China is doing very well in Renewable Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-3-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

The San Jose Mercury and the New York Times both recently ran articles detailing that China, despite being far too dependent on coal with 80% of its electricity generation still, has become a power in renewable energy and is growing and developing very rapidly.

To be sure, China has coal problems. The trains between its Western region that has coal and its Eastern region that has the majority of people and industry sometimes are stalled by heavy snow storms; by itself their burning of coal is a major threat to global warming; & their air is seriously polluted by massive burning of coal with insufficient removal of pollutants from the exhaust.

But at the rate they are going, they may soon be able to run their economy on renewable energy.

China’s national government is putting $100 billion a year into green technology research. And, in China, their provincial and local governments are also heavily backing clean tech companies. They have mandated that by 2020 the percentage of their energy from renewable sources WILL go from 7 % today to 15% then. This is not a hoped for target only as it has been so far in the United States.

Chinese cities are offering land and tax incentives to clean technology companies to locate plants there. And, even more importantly, government owned banks are making credit available to clean tech companies instead of cancelling it as banks in the United States recently did. And, they are even offering this credit at lower rates than their competitors in the United States and Europe can get.

These policies are beginning to be effective. According to John Doerr and John Denniston from the venture firm Kleiner Perkins, only five of the world’s top 30 companies in solar, wind, and next-generation batteries are based in the United States.

Apparently most of the other 25 are based in China.

(I do wish they would do an article on these 30 companies to detail what each one does and why it’s listed in the top 30 and where it’s located.)

The New York Times reports in its story that China invested about $440 billion into clean energy last year & is also investing heavily in nuclear power.

The United States does have clean tech companies, particularly here in the Silicon Valley, with some very important technology that may be superior to what is available elsewhere; but in terms of large scale rollouts and real progress in building lots of new renewable energy, the United States IS behind and may even be falling farther behind.

Meanwhile there is good news too some of it here in the United States.

China’s other good news besides building massive amounts of both renewable energy and nuclear that at least doesn’t release CO2 or particulate pollution is that China is getting serious about implementing ways to make its use of coal much cleaner.

Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina has been working on a win win deal to do both more nuclear and domestic oil drilling offshore that Republicans favor more and a massive increase in our domestic renewable energy production that more Democrats favor.

The very good news here is that this may actually get a bill through the overly partisan U.S. Congress that will begin to make the progress we need in building much more renewable energy.

The even better news is in this quote from Senator Graham.

“Six months ago my biggest worry was that an emissions deal would make American business less competitive compared to China. Now my concern is that every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.”

If other Republicans begin to really understand that our energy independence and economic strength heavily depend now on a massive increase in our renewable energy production and companies, we may finally see some action.

Best of all, if this compromise bill manages to pass both the Senate & the House, from his recent comments, it looks like President Obama will support it and sign it.

I also liked this quote from the NY Times article, “In the energy sector alone, the deployment of new technologies, like wind and solar power, has the potential to support 20 million jobs by 2030 and trillions of dollars in revenue, analysts estimate.”

So, between the jobs and money from this build up in renewable energy, both the private investors & companies and the political leaders in the United States are beginning to make plans to be part of a clean technology economy.

I also liked a comment by one man in the NY Times article who pointed out that in addition to trying to be included in this massive new opportunity, the United States and Europe can also co-operate with these Chinese companies to bring about this change even faster.