[FLPERMACULTURE] Fw: Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China

[Joseph Wetmore]

> Follow the link to the original for pretty pictures.
> 
> 
> 
> =============================================
> 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html>
> 
> Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China
> 
> By Ariana Eunjung Cha
> Washington Post Foreign Service
> Sunday, March 9, 2008; A01
> 
> GAOLONG, China -- The first time Li Gengxuan saw the dump
> trucks from 
> the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn't
> believe what 
> happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary
> school 
> playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white
> liquid onto the 
> ground. Then they turned around and drove right back
> through the gates 
> of their compound without a word.
> 
> This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine
> months, Li and 
> other villagers said.
> 
> In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its
> industrial 
> growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not
> uncommon. But 
> the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the
> central plains of 
> Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one
> reason: It's a 
> green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for
> solar energy 
> panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of
> polysilicon 
> production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic
> substance that 
> poses environmental hazards.
> 
> "The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile.
> No grass or trees 
> will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is
> poisonous, it 
> is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said
> Ren Bingyan, a 
> professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei
> Industrial University.
> 
> The situation in Li's village points to the
> environmental trade-offs the 
> world is making as it races to head off a dwindling supply
> of fossil fuels.
> 
> Forests are being cleared to grow biofuels like palm oil,
> but scientists 
> argue that the disappearance of such huge swaths of forests
> is 
> contributing to climate change. Hydropower dams are being
> constructed to 
> replace coal-fired power plants, but they are submerging
> whole 
> ecosystems under water.
> 
> Likewise in China, the push to get into the solar energy
> market is 
> having unexpected consequences.
> 
> With the prices of oil and coal soaring, policymakers
> around the world 
> are looking at massive solar farms to heat water and
> generate 
> electricity. For the past four years, however, the world
> has been 
> suffering from a shortage of polysilicon -- the key
> component of 
> sunlight-capturing wafers -- driving up prices of solar
> energy 
> technology and creating a barrier to its adoption.
> 
> With the price of polysilicon soaring from $20 per kilogram
> to $300 per 
> kilogram in the past five years, Chinese companies are
> eager to fill the 
> gap.
> 
> In China, polysilicon plants are the new dot-coms. Flush
> with venture 
> capital and with generous grants and low-interest loans
> from a central 
> government touting its efforts to seek clean energy
> alternatives, more 
> than 20 Chinese companies are starting polysilicon
> manufacturing plants. 
> The combined capacity of these new factories is estimated
> at 80,000 to 
> 100,000 tons -- more than double the 40,000 tons produced
> in the entire 
> world today.
> 
> But Chinese companies' methods for dealing with waste
> haven't been 
> perfected.
> 
> Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies
> in the 
> developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into
> the 
> production process. But the high investment costs and time,
> not to 
> mention the enormous energy consumption required for
> heating the 
> substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the
> recycling, have 
> discouraged many factories in China from doing the same.
> Like Luoyang 
> Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed
> technology to 
> prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or
> have not brought 
> those systems fully online, industry sources say.
> 
> "The recycling technology is of course being thought
> about, but 
> currently it's still not mature," said Shi Jun, a
> former photovoltaic 
> technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
> 
> Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up
> polysilicon research 
> firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe
> shortage of 
> polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this
> issue for now.
> 
> "If this happened in the United States, you'd
> probably be arrested," he 
> said.
> 
> An independent, nationally accredited laboratory analyzed a
> sample of 
> dirt from the dump site near the Luoyang Zhonggui plant at
> the request 
> of The Washington Post. The tests show high concentrations
> of chlorine 
> and hydrochloric acid, which can result from the breakdown
> of silicon 
> tetrachloride and do not exist naturally in soil.
> "Crops cannot grow on 
> this, and it is not suitable for people to live
> nearby," said Li 
> Xiaoping, deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of
> Environmental Sciences.
> 
> Wang Hailong, secretary of the board of directors for
> Luoyang Zhonggui, 
> said it is "impossible" to think that the company
> would dump large 
> amounts of waste into a residential area. "Some of the
> villagers did not 
> tell the truth," he said.
> 
> However, Wang said the company does release a "minimal
> amount of waste" 
> in compliance with all environmental regulations. "We
> release it in a 
> certain place in a certain way. Before it is released, it
> has gone 
> through strict treatment procedures."
> 
> Yi Xusheng, the head of monitoring for the Henan Province
> Environmental 
> Protection Agency, said the factory had passed a review
> before it 
> opened, but that "it's possible that there are
> some pollutants in the 
> production process" that inspectors were not aware of.
