On October 12, 2004, the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited Liuminying Village.	A solar energy powered street lamp in a Beijing suburban village.	Many rural families in suburban Beijing have installed solar water heaters.

LIUMINYING Village, 30 kilometers south of downtown Beijing in Daxing District, is a modest settlement, populated by modest, hard-working people. But their commitment to achieving energy diversity has marked them out as true conservation pioneers. The solar-powered street lamps of the village are the most visible manifestation of a concerted drive by the villagers and municipal authorities to promote alternative energy.

Zhang Zhihui’s home lies along the main street, and like those of many other villagers, it is equipped with energy-saving devices provided free-of-charge by municipal authorities, such as a methane stove and a suspended kang (brick bed) that conserves heat much better than a regular kang. The stove in particular is a direct consequence of a decision taken 20 years ago to begin public construction of methane pits for the village’s use, a move that was followed up by a campaign launched in 2005 to popularize a range of alternative energy and energy-saving technologies.

A Changing Life

When Zhang Zhihui mentions the village’s methane pit, she could not be more to the point regarding the benefits it has brought her. “It is much more convenient to cook and heat water using methane stoves,” she said plainly. Methane gas costs RMB 0.6 per cubic meter, a fraction of the cost of natural gas. The annual cost to Zhang Zhihui’s family of five is a mere RMB 300 to 400.

In 1999, the village built its own methane station, with pipelines that lead directly into villagers’ kitchens. The station uses crop stalks and excrement as raw materials. After fermentation, methane gas is produced that can be used as fuel for cooking and heating, while the liquid waste and residue can be used as fertilizer.

The kitchen in Zhang Zhihui’s home is clean and tidy, its walls covered in white ceramic tiles, and it is a complete contrast to the way rural kitchens used to look just 20 years ago. Before 1980, most families in China’s cities used coal stoves, and in the countryside most families used stoves fueled by crop stalks. Usually, a rural kitchen would be piled high with stalks and blackened by cooking fumes.

Recalling the days before the village methane station was built, Zhang Zhihui said: “The condition of the toilets and the pigsties used to be a headache. Villagers disposed of their garbage wherever they liked.” Then, in 1994, the municipal government began a new round of methane gas promotion and sponsored villagers to build methane pits. Zhang Zhihui, like most villagers, was not particularly keen. “We’re used to using crop stalks as fuel for cooking, which can be easily obtained,” she said.

Village leaders went door to door persuading villagers of a better way. That year, only eight out of more than 100 households built methane pits. Later, as more and more villagers began to see the benefits of methane pits, many more undertook to build them in their courtyards. In 1999, the village built a methane station for centralized gas supply.

Another villager, Xu Jinfeng, said: “My family of six would need three to four cylinders a year if we used liquefied petroleum gas for cooking. Now, using methane gas supplied by the village station, we have saved RMB 300 per year.” Daily sewage is treated through the methane station, and the environment of the village has seen a great improvement.

At the end of 2005, the municipal government adopted 108 measures to improve the environment through the use of new energy sources. It invested RMB 10 billion in more than 100 large and medium-sized methane projects, and nearly 300,000 suspended beds in suburban districts.

According to Liu Xiaojun, head of the Science, Technology and Education Department of the Beijing Municipal Construction Commission, an ordinary farm household consumes five tons of coal per year for cooking, discharging 2,800 kilograms of harmful gases, such as sulphur dioxide. Now, 22 million rural households use methane gas, providing a clean fuel equivalent to 13.5 million tons of standard coal.

Most of the rural families in suburban Beijing have installed solar water heaters on the roofs of their homes. Zhang Zhihui has also installed one. She said it is both convenient and economical to use for showering during the summer.

An Ideal Future

When night falls, the solar energy-powered road lamps in Liuminying Village are turned on. Electric lights were not popularized in China’s rural communities until 1980, so the villagers had no concept of street lamps. In 2005, Beijing began to promote solar-energy powered lamps. It has invested hundreds of millions of RMB installing nearly 80,000 such street lamps in its suburban districts. Liu Xiaojun has calculated that 80,000 35-watt lamps can save 2,700 kWh per hour. If they are used eight hours per night, the total saving would amount to 7 million kWh annually.

