The Chinese steel industry is willing to take the risk to help develop and test Fastox because of its urgent need to rein in pollution. Because of China’s heavy reliance on coal, over one-third of the country is exposed to acid rain. Massive coal use has also led to respiratory problems, polluted waterways, and smoggy skies over China’s major coastal cities. Beijing’s latest five-year plan calls for the country to reduce energy use by 20 percent by 2010, in part to combat pollution, but so far the country is falling woefully short of that goal.

“If we could do the tests of Fastox tomorrow, they would,” says Hart of his partners. “They want this to be done as quickly as possible. The Olympics are coming up.”

Indeed, as the summer Olympics approaches, the Chinese government is cracking down on polluting industries by closing the worst-offending plants. “China cannot afford to become dirtier in 30 years,” says Hongyan He Oliver, a research fellow in energy policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s already hit the bottom.”

Hart’s next step is to put together a budget outlining exactly how much the development of the Fastox prototype will cost and to work out which of the three steel companies will be the first to host it. Hart expects the financial and engineering details to be figured out by the end of March and construction of a prototype to begin soon thereafter.

Hart is not the only one hoping to profit from helping China’s steel industry become greener. In November, Siemens finished outfitting a BaoSteel plant outside Shanghai that employs a new steelmaking method: It doesn’t use coke at all and reduces emissions up to 90 percent. The problem with this approach, though, is that each plant must be rebuilt from scratch at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Siemens recently won a contract to construct another such plant for BaoSteel by 2010.

Fastox has the advantage of only requiring a much cheaper modification to existing plants, though the potential benefits are also less substantial. “Sierra Energy has that advantage, but it’s kind of halfway there,” says George Haley, director of the Center for International Industry Competitiveness and a professor at the University of New Haven School of Business. Fastox “continues to require coke, and Chinese coke is of very poor quality.” This means that the process is still likely to lead to significant emissions, according to Haley.

Hart counters that reducing the use of coke through Fastox will still be meaningful and result in lower emissions. He’s convinced that Fastox offers the most viable option for Chinese steelmakers and believes that China’s current environmental crisis will be met head-on with the same fierce pragmatism that has been thrusting the country into modernity.

“Energy efficiency and environmental practices are the same thing,” Hart says. “The Chinese recognize that and they’re putting a huge amount of effort into achieving it as a goal.”