The Chinese government will launch within this year a program to build more small hydropower plants in the Yangtze River valley to replace environmentally damaging energy sources.

The program is designed to substitute hydropower for timber and enable more farmers in the valley to use clean energy, enlarge forest area and bring more virgin forests under protection.

 

"Hydropower is a clean energy source which is winning acceptance in China. Investors are keen to finance small hydropower plants which not only enjoy preferential government policy, but are also low cost, with low investment risks and easy to maintain," says Li Qidao, a renowned small hydropower plant expert.

 

Li believes that farmers can afford hydropower, which is cheaper, so they do not have to use timber for heating and cooking. They will also have more time to undertake other sideline businesses involving planting and breeding, or find jobs in urban areas.

 

Cheng Huizhou, head of the division for development of hydropower and electrification in rural areas with the Ministry of Water Resources, says a similar scheme has been applied to a number of areas and encouraging progress has been made.

 

The scheme of substituting hydropower for timber was introduced two years ago on a trial basis to areas around the sources of four rivers in central China's Hunan Province, including Xiangjiang, Zijiang, Yuanjiang and Lijiang rivers.

 

More small hydropower plants have been built, along with greater use of protected forest, so many local farmers have resorted to clean energy by forsaking the habit of using timber or straw for cooking or heating.

 

As a result, vegetation in the valleys has been recovering rapidly. The silt now swept into the Dongting Lake, a tributary of the mighty Yangtze, has been decreased by around 40 percent in the past two years, says Fang Xinlin, a water resource specialist.

 

In southwest China's Sichuan Province, where small hydropower plants were built as early as the 1980s, 1.5 million farmers had shifted to hydropower instead of pollution causing timber burning by late 2002.

 

This meant over 4 million cubic meters of timber was saved from destruction in Sichuan annually, according to Zhu Jiaqing, deputy head of the provincial bureau of water resources.

 

The Yangtze River, China's longest running 6,300 km, starts in the southwestern foothills of Tanggula Range in western China, and flows eastward through Qinghai, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai, where it empties into the East China Sea.

 

"Because of a lack of substitute energy, many farmers in the mountainous areas of west China still rely on the methods passed down from generation to generation, such as burning timber or dung for cooking or heating," says Cheng, a leading official for developing hydropower and electrification in rural areas with the Ministry of Water Resources.

 

According to Cheng's estimate, 420 million to 560 million cubic meters of firewood are burned off or 23.3 million hectares of woodland is destroyed annually in west China, where the ecology is the most fragile in the country.

 

About 100 million farmers mainly depend on firewood or straw for fuel.

 

"Over-harvesting around both banks of the upper reaches of the Yangtze has led to more natural disasters and a worsened ecological environment has in turn caused great damage to the ecosystem downstream," says Jing Zhengshu, deputy minister of water resources.

 

In the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze in Sichuan Province, the silt swept into the Yangtze exceeds 700 million tons each year, the deputy minister says.

 

However, the situation is changing.

 

According to Jing, small hydropower stations, with a combined generating capacity of 24.85 million kw, have been constructed across China, which is near the total generating capacity of small hydropower stations in the rest of the world.

 

Over 300 million farmers across the country have bid farewell to firewood, and now use clean hydropower energy, mostly financed with pooled funds but aided by the government.

 

In west China, such as Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, small hydropower stations with a combined generating capacity of 10.36 million kw have been constructed, accounting for 56.6 percent of the national total, Jing says.

 

"The construction of small hydropower stations is playing an important role in protecting the ecological environment in west China, especially the ecosystem of the Yangtze River Valley," he says.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2003)