

5. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). (2004). Interna-tional energy outlook. US DOE, available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html.

6. US DOE Energy Information Agency. http://www.eia.doe.gov, accessed July 20, 2005.

7. Moens, L. (2005). Renewable feedstocks. In M. Abra-ham (Ed.), Sustainable science and engineering: De-fining principles, Amsterdam: Elsevier.

8. Leung, D.Y.C., Yin, X.L., & Wu, C.Z. (2004). A re-view on the development and commercialization ofbiomass gasification technologies in China, Renew-able & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 8, 565–580.

9. Welcoming a new era in the biomass economy, CAENewsletter, available online at http://www.cae.cn/english/publications/con-tent.jsp?id�774.

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