Wall Street Journal: World's Top Polluter (China) Emerges as Green-Technology Leader

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126082776435591089.html

DECEMBER 16, 2009

World's Top Polluter Emerges as Green-Technology Leader

By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- Xu Shisen put down the phone and smiled. That was Canada calling, explained the chief engineer at a coal-fired power plant set among knockoff antique and art shops in a Beijing suburb. A Canadian company is interested in Mr. Xu's advances in bringing down the cost of stripping out greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal.

…

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations' efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world's biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

China's vast market and economies of scale are bringing down the cost of solar and wind energy, as well as other environmentally friendly technologies such as electric car batteries. That could help address a major impediment to wide adoption of such technologies: They need heavy subsidies to be economical.

The so-called China price -- the combination of cheap labor and capital that rewrote the rulebook on manufacturing -- is spreading to green technology. "The China price will move into the renewable-energy space, specifically for energy that relies on capital-intensive projects," says Jonathan Woetzel, a director in McKinsey & