These two want to lead the green race.
In a call with reporters today, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that the U.S. needs a comprehensive energy and climate change law to beat China and lead the cleantech industry.
He said China’s emergence as a green superpower couldn’t be ignored.
“The U.S. should sit up and take notice,” Chu told reporters.
A climate change law would bring long-term certainty and “help U.S. [renewable energy] companies become more competitive,” he explained. It would also ensure that more capital flows into the sector.
All we’ve seen so far in energy legislation is the House’s Waxman – Markey legislation, which contains a cap-and-trade provision.
On the Senate side, last week Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and his co-sponsors — Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — took steps to revive their stalled climate change and energy bill as they met with Senators from carbon-dependent states and key industry groups, including the powerful American Petroleum Institute.
Chu said he was talking to lawmakers from both parties to get them to support a climate change bill. He declined to say with whom he was talking.
Underscoring China’s growing role as a global renewable energy leader, Bloomberg New Energy Finance figures released today show that in 2009 China replaced the U.S. as the world’s largest investor in renewable energy. New Energy Finance also reports that last year alone, China invested $34.5 billion in wind turbines, solar panels and other cleantech solutions. The U.S. spent about $18.6 billion.
Asked about these figures, Chu said that he hadn’t read the report, but that “based on what you are seeing in China these days they seemed believable.”
He added:
The [Chinese] leadership increasingly sees economic opportunity in cleantech… Having missed the industrialized revolution and the semiconductor revolution, they do not want to miss this opportunity.
The Obama administration has been very clear that it wants to beat China and lead the cleantech race. And, there’s growing concern at the White House that China and its huge stimulus could actually end up winning.
Over the past year, a number of Chinese renewable energy companies, eager to grow their U.S.-market share, have announced plans to open manufacturing lines here.
For example, Chinese energy company A-Power Energy Generation Systems recently proposed building a 600 megawatt wind farm in Texas. The project has rattled some on Capitol Hill, including Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has urged the DOE not to give A-Power and its partners stimulus money because the project’s turbines would largely be made in China.
On this and the fact that a lot of foreign companies have ended up pocketing the DOE’s cash grants, Secretary Chu, citing American Wind Energy Association figures, pointed out that 53 percent of wind turbines parts manufactured by foreign companies for the North American market were U.S.-made.
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