Two large building developments in China are using the UK’s green building standard.

Watford-based building consultancy BRE says it has awarded its environmental assessment standard to a £20m flagship building called the Living Lattice in Meixi Lake Eco City.

The new urban development in the southeast province of Hunan is one of 240 new cities planned in China.

The BREEAM standard sets outs best practice in sustainable building design, building and operation.

Two new towers in Shanghai International Shipping Service Centre’s marina development also won the standard.

The announcement came during Prime Minister David Cameron’s trade visit to China this week.

UK engineering firm Rolls Royce has won a £17 million contract to work on a Chinese energy infrastructure project.

The deal is one of several announced yesterday to coincide with Prime Minister David Cameron’s trade visit to Shanghai. In total £5.6 billion worth of deals have been signed between UK and Chinese firms during the trip.

Rolls Royce will supply state power firm PetroChina with equipment and services on its second West to East Pipeline Project (WEPP II).

PetroChina is extending the flow natural gas through a branch of its pipeline. The Lunnan – Tulufan branch transports 17 billion cubic metres of gas per year.

Andrew Heath, Rolls-Royce’s President for Energy said: “Rolls-Royce continues to expand its presence in China, providing vital equipment to help spur economic growth in China’s fast-developing cities and support the drive towards cleaner, greener energy consumption.”

During the British trade visit, British oil giant Shell agreed to carry out a second two-year energy policy study with Chinese think-tank the Development Research Council focusing on gas policy and energy security. Their first joint study looked at opening up and reforming China’s huge energy sector.

Scottish renewable energy consultancy SgurrEnergy also signed a contract to research wind turbine designs for a project in Zhangbei.

The Chinese city of Shanghai launched its carbon trading scheme today (pictured) as it strives to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

Three trades for a total of 9,500 permits went through in the first half-hour after the market opened. The first was sold for 27 yuan (£2.7) per metric ton, according to the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange.

Under the scheme, companies that exceed their quota of carbon emissions can buy unused allocations from others.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions but it has pledged to reduce its emissions per unit of GDP to 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2020.

Shanghai is the second Chinese city after Shenzhen to trade carbon to try to limit emissions, with the capital Beijing expected to follow later this week.

Under Shenzhen’s pilot programme, 635 companies – responsible for around 38% of the city’s emissions – face obligations to reduce their carbon intensity by 6.7% on average every year by 2015.

China has launched an investigation into the safety of oil and gas pipelines in the country, after 52 people were killed in an explosion at a pipeline owned by Sinopec in Qingdao.

At least 136 people have also been hospitalised, with 10 in critical condition while another 11 are also reported missing.

On a visit to the city where the Chinese President Xi Jinping met with some of those injured in the blast, he said: “A large-scale work safety check should be launched… with inspectors going deep into the production sites anonymously and unannounced,” according to state news agency Xinhua.

In a statement on the company’s Weibo microblog, Sinopec Board Chairman Fu Chengyu apologised for the incident and said the firm would co-operate fully with the investigation.

The explosion happened at around 10.30am on Friday as workers were cleaning up fuel that had been seen leaking from the pipeline more than seven hours earlier, China Daily reported. Oil from the pipeline spilled into a storm drain where it ignited, blowing a hole in the ground 30 metres across and six metres deep.

Local residents were said to be furious that no official warning was given when the leak was originally discovered and questioned why the pipeline was built in such a densely populated area.

The European Union and China have signed an agreement to collaborate on a new low carbon city progaramme.

Climate-KIC, the EU’s main climate innovation initiative will work with Tianjin, the fourth largest city in China, on projects that aim to boost sustainable growth, with plans for pilot projects on green building retrofit and ‘smart city’ systems.

The agreement was signed in Beijing last week during the EU-China Summit.

Mary Ritter, Climate-KIC CEO said: “Chinese cities are on the frontline in facing the combined challenges of climate change, sustainable development and demographic change. How China urbanises in the coming decades is critical for China and the wider world.”

The EU is China’s biggest trading partner while China is the EU’s largest source of imports.

Confidence in the global economy has hit a two-year high among power and utility company executives, according a new survey released by accounting firm EY.

In its annual Capital Confidence Barometer, 90% of the executives surveyed thought the world’s economy was stable and 67% thought it would improve over the next year.

The majority (58%) thought the economy would expand by 1-3% over the next 12 months and more than a quarter (28%) thought it would grow even more than that.

Political instability was cited as the biggest concern for most power and utilities execs, with half (48%) saying it was the greatest economic risk to their business over the next six to 12 months. Next in line for concern were the Eurozone crisis (25%), the failure of the US to manage its withdrawal of quantitative easing (18%) and more slow growth in China (9%).

Despite this the report found confidence in both developed and emerging markets. French execs were the most optimistic with all those polled saying they had a positive view of the world economy. France was followed by the US, where 83% of those surveyed saw the global economy in a good light.

Brazil took third place (82%) and China came fourth (73%). The UK finished off the top five, with 71% of British execs having a positive view of the world economy.

