“We’re looking for technologies that have it all,” said LU Lunyan, Director, Climate & Energy Programme, WWF-China. “Being good at the single variable of reducing CO2 emissions isn’t good enough. Our award winners are also very capable at meeting a market need, so there’s the potential for large scale purchasing that would allow them to be out in the real world with enough ubiquity to significantly bring down humanity’s CO2 emission levels. And the reason they’re good at both the business and low carbon fronts is because the underlying technology is so new and different.”
 

The winning Chinese innovations are a cooling tower from Nanjing, a battery charger from Baoding, and a refrigeration system and a power generation system, each from Wuhan.
 

The announcement of the winning products is the culmination of an intensive search and review effort, with final selection of the award winners completed by an expert panel who judged according to five criteria—emissions reduction potential, innovativeness, technology reliability, market potential, and supporting business strategy—to ensure multifaceted winners.
 

The Climate Solver China Awards mark the first time the awards have also been organized outside the origin country: the Climate Solver (Sweden) initiative started in 2008, and this year’s four Chinese innovations join six Swedish innovations announced in November. India will join as the third organizing country in 2013.
 

“The purpose of the Climate Solver initiative has always been to inspire the world with opportunities for tackling climate change made possible by innovations developed by climate entrepreneurs,” said Magnus Emfel, Manager of Climate Innovations, WWF-Sweden. “With all these solutions at hand, the question is what’s stopping us from putting them to practice? Together with investors, corporations, and policymakers, we want to enable faster global deployment of technologies for energy efficiency and renewable energy. I’m very pleased, but not surprised, to see a multitude of climate innovations also from China and look forward to the day they become the tried and true in the marketplace.”

 
 

The 2012 Climate Solver China Award winners are:
 

Hydrodynamic Cooling Tower (Nanjing Xingfei Cooling Apparatus Co., Ltd.)
 

You’ve seen the huge cooling towers that dot China’s landscape marking a steel factory, chemical plant, or any other business that needs to transfer a large amount of waste heat to the atmosphere. Many of these towers require electric fans to aid in the cooling process, and the electric fans add to power bills, are an added danger for workers, and emit CO2 emissions with their power use. Xingfei’s Hydrodynamic Cooling Tower design is able to take full advantage of all the water already circulating in these massive cooling towers and use it to drive hydrodynamic fans, making electric fans unnecessary in the cooling process.

If distributed to 50% of the Chinese market alone, Xingfei’s hydrodynamic cooling tower would reduce annual CO2 emissions by 6.36 million tons by the year 2022.
 

Thermal-Chemical Absorption Refrigeration System (Wuhan Yunhe Dingyu Refrigeration Science & Technology Co., Ltd.)
 

In China, refrigeration, from air conditioning to freezing, is a major consumer of electricity and hence emitter of CO2 emissions. Beyond that, the commonly used refrigerants are greenhouse gases much worse than CO2. Yunhe’s Thermal-Chemical Absorption Refrigeration System replaces electricity as the power source with heat from diesel engine exhaust, industrial steam, or even solar energy. Further, it replaces greenhouse gases as the refrigerant with ammonia, and gets rid of electric compressors altogether. You can already find Yunhe technology in the air conditioners, ice makers, and freezers of some fishing boats.

If distributed to 50% of the Chinese market for refrigeration powered by marine diesel and vehicle engine exhaust gas alone, Yunhe’s absorption refrigeration system would reduce annual CO2 emissions by 15.33 million tons by the year 2022.
 

LHVG Safe and Clean Power Generation System (China City Environment Protection Engineering Co., Ltd.)
 

China has grown into the world’s largest steel producer. And all that steel making produces vast amounts of chemical gases containing vast amounts of heat, which represents not only great wastage of chemical and thermal energy, but also air pollution. CCEPC’s Low Heat Value Gas Safe and Clean Power Generation System can take these otherwise waste gases, combust them to create greater heat, and then drive a gas or steam turbine to produce power for the steelmaker. If distributed to half the Chinese steel industry, the system would reduce annual CO2 emissions by 7.49 million tons per year by the year 2022.
 

Smart Storage Battery Charger (Universal Energy Electrical Co., Ltd.)

 

Many electric cars are a match for their fossil fuel counterparts in terms of comfort and performance. One of the main reasons they aren’t more prevalent is that compared with petrol stations, electric car battery chargers aren’t common and the entire charging process can be slow. Universal Energy’s Smart Self-Adaptive Storage Battery Charger improves charging energy efficiency from a conventional 60%-85% up to 97%, which helps make charging at least twice as fast as with traditional chargers. Further, the charger is only about 1/20 the weight of typical charging solutions with the same power output. Universal Energy’s chargers are currently used by the Chinese military, but with their high-performance characteristics, the company is hopeful they’ll receive strong interest from the private sector.*
 

*This background information has been modified from an earlier version.

·         “Smart Storage Battery Charger” has been changed to “Smart Self-Adaptive Storage Battery Charger”

·         “3-6 times faster” has been changed to “at least twice as fast as”

·         “40%-60%” has been changed to “60%-85%”

·         “1/6 the weight of typical charging solutions” has been changed to “1/20 the weight of typical charging solutions with the same power output”

 

 

 

Qiu Wei, Senior Communications Officer, wqiu@wwfchina.org,  +86 10 6511 6272