China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
As China takes the lead on wind turbines, above, and solar panels, President Obama is calling for American industry to step up.
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Published: January 30, 2010
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.
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Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
A worker inside a wind turbine at a factory in Tianjin, China.
A blog about energy, the environment and the bottom line.
Go to Blog » 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.
The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.
Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.
“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market.”
Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.
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.
As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.
China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.
Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.
China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.
So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.
From the New York Times
In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.
Interest rates as low as 2 percent for bank loans — the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy — have also made a big difference.
As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in energy. Although Chinese wages have risen sharply in the last five years, Vestas still pays assembly line workers here only $4,100 a year.
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Big Business and "Process"
Dan Mills on Turbine companies and municipal council
Dear Editor:
The die was cast for the so predictable out-come of the new Wind By-Law of
the Municipal Council of the District of Digby the night that Democracy
died. That was back in summer when, after weeks and months of meetings by
the Planning Advisory Committee ( which included 3 councilors and 3
community volunteers) the deputy-warden, a member of the same, proposed
bringing it to Council for approval.
And so they did! The deputy made the motion. And like the Lone Ranger riding
in on the great horse,Silver with a Tonto or two at his side,coming as it
seemed in the name of the new-found God,Economy, the silver bullet was
fired! And down went our Council as in the ancient Jewish parable of the oak
tree and the reed.(Jesus refers to it in Mt.11,7.)
Or another way perhaps more readily understandable to the child in us: Big
Business came in, and it huffed and it puffed and it blew the house down!
The house was made of straw! ( In consultant fees alone, over
Twenty-Thousand Hard-Earned-Tax-Payers-Dollars huffed right into the 4-site
groups pockets for a by-law which didn't take!) And it was there that
democracy died!
Council decided to do it "Their Way" on the advice of outside companies who
said they wouldn't play if the rules didn't change. And so they discounted
the PAC this time, and all the people, and hired 4-Site to do the deed in
its' own image and likeness.Fait accompli! We're just waiting for the bill
for that one!
"It's just money", I suppose the Council Treasury will avow....but it's a
lot more costly than that, isn't it? Time will prove me right.
Daniel Mills
Digby County
Nova Scotia
Dear Editor:
The die was cast for the so predictable out-come of the new Wind By-Law of
the Municipal Council of the District of Digby the night that Democracy
died. That was back in summer when, after weeks and months of meetings by
the Planning Advisory Committee ( which included 3 councilors and 3
community volunteers) the deputy-warden, a member of the same, proposed
bringing it to Council for approval.
And so they did! The deputy made the motion. And like the Lone Ranger riding
in on the great horse,Silver with a Tonto or two at his side,coming as it
seemed in the name of the new-found God,Economy, the silver bullet was
fired! And down went our Council as in the ancient Jewish parable of the oak
tree and the reed.(Jesus refers to it in Mt.11,7.)
Or another way perhaps more readily understandable to the child in us: Big
Business came in, and it huffed and it puffed and it blew the house down!
The house was made of straw! ( In consultant fees alone, over
Twenty-Thousand Hard-Earned-Tax-Payers-Dollars huffed right into the 4-site
groups pockets for a by-law which didn't take!) And it was there that
democracy died!
Council decided to do it "Their Way" on the advice of outside companies who
said they wouldn't play if the rules didn't change. And so they discounted
the PAC this time, and all the people, and hired 4-Site to do the deed in
its' own image and likeness.Fait accompli! We're just waiting for the bill
for that one!
"It's just money", I suppose the Council Treasury will avow....but it's a
lot more costly than that, isn't it? Time will prove me right.
Daniel Mills
Digby County
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick Power Deal
Power deal still unpopular
New Brunswickers uneasy about NB Power sale
By ALOMA JARDINE Moncton Times & Transcript
Sun. Jan 31 - 4:53 AM
MONCTON, N.B. — First there was disbelief, then anger, then concern as New Brunswickers tried to wade through the terms of the NB Power deal and make up their minds about it.
People have taken issue with almost every aspect of the plan to sell major assets of the New Brunswick electric utility to Hydro-Quebec.
Ask 10 people what they think of the multibillion-dollar agreement and you’ll likely get 10 different opinions.
But a few general themes have emerged.
People are worried about the long-term impact on power rates and on the province’s energy sovereignty. They question why industrial users seem to be getting a better deal than residential ones.
Mostly they feel the way the whole deal has been done stinks — and that has left them angry and suspicious.
"I’d say the thing people are most upset about is this deal has been put together in a very secret fashion. There hasn’t been a lot of public input," says Cocagne, N.B., resident Richard Lachance. "The idea of selling the province’s assets without public input, it’s not right."
The lack of transparency on the government’s part, whether real or perceived, seems to come up time and again when New Brunswickers talk about the reasons they are leery of the deal.
"People have just lost trust and faith in government and it is like they aren’t working for our benefit, they are working for their party’s benefit," Lachance says.
Geoff Martin, a political science professor at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., says he is getting the same vibe, that people are wondering who they can trust to tell them about the deal.
"People are a bit suspicious and also worried about the fine print and how that can come back (on us)," he says. "Maybe people in general are a little bit jaded."
Political science professor Tom Bateman at St. Thomas University in Fredericton says there has been a combination of what he calls process concerns and substance concerns in the public debate.
"I thought earlier in the debate the concerns about substance were fairly clearly articulated," he says. "Questions of sovereignty, the loss of control this province will have over its energy. . . . Other concerns were whether the assets going to Hydro-Quebec were properly valued."
