BEIJING -- When the opening lyrics of ''Dark Side of the Moon" floated through the air at a Beijing bar on a recent evening, patrons sang along to the Pink Floyd classic. ''Breathe, breathe in the air," they chanted in chorus. They seemed oblivious to the irony, in a city that is fast becoming one of the world's most polluted.
To confront such problems, China is increasingly looking to boost renewable-energy technologies, such as solar and wind power and electric vehicles.
More than 30,000 new cars are hitting Beijing's streets every month, city authorities say, and China recently overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest consumer of energy after the United States. With the numerous coal-burning factories that ring the city expanding, a yellow haze often crowns the capital.
Air pollution kills about 4 million people a year in China, according to the World Health Organization. Beijing residents joke that every day spent in the capital is akin to smoking 10 cigarettes.
In addition, the World Bank and other specialists warn that the country's galloping fossil-fuel consumption is threatening to deplete global energy stocks and bottleneck the country's economic growth. ''The goal is to have renewable sources produce 10 percent of all our power" by 2010, said Shi Lishan, a director at the Energy Department of China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission.
The promise of alternative-energy technologies, which theoretically could produce infinite, environmentally-friendly energy from renewable sources, sounds good on paper. But nowhere in the world have these technologies been able to completely replace traditional power plants by generating cheap and reliable energy in meaningful quantities.
Meng Xian Gan, director of the Chinese Solar Energy Society, a Beijing research institute, says China has ''no choice" but to invest in and develop the nascent industry.
China would have to eventually phase out the use of coal, which provides about 70 percent of the country's energy, if the Kyoto climate-control protocol is ratified. And rising demand for oil and natural gas from newly enriched consumers and industry is exhausting China's domestic oil fields and straining its treasury.
Although China was a net exporter of oil until 2001, it now spends $100 billion on importing one-third of the 2.5 billion barrels of oil it consumes every year, according to government figures.
Lou Hai, a sales manager with the New Sunshine Solar Co. in Beijing, says he hopes he is doing his part in resolving these problems.
''Imagine capturing the sun's rays to run washing machines. . . . Basically we're producing something from nothing," he said, gesturing to a row of gently humming electronic controllers and batteries his company designs to modulate and store electricity generated from solar panels.
Although solar-powered electricity costs three times as much as coal-generated power, Lou says his company's products have helped reduce the cost of solar-powered energy by 25 percent and estimated that continuing innovation will allow solar power to cost the same as coal-powered electricity by 2006.
With thousands of entrepreneurs developing other innovations and collaborating with local governments and companies across China, solar cells are being employed to heat buildings and water, power irrigation equipment, recycle waste, and even desalinate water.
Over the past year, the central government has also ''become particularly serious about generating more wind energy," said Zhao Jian Ping, the World Bank's senior energy specialist in Beijing.
China has the potential to produce up to 250 gigawatts of wind energy, the World Bank estimates, and numerous wind parks with a total capacity to produce more than 400 megawatts have been installed across the country, mainly in the western plains and along the northeastern coast.
Much of the impetus for such projects comes from the government, which spends about $500 million a year supporting the industry with subsidies, including tax incentives, preferential pricing, credit guarantees, and research and development grants, through such agencies as the National Development and Research Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Energy Research Institute in Beijing says.
But Zhao says Chinese renewable-energy firms still lag behind their Western competitors in technology and efficiency. To leverage foreign expertise, the Chinese government has encouraged foreign investment in the field and most renewable energy projects being set up are collaborations with European companies. Beijing has also instituted several programs that give foreign investors access to domestic energy markets in exchange for technology transfers.
The most successful of these have been the ''Ride the Wind" and ''Brightness" programs, which have brought in about $10 billion, mainly from European corporations and foundations such as The World Nature Fund and the Shell Energy Foundation. The numerous alternate energy plants they have set up across China now bring power to over 30 million rural consumers who were once outside the national power grid.
Zhou Heliang, head of the Beijing 863 Electric Vehicle Program, a government-funded project competing to develop an electric bus for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, says China is investing heavily in developing its own alternative technologies, particularly in the field of electric and hybrid cars.
''The idea is that apart from reducing pollution we will become world leaders in a totally new field," Zhou said.
Ironically, China is depending heavily on market mechanisms to shape its alternative energy industry and help pick winning technologies. Rather than funneling all state research funds to state-run research centers, as was the practice in the past, the government is now seeding numerous public and private companies working on alternate energies with capital.
''We need innovation, we need
different people to try different approaches," said Sun Liqing, an assistant
professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, which is also working on an
electric vehicle with state funds. ''Eventually, the best techniques will win
and the worst will die." 