China Study Tour: ENN – Butterflies and Children

The visit to ENN was interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was very clearly a marketing presentation. The first place we went into was a very expensively decorated room, with TV screens and interactive display. The history of energy usage was told in the “progress” perspective, and was concluded with a presentation on “clean coal.” After the visit, I discussed with some of the others on the trip that there really isn’t any such thing as clean coal – just potentially less dirty coal. I understand they’re using “clean” to refer to the burning of the coal, but I think that any “clean” energy technology needs to be viewed in aggregate before saying that it is, in fact, clean. Upon leaving the first building, we saw a video of children laughing and butterflies.

The second manufacturing site we visited was for solar energy. This was actually quite fascinating, as I didn’t realize that solar panel technology has changed so much in the past decade. No longer is a clunky large silicon based panel necessary; thin-film technology fits between two sheets of glass. Potentially, an entire high rise could be powered only by its windows. Even here, though, in such a high-tech area – and there were a lot of machines, this was not a labor heavy manufacturing center – there was a leaky roof, and a sketchy walkway that made people in the group feel slightly uncomfortable walking on it.

The last area we visited was the algae facility. This was merely a demonstration facility, the real gas production from algae facility is in Inner Mongolia. The machines looked a lot like flash pasteurization machines that I saw at Beecher’s cheese in Seattle.

Overall, the work they’re doing is very interesting, and it’s good to see that China is so concerned with green energy and green technology. I simply found it rather suspicious how impressive and developed the presentation was – and there were five other groups that day other than us – and it makes me wonder what exactly they aren’t saying.