> Yi said the 
> agency would investigate.
> 
> In 2005, when residents of Li's village, Shiniu, heard
> that a new solar 
> energy company would be building a factory nearby, they
> celebrated.
> 
> The impoverished farming community of roughly 2,300, near
> the eastern 
> end of the Silk Road, had been left behind during
> China's recent boom. 
> In a country where the average wage in some areas has
> climbed to $200 a 
> month, many of the village's residents make just $200 a
> year. They had 
> high hopes their new neighbor would jump-start the local
> economy and 
> help transform the area into an industrial hub.
> 
> The Luoyang Zhonggui factory grew out of an effort by a
> national 
> research institute to improve on a 50-year-old polysilicon
> refining 
> technology pioneered by Germany's Siemens. Concerned
> about intellectual 
> property issues, Siemens has held off on selling its
> technology to the 
> Chinese. So the Chinese have tried to create their own.
> 
> Last year, the Luoyang Zhonggui factory was estimated to
> have produced 
> less than 300 tons of polysilicon, but it aims to increase
> that tenfold 
> this year -- making it China's largest operating plant.
> It is a key 
> supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, a solar panel company
> whose founder 
> Shi Zhengrong recently topped the list of the richest
> people in China.
> 
> Made from the Earth's most abundant substance -- sand
> -- polysilicon is 
> tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy,
> and even a 
> small misstep in the production can introduce impurities
> and ruin an 
> entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the
> waste. For 
> each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at
> least four 
> tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste.
> 
> When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride transforms
> into acids 
> and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people
> who breathe 
> the air dizzy and can make their chests contract.
> 
> While it typically takes companies two years to get a
> polysilicon 
> factory up and running properly, many Chinese companies are
> trying to do 
> it in half that time or less, said Richard Winegarner,
> president of Sage 
> Concepts, a California-based consulting firm.
> 
> As a result, Ren of Hebei Industrial University said, some
> Chinese 
> plants are stockpiling the hazardous substances in the
> hopes that they 
> can figure out a way to dispose of it later: "I know
> these factories 
> began to store silicon tetrachloride in drums two years
> ago."
> 
> Pro-EnerTech's Shi says other companies -- including
> Luoyang Zhonggui -- 
> are just dumping wherever they can.
> 
> "Theoretically, companies should collect it all,
> process it to get rid 
> of the poisonous stuff, then release it or recycle.
> Zhonggui currently 
> doesn't have the technology. Now they are just
> releasing it directly 
> into the air," said Shi, who recently visited the
> factory.
> 
> Shi estimates that Chinese companies are saving millions of
> dollars by 
> not installing pollution recovery.
> 
> He said that if environmental protection technology is
> used, the cost to 
> produce one ton is approximately $84,500. But Chinese
> companies are 
> making it at $21,000 to $56,000a ton.
> 
> In sharp contrast to the gleaming white buildings in
> Zhonggui's new 
> gated complex in Gaolong, the situation in the villages
> surrounding it 
> is bleak.
> 
> About nine months ago, residents of Li's village, which
> begins about 50 
> yards from the plant, noticed that their crops were wilting
> under a 
> dusting of white powder. Sometimes, there was a hazy cloud
> up to three 
> feet high near the dumping site; one person tending crops
> there fainted, 
> several villagers said. Small rocks began to accumulate in
> kettles used 
> for boiling faucet water.
> 
> Each night, villagers said, the factory's chimneys
> released a loud 
> whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard
> to breath. 
> "It's poison air. Sometimes it gets so bad you
> can't sit outside. You 
> have to close all the doors and windows," said Qiao
> Shi Peng, 28, a 
> truck driver who said he worries about his 1-year-old
> son's health.
> 
> The villagers said most obvious evidence of the pollution
> is the 
> dumping, up to 10 times a day, of the liquid waste into
> what was 
> formerly a grassy field. Eventually, the whole area turned
> white, like snow.
> 
> The worst part, said Li, 53, who lives with his son and
> granddaughter in 
> the village, is that "they go outside the gates of
> their own compound to 
> dump waste."
> 
> "We didn't know how bad it was until the August
> harvest, until things 
> started dying," he said.
> 
> Early this year, one of the villagers put some of the
> contaminated soil 
> in a plastic bag and went to the local environmental
> bureau. They never 
> got back to him.
> 
> Zhang Zhenguo, 45, a farmer and small businessman, said he
> has a theory 
> as to why: "They didn't test it because the
> government supports the plant."
> 
> Researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this
> report.