Driving Sustainable Development in China

ITT, a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company, operates on all seven continents, but is currently seeing its fastest and largest growth in China – where ITT’s water and wastewater pump systems play an increasingly prominent role in that country's expanding infrastructure development. By investing and establishing a presence in China over the past century, ITT has built credibility and a reputation for reliability among the Chinese people and government officials.

ITT has demonstrated its commitment to promoting sustainable development in China through the installation of energy- and water-efficient products and technologies in small- and large-scale projects, thus tackling China’s water access and quality issues.

Frequently, ITT’s customers in China are cities and project-based corporations working on major government infrastructure projects such as Three Gorges Dam, the South-North Water Diversion Project, the Suzhou Subway and the country’s numerous wastewater initiatives in Beijing, Shenyang and Kunming. Most recently, ITT committed to helping China’s Chongqing Water Group construct the sustainable water transport networks that are necessary to improve the quality and supply of freshwater in Chongqing, the largest city in Western China.

Internally, ITT’s manufacturing plants in Shenyang and Nanjing incorporate "green" practices, such as water treatment technologies that enable almost total water reuse and zero wastewater discharge – with the Nanjing plant conserving over 18,000 liters of water and wastewater each day.

To address the country’s water access and quality issues, ITT collaborated with the Center for Rural Drinking Water Safety, part of China’s Ministry of Water Resources, to complete two water treatment plants in China as part of a pilot project to find sustainable solutions for rural drinking water issues. The two plants supply more than 15,000 local residents with purified water that meets or surpasses national standards.

ITT also promotes sustainable development in China through its philanthropic efforts in the region. ITT Watermark, ITT’s signature corporate citizenship program, partnered with the China Women’s Development Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and children, to provide eight rural schools with safe drinking water, new sanitation facilities, and education on water safety and hygiene. ITT also deployed its technology to address water distress following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, providing safe drinking water to more than 200,000 earthquake survivors.

Growing with the Chinese Mainland Sustainably

Many of the communities that the company CLP serves are in urgent need of power to support their economic and social development. Bringing affordable energy on a long-term and sustainable basis means that CLP must work with coal as it is the dominant fuel of choice in the Asia-Pacific region, but the company intends to do so responsibly. CLP also works with cleaner sources of energy such as gas, renewables and nuclear when it is practical to do so.

Founded in Hong Kong over a century ago, CLP is a leading power company in the Asia-Pacific region. CLP is committed to providing energy solutions in a financially, socially and environmentally responsible manner.

CLP’s investments on the mainland epitomize its approach to powering Asia responsibly. Supporting the Chinese government’s goal of reducing the carbon intensity of its economy, CLP has been actively pursuing clean energy opportunities on the mainland. From a small hydro project in Guangdong province started in 1997, the company’s portfolio today includes wind, nuclear, hydro and biomass. Where CLP works with coal, it uses more efficient and cleaner technology. The company’s goal is to maintain a balanced portfolio that allows it to produce power in an affordable manner, while meeting the promise of decarbonizing its generation portfolio by 75% by 2050.

In addition to commercial investments, community investments also play a role in supporting sustainable growth on the mainland. Recognizing the importance of preparing the next generation of leaders for complex challenges, CLP has been supporting a number of education initiatives in China.

In November 2009, the company established the CLP-Tsinghua University Clean Energy Education Fund to support students with financial difficulties at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University and to support research programs on clean energy. Through these efforts, the Fund aims to contribute to the mainland’s electricity sector by developing a pool of experts in clean energy.

At the basic-education level, CLP also runs a Young Power Program to promote environmental awareness and social responsibility through activity-based thematic learning, and has been contributing to the establishment of 11 Hope Schools with the goal of raising the literacy level and improving the learning conditions for rural children in Guizhou and Sichuan.

CLP recognizes that sustainable growth requires collective action and will continue to raise awareness about the importance of sustainability and to exchange information so that a low-carbon future becomes a reality in China.

Article originally published in the November 2010 edition of Sustain, the magazine of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.