China Becoming a Center for Green Technology?

The New Yorker magazine this week (Dec. 21 & 28, 2009, issue) has an article about the country that it says has taken the lead in clean energy technology.

The article must then be about the U.S. But it isn't. Then it must be an editing slip up and the article is talking not about a "country" per se, but about the economic powerhouse known as the European Union. Wrong again. Hum...Brazil maybe? Not a chance.

The country that the article ("Green Giant: Beijing's Crash Program for Clean Energy") refers to is China, and if you are interested in key developments in green energy then this article is a must read.

A few of the article's key observations:

"As [Chinese] President Hu Jintao...put it in October of this year, China must 'seize preemptive opportunities in the new round of the global energy revolution." (page 54)

"David Sandalow, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, has been to China five times in five months. He [said], 'China's investment in clean energy is extraordinary.' For America, he added, the implication is clear: 'Unless the U.S. makes investments, we are not competitive in the clean-tech sector in the years and decades to come.'" (page 55)

"China is already buying and installing the world's most efficient transmission lines - 'an area where China has actually moved ahead of the U.S.,' according to Deborah Seligsohn, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. In the next decade, China plans to install wind-power equipment capable of generating nearly five times the power of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest producer [of power]." (page 56)

While the article points out that China is now spending $70 billion each year on research and development, it also explains that China has enormous energy challenges and it faces a pollution problem like no other country in the world.

If nothing else, the policy makers in Brussels and Washington, D.C., better be giving careful consideration to what Beijing is doing. On the other hand, the more innovation the better since ultimately does the market really care whether a good idea comes from China, Brazil, the EU, the U.S. or anywhere else?