China's Carbon Cost Abatement Curve: March 2, 2009

Dear China Environment Forum Members,

March is around the corner, and we've got a double header for all of you!

I am particularly honored to share with you that on March 2nd (from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.) CEF will host the U.S. launch of a McKinsey & Company report on China's carbon cost abatement curve. This study - entitled China's Green Revolution: Prioritizing Technologies to Achieve Energy and Environmental Sustainability - is part of a larger McKinsey initiative to examine the carbon cost abatement curves in major greenhouse-gas-emitting countries around the world. Completed studies have examined the United States, the UK, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Australia. Copies of the new report will be available at the meeting. Meeting details are below. For those out of town please note that this meeting will be webcast!

Second, grab your bags of popcorn, for on March 18th (from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.) CEF will be hosting a screening of the film "Up The Yangtze" as part of the DC Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital (March 11-22) (http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org).

NEW CEF REPORT: Please see CEF's new China Environmental Health Research Brief (part of a USAID and Western Kentucky University supported project): "The Impacts of Climate Change in China" at this link: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/docs/climate_biophysical1.pdf

China's Green Revolution: Prioritizing Technologies to Achieve Energy and Environmental Sustainability

Date: Monday, March 2, 2009, 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center's 6th Floor Flom Auditorium (www.wilsoncenter.org/directions)

Speakers: Jonathan Woetzel, a Director in McKinsey & Company's Shanghai office and Martin Joerss, a Principal in McKinsey & Company's Beijing office

RSVP: cef@wilsoncenter.org

Rising demand for energy, increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, and the deterioration of critical natural resources such as arable land and water, pose enormous challenges for China. Like many countries, China faces the challenge of finding solutions that adequately address these issues without compromising its economic development goals and the living standards of its people.

To provide a quantitative, fact-based analysis--a China carbon cost abatement curve--to help policymakers and business leaders identify and prioritize potential solutions, McKinsey & Company, in cooperation with leading researchers in China and across the world, undertook a study of the range of technologies that China could deploy to address its energy and environmental sustainability challenges.

Over the past year, a McKinsey team studied more than 200 efficiency and abatement technologies, with a special focus on five sectors: residential and commercial buildings and appliances; transportation; emissions-intensive industries (including steel, cement, chemicals, coal mining and waste management); power generation; and agriculture and forestry.

Join McKinsey partners Jonathan Woetzel and Martin Joerss at this CEF meeting for a discussion of the key findings from their year-long study.

Film Screening of "Up the Yangtze"

Post-Film Discussant: Judith Shapiro, American University and Author of Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China

Date: Wednesday March 18, 2009, 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center's 6th Floor Flom Auditorium

No RSVP necessary for this event and seating will be on a first-come-first-serve basis!

Film Screening of "Up the Yangtze"

As part of the 2009 DC Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (March 11-22)

(http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org) the China Environment Forum will be screening the film "Up The Yangtze."

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze, navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam, a contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle, provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.

Written and directed by Yung Chang. Produced by Mila Aung-Thwin, Germaine Ying-Gee Wong, and John Christou. An Eye Steel Film and National Board of Canada co-production.

For directions to get to the center: www.wilsoncenter.org/directions

For the past year CEF meeting, publication, and other activities have been supported by USAID, Western Kentucky University, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Waters Corporation.