"China blew past the U.S. by nearly doubling capacity twice in 2008 and 2009 to take the lead as the largest market for new wind capacity."

This is not the point. New wind capacity is not total capacity, and it does not come close to making up for the additional coal plants that China will build for years to come.

China is on a steep growth curve for renewables, adding more wind capacity than the US the last two years, but they are still significantly behind the US in total wind power capacity

And, the larger point is that for every megawatt of renewable energy China adds,they are adding gigawatts of coal fired energy.

Calling China a clean energy leader would be a little like calling OJ Simpson a champion for battered women if he donated $500 to a shelter.

ack . . . the first sentence in my response is a quotation from your post . . . can't go back and edit, hope this makes my response a bit more clear.

[Fixed! -BTI]

Dear EnerGeoPolitics:



Thank you for your comment. As our "horse and buggy" metaphor illustrates China can, in fact, corner the market in clean tech and simultaneously build coal plants. The US gets 50% of it's electricity from coal and 95% of its transportation energy from oil but that doesn't mean we're not able to contend for new markets in cleantech as well. Does that mean that no country can dominate the clean tech market as long as they are still using coal? Even if your argument is that by virtue of China installing new coal capacity (as opposed to just using it, say), it is not pertinent to the "clean energy race," at least not in an economic context, given that on almost every measure of clean tech competitiveness, China is leading the pack.



And while China might lag slightly behind the US in terms of total installed wind capacity, it has been doubling its capacity every year for the last 5 years (it installed about 1/3 of US total capacity in 2009, alone) and it will almost certainly pass us in total installed capacity as soon as 2010. You argue that this is not the point, but China is still likely to surpass us in installed capacity at the same time that it is building new coal fired power plants. Then will they be leading the clean energy race?



Your argument is more relevant to a discourse on who is leading the "Green" competition. In terms of being "environmentally-friendly" China is certainly far behind but that has only a tangential relationship to clean technology market leadership. And in those terms, annual market size, not total installed capacity, is what lures investment, manufacturing, and now R&D to China.

Yael, China doesn't lag slightly behind, they are about 30% behind in installed capacity. Will they pass the US? Possibly, maybe even probably, but that is artifactual. As Tom Freidman loves to recite, China does not have to worry about permit processes and NIMBYism. But the planned US wind farms will eventually launch and, while the USA is in T. Boone Pickens' words "the Saudi Arabia of wind," China is wind poor. They will hit the wall of max capacity long before the US does.

But, you are more concerned with cleantech innovation than actual capacity anyway. I am not convinced they will ever be ahead on that score either. Yes, they are drawing some R&D, but that will hit the same wall as their installation efforts. Meanwhile, US firms have interesting prototypes like the Selsam super turbine and Magenn's high altitude system. The UK has made a breakthrough on deep water turbines that they are going to begin deploying soon. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any thing like that level of innovation coming out of China, mostly just engineering changes to meet local needs.

Where China will claim a lead is in manufactuaring, but the innovation leaders remain in the West. As in so many things, I think too many people are willing to leap on the China bandwagon before the race has been fully run.

But this has been a pleasant debate. I am adding you to my link list.

Dear Energeopolitics Man,

Thank you for keeping us on our toes. You get a huge amount of street cred here in Breakthrough global HQ (downtown Oakland) for actually fronting real wind capacity numbers, rather than just mouthing neocon lip about the super-powers of markets in every quantum-econo-moral dimension. Facts speak louder than economic theory, so thank you.

To the content. Your point is: China lags. My answer: Yes! Their GDP is one-third of ours! Average dude makes less than $6gs a year (PPP). They aren't but a stone’s throw from the foot-binding of A Good Earth! They consume a lot less energy than us, so even at 1.3 bi they are behind.

And yet and yet: we worry. Why? Because our in group/out group natures have us genetically programmed to fear successful Asians? Because we fear competition? We’re still ahead, after all. Two income family here makes well over 60gs annually (with SUV, cells, and Wii stat) -- 10 times the average Chinaman.

No. It’s really not about China. It’s about us. We rose to the occasion against the Russians in the 50s and in the Japanese in the 80s. I’m happy for them that some of them developed and prospered. But I'd like our team to make the investments in our people and our technologies to, at the very least, compete for the Mark Pintos of the world who leave because our labs are, bluntly stated, too tiny.

You point out: China lacks wind capacity. Britain’s building some tidal power. This is missing the point. Asia is investing. We're not. Westinghouse goes to China for a reason. We have coal plants still burning along from the 50s, even as we starve our best domestic energy firms for contracts. We invest a fraction of our GDP in R&D compared to Asia. Our most liberal House in Congress seeks to hands our treasure to coal companies in exchange for press releases about capturing pollution and magical efficiency savings. Our best people flee to China, with their children (see Pinto ref above), because we don’t do solar (the pathetic NREL being case in point).

So, yes, we worry. That China is 30 percent behind us in installed wind, and that Britain has some demonstration wave devices, are details against the overall backdrop.

With best wishes,

Michael