February 2011: Successful CPSUC Final Conference in Hohhot, China

On 25 February 2011, the Asia-Invest project "CPSUC - Cleaner Production Service Units & Campaigns in the Less Developed Provinces of the People's Republic of China - CN/ASIA-INVEST/041 (137-265)" held the final conference in Hohhot, China. Wang Jue (EU delegation in Beijing), Peng Sizheng (deputy director general of ACCA21), Liu Wenqiang (officer from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), Xu Jun (director of department of social development of Ministry of Science and Technology), Wang Tao (officer of the department of pollution prevention and control of Ministry of Environmental Protection), Yang Jie (deputy director general of the Inner Mongolia Science and Technology bureau), and Gerhard Weihs (managing director of Centric Austria International) attended the conference and made speeches. Altogether more than 200 participants joined this event, coming from our CPSUs China wide, local governments and enterprises.

This final conference was very successful. Gerhard Weihs appreciated all participants of the project at the opening ceremony, because without them the project would not have been so successful; later on he also hold the panel discussion about problems encountered to popularize Cleaner Production through campaigns in China. Peng Sizheng from ACCA21 pointed out that Cleaner Production is an important measure to improve enterprises production performance and management; he expressed his hopes that China and EU will continue collaboration to support sustainable development in less developed areas in China. Yang Jie from Inner Mongolia said that Inner Mongolia will continue to strengthen Cleaner Production projects' approval and audit and support the enterprises to implement Cleaner Production. Wang Jue from EUDC mentioned that the new "SWTICH ASIA" program encourages Asian countries to pay more attention to develop more cleaner and more energy-efficient industries. Xu Jun introduced the strategic priority areas of Cleaner Production by MOST's planning under the 12th 5 year plan. Liu Wenqiang presented the situation and focused on the efforts of MIIT to promote Cleaner Production. Wang Tao briefed us on MEP's Cleaner Production focus, efficiency and future work ideas. Rainer Agster introduced EMAS system. And participants also discussed EUREM (European Energy Manager), and the EU-BAT system (Best Available Technology).

In summary the CPSUC project bears great potentials by boosting the capacity of Cleaner Production intermediary agencies and service providers, and consecutively of small and medium-sized enterprises in the 11 less developed provinces in western China:

(1) We did identify institutions which could act as adequate Cleaner Production service providers. We built on existing capacities, and we did not establish new institutions, but incorporated in existing institutions a new division to deal with Cleaner Production. We overachieved our target of 11 such Cleaner Production Service Units (CPSU); there are 13 established now; and including their local allies the number is even higher.

(2) We recruited experts to be trained as Cleaner Production consultants. Instead of the targeted 22 experts, the number was tripled at least. All our CPSUs have expanded their capacity to 3 to 5 qualified Cleaner Production experts in average, or even more.

(3) We did not only class-room instruction but training-on-the-job. As a result, more than 20 pilot companies implemented Cleaner Production with advice from our local Cleaner Production consultants. The good experiences were elaborated as case studies, providing the needed show cases for further promotion.

(4) Last but not least our CPSUs have started to campaign Cleaner Production locally. They have set up 3 to 5 years business plans, each to reach out to more enterprises over this period. These campaigns are engaging multiple stakeholders, and they are addressing a colorful variety of industrial sectors. Although the lifetime of our CPSUC project is too short to see the mature fruits, the seeds for a rich harvest are put to the soil.

As a conclusion, drawn in the final panel discussion at the end of the conference, the panelists agreed that there is still a long way to go to make Cleaner Production popular in China beside the existing compulsory CP Audit system, which addresses mainly large companies. To reach the numerous numbers of SMEs, which are the vast majority of enterprises in China, voluntary Cleaner Production has to be promoted, in it must be done through campaigns. The stakeholders of CPSUC committed to do ahead in this direction, but further support by the EU and China will be needed.