Bateman says the disparity between breaks for industrial and residential users upset people.
But while those concerns remain, the focus has shifted somewhat to questioning the process — the way the deal was made and presented.
"It’s become a bit of a staple of the debate that the government has not consulted enough," Bateman says. "The MOU (memorandum of understanding) of Oct. 29 seemed to come out of nowhere. It took everybody by surprise and one wonders how much on-the-back-of-a-napkin kind of deal this really is."
The complexity of the agreement may be part of the reason people are focusing on issues of process.
"When someone is unwilling or unable to master the substance, then that person is likely to switch to the process," Bateman says. "It has always been there and it may be more strongly the case now than it was before."
Lachance says if there is a good thing in all of the controversy swirling around the NB Power deal, it is that it has got people thinking about energy.
"It is a very important issue for our future. We can’t rely on oil, but what are we moving towards?" he says.
While Lachance believes citizens should be part of the process, he doesn’t support the idea of a referendum.
"To have a provincial referendum where everybody votes on the deal would be sort of a mistake too, because I don’t feel people have the information to make a decision either way," he says.
Bateman says the government is finding itself with a very difficult communication job at this point.
"We are going to get some detail (on the deal) in the form of this massive piece of legislation. We will have the actual document, which will be hideously unreadable. It will be worse reading than the Income Tax Act and people aren’t going to (read) that either," he says.
So can the government dig itself out of the hole it has dug itself into?
"I think what I have noticed of late is that other personalities in the province have spoken out in favour of the deal, the mayors of Saint John and Edmundston," Bateman says. "I think government will have to leverage some of the trust that people have in other personalities.
The Canadian Press
‘I’d say the thing people are most upset about is this deal has been put together in a very secret fashion.’
RICHARD LACHANCECocagne, N.B. resident
New Brunswickers uneasy about NB Power sale
By ALOMA JARDINE Moncton Times & Transcript
Sun. Jan 31 - 4:53 AM
MONCTON, N.B. — First there was disbelief, then anger, then concern as New Brunswickers tried to wade through the terms of the NB Power deal and make up their minds about it.
People have taken issue with almost every aspect of the plan to sell major assets of the New Brunswick electric utility to Hydro-Quebec.
Ask 10 people what they think of the multibillion-dollar agreement and you’ll likely get 10 different opinions.
But a few general themes have emerged.
People are worried about the long-term impact on power rates and on the province’s energy sovereignty. They question why industrial users seem to be getting a better deal than residential ones.
Mostly they feel the way the whole deal has been done stinks — and that has left them angry and suspicious.
"I’d say the thing people are most upset about is this deal has been put together in a very secret fashion. There hasn’t been a lot of public input," says Cocagne, N.B., resident Richard Lachance. "The idea of selling the province’s assets without public input, it’s not right."
The lack of transparency on the government’s part, whether real or perceived, seems to come up time and again when New Brunswickers talk about the reasons they are leery of the deal.
"People have just lost trust and faith in government and it is like they aren’t working for our benefit, they are working for their party’s benefit," Lachance says.
Geoff Martin, a political science professor at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., says he is getting the same vibe, that people are wondering who they can trust to tell them about the deal.
"People are a bit suspicious and also worried about the fine print and how that can come back (on us)," he says. "Maybe people in general are a little bit jaded."
Political science professor Tom Bateman at St. Thomas University in Fredericton says there has been a combination of what he calls process concerns and substance concerns in the public debate.
"I thought earlier in the debate the concerns about substance were fairly clearly articulated," he says. "Questions of sovereignty, the loss of control this province will have over its energy. . . . Other concerns were whether the assets going to Hydro-Quebec were properly valued."
Bateman says the disparity between breaks for industrial and residential users upset people.
But while those concerns remain, the focus has shifted somewhat to questioning the process — the way the deal was made and presented.
"It’s become a bit of a staple of the debate that the government has not consulted enough," Bateman says. "The MOU (memorandum of understanding) of Oct. 29 seemed to come out of nowhere. It took everybody by surprise and one wonders how much on-the-back-of-a-napkin kind of deal this really is."
The complexity of the agreement may be part of the reason people are focusing on issues of process.
"When someone is unwilling or unable to master the substance, then that person is likely to switch to the process," Bateman says. "It has always been there and it may be more strongly the case now than it was before."
Lachance says if there is a good thing in all of the controversy swirling around the NB Power deal, it is that it has got people thinking about energy.
"It is a very important issue for our future. We can’t rely on oil, but what are we moving towards?" he says.
While Lachance believes citizens should be part of the process, he doesn’t support the idea of a referendum.
"To have a provincial referendum where everybody votes on the deal would be sort of a mistake too, because I don’t feel people have the information to make a decision either way," he says.
Bateman says the government is finding itself with a very difficult communication job at this point.
"We are going to get some detail (on the deal) in the form of this massive piece of legislation. We will have the actual document, which will be hideously unreadable. It will be worse reading than the Income Tax Act and people aren’t going to (read) that either," he says.
So can the government dig itself out of the hole it has dug itself into?
"I think what I have noticed of late is that other personalities in the province have spoken out in favour of the deal, the mayors of Saint John and Edmundston," Bateman says. "I think government will have to leverage some of the trust that people have in other personalities.
The Canadian Press
‘I’d say the thing people are most upset about is this deal has been put together in a very secret fashion.’
RICHARD LACHANCECocagne, N.B. resident
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New Brunswick power electricity
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