The suspended bed in Zhang Zhihui’s home was built free-of-charge by the municipal government after she applied for its construction. The bed is made of adobe or brick, and beneath it is a passage linked to a stove. Before the new bed was introduced, the adobe beds in rural areas were built directly on the ground, and the heat was mostly absorbed by the ground. The suspended bed has heat circulating in it, so it saves energy. Zhang Zhihui, for one, has been sold on its benefit. “The new bed is great. It stays warm the whole night, long after burning just a few stalks.”

An investigation report released by the Ministry of Agriculture entitled “The Characteristics of Rural Household Energy Consumption and Construction of New Energy Sources” indicates that, on average, the annual consumption of coal in Beijing’s rural areas is 2.9 tons per household, of which 2.3 tons are used for winter heating. Seventy-eight percent of the households regard winter heating a heavy burden. More than 99 percent of dwellings in rural areas are one-story houses, and in winter room temperature reaches merely 10 °C by burning coal. Liu Xiaojun said that by using suspended beds, the thermal efficiency rises from 45 percent to 70 percent, and the room temperature also rises by 4 °C to 5 °C. On average, one suspended bed can save 1,000 kilograms of crop stalks a year, or 600 kilograms of standard coal.

Saving energy is one of the issues that most concerns the Chinese government. China’s Law of Renewable Energy came into effect in 2006, and it contains special provisions on developing renewable energies, such as solar photovoltaic power and bio-energy. Over the coming three years, the government will invest RMB 10 billion to support new energy development and reduce the discharge of pollutants. One-third of the sum will go to saving energy in the countryside.

Sun Zhengcai, minister of agriculture, said at the 2008 session of the National People’s Congress: “By 2010, the capability of energy saving and development in agriculture and rural areas will reach 50 million tons of standard coal, and the number of rural households that use methane gas will reach 40 million.”

Methane stoves are popular among rural residents like Zhang Zhihui, because they are both convenient and economical. To millions of rural households, reducing expenditure is the overriding motivation for adopting alternative energy sources.

Fan Jinwei, Zhang Zhihui’s eldest son, goes straight to the point: “If you want us to take a measure, you have to let us know its benefits.” As to the solar energy-powered street lamps in the village, Fan Jinwei said: “They are very good. If you installed one in my home, it would save us a lot of money.” But at present, the direct factor hindering the technology’s spread is cost. Although the cost of photovoltaic power generation has dropped steadily — from RMB 40 to RMB 4 per kWh over the past 30 years — the cost per unit of energy is still much higher than that of conventional fuels.

Gap in Reality

Regrettably, on a broader level a gap remains between the ideal of renewable alternative energy sources and the reality of promoting them in the countryside as a whole. In 2007, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), joining five schools of higher learning, including the Renmin University of China and the Agricultural University of China, sent 13 groups of college students to conduct a survey of rural energy consumption. Yuan Fang, a doctoral candidate, participated. He discovered that in China’s rural areas, the percentage of rural households using methane gas is very low, and the drop-out rate is high. In settlements in certain poor provinces and autonomous regions in western China, such as Shixiangjiao Village in Lingchuan County, Guilin City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, methane gas was introduced as early as 20 years ago. But of its 81 households, only 18 have built methane pits since, and 11 pits have been deserted or are seldom used due to a lack of ongoing support services.

Yuan Fang said that in Lingchuan County, only one pilot village has set up a village-level methane station service network. “The maintenance and repair service of methane in rural areas is 20 years behind,” he said. In the past five years, the Chinese government has invested RMB 8 billion to promote methane technology, but there still is no well-developed methane service company on the market. “The popularization of new energy also involves changes in farmers’ lifestyles and ways of thinking. It is a complex process,” Liu Xiaojun said.

On the street of Liuminying Village there hangs a banner bearing the slogan: “Let us renew our efforts to improve the appearance of our village.” In 2007, the village’s industrial and agricultural production value totaled RMB 150 million, and its per capita net income was nearly RMB 10,000. Given such impressive figures, it is tempting to suggest that Liuminying’s progressive energy policy has had something to do with the village’s prosperity. And with inexorably rising energy costs, it should also by all rights be an inspiration to other communities as to what is possible when there is a public commitment to alternative energy.