China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

New York Times ^ | January 31, 2010 | Keith Bradsher

[reaganaut1]

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

...

Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will still be from coal.

China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.

[reaganaut1]

The Chinese aren't stupid. They won't let "renewable" energy mandates cripple their economy, but they will happily make a profit selling wind turbines and solar panels to the U.S. and Europe.

Why don't we better exploit our own energy resources, as Sarah Palin and others have advocated?

[Diogenesis]

Lucky for the Chinese that the Clintons and the DNC
sell the US patent applications to the Chinese and
the islamic terrorists (via the IEAE).

[Past Your Eyes]

I’ve always wanted a Chinese wind turbine. Haven’t you?

[highlander_UW]

Apparently the authors of this article have never actually been to China and tried to breath what passes for air there.

[RU88]

I say bs to the whole premise of this article. China could care less about going “green.” If they did they wouldn't’t be building a new coal fired plant each month to go on line. The whole purpose of this is to export turbines and panels to gullible Westerners who in turn will pay through the nose for something they already have.

[greenhornet68]

Maybe 0bama and Van Jones have a plan to leapfrog the Chinese in Clean Energy Development. Do you think the Chinese will lend us the money to do that?

[listenhillary]

Muzzle the environmental activists and lawyers. Get the best nuclear plant design together and use single plan. Plan for breeder reactors to reprocess fuel. Then get the hell out of the way as American companies build 80 to 100 new plants. Stimulus money could have been used a a loan guarantee.

I would certainly buy bonds to finance them as long as the environmental lawyers were taken out of the equation in their ability to harass the industry.

[bert]

Amen brother..... rave on!!

you have got it right.

[listenhillary]

I’d love to see nationwide $.05 a kilowatt electricity. Removing the older coal plants, exporting electricity to Mexico, Canada.

I don’t know if the nickle a kilowatt is realistic, but fifty years ago they told us nuclear power would make electricity too cheap to meter.

[Mobties]

Interesting. I also hear the Chinese are now the world’s largest single automobile market, a huge user and continuing builder of coal fired generators, and that they’ve flat refused to comply with any restrictions of the Kyoto/Copenhagen variety. Are those pinwheels and solar panels for use in China or for the "Climate Change" crowd?

[bert]

I spent several years in the nuclear power plant building business. I was a glazing contractor, not hi tech, but we still had rigid specs and procedures.

I know of one hollow metal door that was built, redesigned and rebuilt 4 times to comply with the ever changing and unending requirements of the nuc killlers. They purposely and diligently inflicted cost and death by a thousand small bleeding cuts.

[wita]

Why don’t we better exploit our own energy resources, as Sarah Palin and others have advocated?

A question begging an answer, but then I think most of us know the answer.

When we (the Congress) allow viscous radicals to be in charge of energy policy, you get the kind of policy we now have.

Those radical have the freedom to preach their brand of science, and the Congress must listen, but, the Congress has the power, to shut them up by using real science as the controlling policy.

How do we know real science? Simple, any proposed doctrine in complete denial of where we were, where we now are, and wishing we were where we used to be is not true science, it is in denial of the science that got us to this point in time.

Trumped up studies, deceiving so called experts, believers of the lies, and off the wall crisis managers, radical environmentalists, their media enablers and idiots in high government office whether elected or bureaucrat, are all part of the problem so easily solved by giving ear but not action to their “decidedly non progressive” agenda.

[listenhillary]

Selling the rope to capitalists to hang themselves with? (Or something like that)

[Ben Ficklin]

The first major US Corporation to move into clean energy was Enron. Remember them?

They bought Zond Corporation, one of the earliest companies in windpower, in 1997.

It was Enron, who was very influential in Texas, who got the state to implement the first renewable mandates, in 1999.

Enron eventually sold Zond to GE.

Now, Texas leads the nation in windpower, and when the new transmission lines are completed in 2013 or 2014, there will be a very large increase

[stephenjohnbanker]

“I’ve always wanted a Chinese wind turbine. Haven’t you?”

How long until it breaks, like all their other exported junk.

[listenhillary]

Cold keeps Minn. wind turbines from spinning
http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1390565.shtml

Wind farms produced ‘practically no electricity’ during Britain’s cold snap
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farms-produced-practically-no-electricity-during-Britains-cold-snap.html

[Venturer]

When you have a sucker on the string, supply them with what they want.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

This article is more proof of how merciful it will be when the New York Times ceases publishing as a bankrupt entity.

China has nothing "clean" within its borders. Its rivers are polluted, 90% of its groundwater is polluted with lethal toxic chemicals and its air is horribly polluted in its cities.

I have friends who lived in China recently and they say the milk you can buy there tastes like plastic because of its chemical impurities.

For a Commie rag like the New York Slimes to suggest the Chinese are "green" and have a bright future ruling the world is absolute bullshit.

The New York Times is obviously an in-house propaganda leaflet for the brutal murdering dictators suppressing freedom throughout China.

The Chinese are on a clear path to choke to death on their own toxic waste.

[listenhillary]

But they have 1.3 billion air filters.

Seriously, I do see them realizing that poisoning themselves to death doesn’t make any sense in the long run. I can see them devoting some of their considerable resources to addressing the pollution. How effective they will be remains to be seen.

[hondact200]

you every seen the crash tests of the Chinese autos - the dummies are pulled out in pieces, arm, head and torso, than legs. The realization of Chinese turbines made would be another castrophe. Look what happened with the Chinese imported drywall put up in houses after Katrina and Rita. Foul odor, mold and odd odors making the house inhabitable. How about the latest Disney toys related to the Princess and the Frog - recalled for excessive levels of toxic chemicals (saw the headline did not read which chemical) but probably cadmium. Install a wind turbine from China, probably will have to remove because it contains toxic levels of something or other. The high energy bulbs contain mercury need to have a hazmat team respond if one breaks. the high energy fluorescent tube lights have to disposed of through an industrial waste processor - example safety kleen. hybrid cars if involved in an accident fire fighters are having to have specialized equipment because of the toxicity to the batteries, and the process to make the batteries are more harmful than the carbon footprint. High efficiency seems to be more a problem with high costs in event of tragedy. Remember asbestos of yesteryear and how is that working out high cost to get rid of it in homes and businesses, encapsulating it is expensive too. technology rushed to achieve something and suddenly the technology has an additional cost that exceeds the value of the original cost. made in China - made for early retirement of the product within days of use.