U.S. Must Duplicate China's Clean Energy Initiatives, Says Reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and nine of his Senate colleagues returned last night from a week-long visit to China, where the delegation met with several high-ranking Chinese officials. Upon returning, Reid said he was impressed by China’s “aggressive investments in clean energy.”

“China isn’t investing so heavily in clean energy just because it’s good for the environment – it’s doing so because it’s good for the economy,” Reid said.  “China knows clean energy creates jobs and, in reducing its reliance on oil, makes it more secure.”

Certainly, lawmakers — mostly Democrats — and administration officials have spoken at length over the course of the last two years about how China has surpassed the U.S. in terms of alternative energy production. President Obama, in particular, has warned that the U.S. can ill afford to fall even further behind in this area.

“The nation that leads in the creation of a clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy,” Obama said recently.

But what Obama and others have failed to note is how little clean energy is actually being consumed by the Chinese.

According to a Washington Post op-ed penned last week by Bjorn Lomborg, “China indeed invests more than any other nation in environmentally friendly energy production: $34 billion in 2009, or twice as much as the United States. Almost all of its investment, however, is spent producing green energy for Western nations that pay heavy subsidies for consumers to use solar panels and wind turbines.”

To date, over 85% of China’s energy still comes from fossil fuel sources, and its emerging economy has led to a spike in global demand for oil, which has triggered a steady rise in prices.

Michael Levi over at the Council on Foreign Relations checked the accuracy of Lomborg’s piece and found that although he exaggerated his claim that China exports most of its wind turbines (Levi argues that China is beginning to capitalize at home on its wind investments), his other assertions are correct; Namely, China still relies heavily on fossil fuels, and exports most of the solar panels it manufactures to Western nations, which subsidize consumers who use them.

Levi also noted that the market in China for solar water heaters would be non-existent without government subsidies.

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