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Investment company to protect environment

By Zhang Yu'an (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-04-20 07:09

The State Development and Investment Corporation, the country's largest State-owned investment holding company, vows to further emphasize resource-saving and environment protection, while continuing to guide investment to basic, resource, transport and high-tech industries.

"The State Development and Investment Corporation always attaches great importance to environmental protection and resource-saving," Wang Huisheng, president of the corporation, said in Beijing yesterday.

It is the corporation's top priority to access the impact of its invested projects on the environment, stress the development of projects that meet the requirements of a circular economy and develop environmentally-friendly new energy resources.

In the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), the corporation will launch nearly 30 new projects and resource-saving and environmental protection will be given top priority while developing the projects, Wang noted.

In the coming years, the corporation will build and renovate a total of 12 coal washing plants to increase its annual coal washing capacity to 40 million tons, and recycle more than 90 per cent of the waste water from coal production.

The recycled water will be used as cooling water for electricity generation and grassland irrigation.

In the meantime, the corporation will also invest in constructing 10 coal gangue-fuelled power plants, which will use coal gangue, a traditional waste product of coal production, as fuel for electricity generators.

The corporation aims to increase its total assets to 220 billion yuan (US$27.45 billion) by 2012, from last year's figure of 93.9 billion yuan (US$11.71 billion). It also intends to boost its profits to 10 billion yuan (US$1.24 billion) by 2012, from last year's 3.7 billion yuan (US$461.69 million).

Wang said his corporation has a long-term reputation for being committed to environmental protection and corporate social responsibility.

For instance, the Ertan Hydropower Company under the corporation has contributed 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million) to a fund jointly established by the National Natural Science Foundation of China to access the environmental impact of the corporation's Yalong River hydropower development projects. The purpose of the fund is to minimize project impact on the environment and ecological systems along the river.

Tianjin Beijiang Power Plant is another example of the corporation's commitment to environment protection and resource-saving.

The plant is one of the country's first-batch of demonstration projects aimed at a circular economy in the power industry. It will be able to generate electricity, desalinate sea water, produce salt from sea water and recycle industrial waste.

Established in 1995, the corporation has adopted a business model of investment holding, namely acquiring shares through investment. It aims to increase the value of shares through management and selling or transferring shares to maximize returns through capital operation, to guarantee the increase of the value of State-owned assets.

This business model enables the corporation to invest its funds in emerging sectors and guides foreign and private investment to the industries that need it.

At the same time, it also enables the corporation to play an active role in the strategic distribution and readjustment of the country's economic development, the president said.

(China Daily 04/20/2006 page10)