Top managers of the country's leading State-owned enterprise
(SOE) risk losing promotion opportunities or even jobs if their
companies fail to meet energy-saving and pollutant-reduction
targets.
An accountability system will be implemented for the managers of
the 154 enterprises directly under the supervision of the central
government starting September.
The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission
(SASAC) urged all its enterprises to draw up detailed steps to help
achieve the national green goal.
"The SOEs, which are the pillars of China's economy, should not
only do well in profit-making, but also become role models in
shouldering corporate responsibility," SASAC head Li Rongrong told
a news briefing yesterday.
The accountability system sets green efforts as a decisive
factor in determining the career prospects of managers.
The central government has already implemented a similar system
to tie the careers of government and Party officials with
improvements in the local environment.
Currently, SASAC assesses the performance of the SOE managements
mainly on profit making.
The new system aims to make the leading SOEs toe the green line
of the central government, which is committed to energy
conservation and emission controls.
The government has set the goal of cutting energy consumption
per unit of GDP by 20 percent and pollutant discharge by 10 percent
from 2006 to 2010.
But energy consumption fell only 1.23 percent last year, well
short of the annual target of 4 percent.
"It's not only our social responsibility to meet the green goal.
In fact, energy saving and pollutant emission reduction can help us
save costs and make more profit," Lu Youqing, vice-president of
Aluminum Corporation of China, told China Daily.
Lu said his company has combined environmental requirements with
production procedures to achieve "clean production" and low
emissions.
The central enterprises - which control all the country's crude
oil and natural gas production, generate half of the electricity
and account for 15 percent of coal output - have great potential in
energy saving and pollutant reduction, Li said.
He also agreed that the green model of development can help
enterprises cut costs.
The bill for coal accounts for 60 percent of the overall cost of
electricity generation for the country's five leading power plants.
The expenditure on fuel accounts for 40 percent of the total cost
of the top three airlines.
Meanwhile, more than 8,000 Chinese enterprises were penalized
for pollution offenses in the first eight months this year, Xinhua
reported yesterday, quoting Ma Kai, head of the top economic
planner.
Ma, who leads the National Development and Reform Commission,
told lawmakers attending the 29th session of the Standing Committee
of the National People's Congress yesterday that the government has
strengthened supervision of enterprises on energy-efficiency and
pollution.
By February, 12 projects that blatantly violated environmental
protection regulations had been permanently shut down.
Ma said approval for 103 projects involving investment of 330.9
billion yuan ($43.8 billion) that failed to meet green standards
had been refused or delayed this year.
(China Daily August 30, 2007)
