Under China's 4-trillion-yuan financial stimulus package over the next two years, a large amount of money will be channeled to the energy and environmental sector.

Construction of many large-scale energy projects will account for a large part of the country's policy to boost domestic demand. China's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has said that several large energy and infrastructure projects to be built this year include:

The Fuqing nuclear power station in Fujian province, the Fangjiashan nuclear power plant in Zhejiang province, Yangjiang station in Guangdong province. They have a total of ten 1000-MW nuclear power reactors.

An engineer conducts components assembly at Goupitan hydropower project in Guizhou province.With a total investment of 13.8 billion yuan and total installed capacity of 3 million kilowatt-hours, the hydropower station is planned for the Wujiang River, a branch of the Yangtze River. The hydropower station will start generating electricity as early as next April. [China Daily]

The eastern part of the second East-West natural gas pipeline, which starts from Zhongwei in Ningxia Hui autonomous region and goes to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

One 800-KV power transmission line from Jinping in Sichuan to the southern part of Jiangsu province.

One coal mine in Shaanxi province with an annual production capacity of 12 million tons.

One oil refinery in Chengdu in Sichuan province, which can produce 10 million tons of oil products per year.

China will also invest 4 billion yuan to upgrade power grids both in urban and rural areas. The country has also completed the plan for the second group of State strategic oil reserves bases, which have a combined capacity of 26.8 million cu m.

"These projects can enhance the country's energy security greatly. It will end the history of 'no oil refinery in southwestern China,'" the NDRC said in a statement.

"They will also increase the proportion of clean energy in China's total energy consumption, and will further restructure China's energy mix," the NDRC said.

Presently many provincial governments in the country are planning for nuclear power projects. Apart from coastal provinces such as Shandong and Guangdong, many inland regions such as Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui are all waiting for the NDRC to approve their nuclear projects.

The State Grid Corp of China, which supplies power to 26 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country, has said that the company plans to invest over 1 trillion yuan in the construction of power grids in the next two to three years, and the move is in line with the country's policy to stimulate the economy.

The company has initiated an emergency procurement plan worth 2.7 billion yuan for the rest of this year. It expects to invest 252 billion yuan for the whole year.

"The construction of power grids can boost the development of many industries, like the metallurgical sector, the construction material industry, as well as machinery manufacturing," says Lu Jian, spokesman of State Grid.

During the Southeast Asian financial crisis over 300 billion yuan was invested into power grids construction and it effectively stimulated domestic economy, says Lu.

Construction of more oil reserves is another giant project for the next few years. China has already launched a state strategic oil reserve base program.

The first bases include four in coastal provinces - in Zhenhai and Zhoushan, Zhejiang provinces; Huangdao, Shandong provinces; and Dalian, Liaoning province.

Sources close to the project have said the second group will include bases in the western regions, including Lanzhou in Gansu province.

The volume of China's national oil reserves will increase to a level equivalent to three months of imports, the NDRC said last year.

China will also raise 1 trillion yuan in the coming three years to address environmental problems, according to Zhou Shengxian, minister of environmental protection.

The money will be used to support nascent environmental industries, such as renewable energies and pollution treatment, according to Zhou.

Statistics show that by the end of 2007, China has more than 30,000 companies doing business in the green industries, creating more than 3 million jobs.

The total annual turnover of China's environmental industry reached 700 billion yuan, among which, 62.5 billion yuan came from environmental protection related products, 50 billion yuan from environmental services, 420 billion yuan from recycling of resources, and 170 billion yuan from clean production equipment.

China has more than 3,000 environmental protection related products now.

The country's vast rural areas will also be one of the major targets of the massive investment package in order to reduce the imbalance between urban and rural environmental efforts, according to Zhou, who emphasizes the importance of providing safe drinking water in the countryside.

China has a total of 2,862 county-level administrative divisions. The size of their centers varies, with the bigger ones called cities and smaller ones county towns. Most of the large public infrastructure and industries are concentrated in these county centers.

Other than 374 county-level cities, the majority of China's county towns do not have public sewage plants.

Over the next three years, China will spend as much as 280 billion yuan on the construction of sewage treatment facilities in the country's county-level regions, according to Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

The goal is that by 2011 over 90 percent of China's 2,862 counties should have wastewater treatment facilities.