China’s Investing in Renewables — But Why?
Frequent commenter Duke Brooks writes in:
Americans who rail against U.S. polluters should probably spend a few days in the world’s most polluted city, Beijing. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. But the lack of outrage from the American left over China’s mass particulate output would tend to expose them for what they are: A political, not ecological, movement.
I don’t think anyone argues that China’s building coal-fired power plants at the rate of one a week is anything other than an abomination; there isn’t too much controversy there — regardless of where one stands politically. Yet China is the world’s leading investor in renewable energy, and they face a far larger challenge than we do in terms of supplying energy to a skyrocketing number of energy-hungry consumers; it’s one that dwarfs ours here in the U.S.
I don’t know whether you saw this report I wrote a few months back in an attempt to make sense of this paradox: China Is Investing in Renewable Energy — But Why?
Why don’t we Manufacture the Coal Plant Equipment and sell it to them? we could then use that money against them!
Just “A modest Proposal”
China is also investing heavily in nuclear power, both by building nuclear plants and by investing in R & D.
China is interested in dominating markets. They are smart enough to know that the key to their manufacturing dominance is (among other things) cheap electric power. For producing power on the cheap, coal is their best bet. Despite what people say, clean (or at least cleaner) coal is possible and they probably intend to develop and dominate clean coal technology as well to sell to other nations with large coal deposits (such as India) that aren’t as fussy about coal as we are.
As for renewables, they know that sooner or later they will have to clean up their act so why not develop (or steal) renewable technology in conjunction with the gullible West in order to dominate that industry as well.