China's Great "Green" Leap Forward

Today, China is acutely aware of environmental imperatives.

I am just back from my latest trip to China, where I observed the very rapid transition that it has undertaken. The transformation is fascinating, even – perhaps especially – for a company that has long shared history with the Land of the Middle Empire.

It's true that Saint-Gobain is familiar with China. Our first plant opened in 1980s and today we manufacture mainly innovative and high-performance materials at fifty industrial facilities. In addition to our products, the "brand France" – that the former Colbert manufacture still embodies – is a major asset in the Far East. China is of strategic importance for our Group's future business development.

We all know what a colossal environmental challenge China is facing. The country alone accounts for 30% of the world's carbon emissions.

However, its leaders have announced a new ambition: to become an "ecological civilization". Now, is this simply window dressing or are we seeing a real change in direction?

All of the official available data confirm this virtuous trend. Last July, the British journal Nature Geoscience published a study showing that China had already reached its 2030 targets set under the Paris Agreement. Another study by the University of Chicago noted "remarkable" results. According to researchers, the concentrations of fine particles in the air (PM2.5) – which play a part in the development of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as cancer – fell by 32 points between 2013 and 2017.

Of course, progress doesn't mean that problems don't exist. Anyone that has lived in one of China's large cities, whose air pollution peaks are increasingly numerous, can see that the environmental crisis is still with us. Moreover, this fairly authoritarian approach to transition is open to some criticism. The sudden shutdown of most of the coal-fired power plants left some institutions in difficulty, including schools unable to heat their classrooms. Furthermore, as our Abrasives production plant near Beijing found out, the authoritarian shutdown of production without warning in major cities by the government causes disruption to plant organization.

Nevertheless, this move shows that the Great Green Leap Forward is real, a fact that is generally accepted today.

The reason is as simple as it is pragmatic: the Land of the Middle Empire realized that its economic future requires an ecological transition. Every day, new and spectacular announcements are made. For instance, the world's most populous country, which already holds one-quarter of the world's installed solar capacity, is planning to increase that capacity tenfold.

What if we looked to China for inspiration? It has demonstrated that a top polluting nation can also be a leading game changer.

Saint-Gobain certainly thinks so and we should know: we work in a construction sector accounting for nearly 25% of all greenhouse gases. Yes, we believe it's possible walk the ridgeline between satisfying today's demands without sacrificing the generations to come.

But the road is narrow! It requires us to constantly rethink how we do things and move forward with confidence and faith in the human ability to achieve progress through innovation.