This was reflected in a growing number of deals in the industry, which also hit a two-year high of 107 deals in the third quarter of 2013. Mergers and acquisitions during the period were worth $31.7 billion (£19.6bn), broadly in line with the previous quarter’s $33 billion (£20.4bn) and 67% higher than the same time last year.

The competitiveness of energy intensive industry in the EU and Japan will be undermined by expensive energy in the future.

That’s according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest World Energy Outlook released earlier today. The annual report found wide disparities in the price of energy in different regions and said although the gap will narrow it won’t disappear.

Compared to the US, natural gas is currently nearly two and half times more expensive in China, roughly three times more costly in the EU and staggeringly almost five times dearer in Japan, according to the study.

It said by 2035 this difference will be significantly less profound but predicted gas prices in the EU, Japan and China will still all end up around twice those in the States. Similarly, the cost of electricity in all three is expected to be around twice as expensive as well.

Fatih Birol, Chief Economist for the IEA said: “Ten years ago when we looked at the natural gas prices in the world …they were more or less equal.

“But after the shale gas revolution, today we see a major disparity between the United States and the rest of the world.”

The IEA said increased supplies of LNG will help cut down price differences for gas and lead to a more interconnected global market. But it added high transport costs – more than the price of gas itself in the US – will mean there is no global gas price.

All this will have a damaging effect on energy intensive industry in the EU and Japan, said the report. By 2035 the countries are predicted to lose nearly a third (30%) of their current share of the global export market for energy intensive goods. The EU will see its share drop by 10%, down to 36% of the global market, while Japan’s share will be cut down to 7% – a 3% fall.

Cheap energy in the US is expected to mean its share will rise by 1% to a tenth of the worldwide market, thanks in part to its ‘shale revolution’. China, the Middle East and India are all predicted to grab larger slices of the pie as well.

Mr Birol said: “These sectors are crucial. They make up about 20% of industrial output globally and 75% of industrial employment. So the changes here may well have a knock on effect for the economies of these countries and as such they may well change the global economic geography.”

The first course of action for countries facing uncompetitive energy prices should be improvements in energy efficiency according to the IEA.

Chancellor George Osborne today said that the UK will allow Chinese companies to take a stake in Britain’s nuclear power plants.

He made the announcement on the final day of his week-long trade visit to China at the Taishan nuclear power station – a collaboration between EDF Energy and the China General Nuclear Power Company – in the southern part of the country.

The decision to open the door for Chinese investment means the nation could in future take majority stakes in the development of next-generation British nuclear power.

Just days ago Energy Secretary Ed Davey hinted the Chinese could get involved in a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point.

The Chancellor said: “Today is another demonstration of the next big step in the relationship between Britain and China – the world’s oldest civil nuclear power and the world’s fastest growing civil nuclear power.

“It is an important potential part of the government’s plan for developing the next generation of nuclear power in Britain. It means the potential of more investment and jobs in Britain and lower long-term energy costs for consumers,” he added.

This week a new agreement between the UK and China on civil nuclear collaboration was signed in Beijing.

China has the largest nuclear build market in the world, with 17 nuclear reactors currently in operation – accounting for 1% or 13GW of the nation’s electricity production capacity. Another 28 nuclear plants are under construction, with total capacity expected to rise to 80GW by 2020 and 400GW by 2050.

Global investment in clean energy in the third quarter of this year was down 20% at $45.9 billion (£28.8bn).

Analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) suggest the level of investment in renewable energy, electric vehicles, smart grids and energy efficiency projects is “worrying” as it is heading for the second successive annual fall.

They said data from the third quarter showed “weakness almost across the board” and predict investment in clean energy to end below last year’s $281 billion (£176bn) – which was 11% down from 2011.

Investment in China, Europe and the US were all down, with the latter nation seeing its total fall to $5.5 billion (£3.4bn) in the third quarter from $9.4 billion (£5.9bn) in the second quarter. China was down at $13 billion (£8.2bn) from $13.8 billion (£8.7bn).

In Europe, although the UK saw a rise from $1.6 billion (£1bn) to $2.6 billion (£1.63bn), German investment was $1.6 billion (£1bn), down from $1.7 billion (£1.06bn) in the second quarter while France saw a fall to $727 million (£456.3bn).

Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive of BNEF said: “The latest setback reflects policy uncertainty in Europe, the lure of cheap gas in the US, a levelling-off in wind and solar investment in China and a general weakening of political will in major economies. Governments accept that the world has a major problem with climate change but for the moment appear too engrossed in short-term domestic issues to take the decisive action needed.”

Solar installations, however, are expected to hit a new record this year at around 36.7GW, with investment in small-scale solar projects reaching $17 billion (£10.7bn) in the third quarter.

Electricity use in China rose by 10.4% in September, picking up the pace since last month when consumption increased by 8.8%, according to government figures reported in China Daily.

The number for September is less than for August – when consumption grew 13.7% – but significantly higher than for the same month last year, when electricity use rose 2.9%.

It brings total power consumption for the first three quarters of 2013 to 3.95 trillion kWh, a 7.2% increase on the same period last year.

Over the weekend the Energy Secretary Ed Davey hinted China could become involved in a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point.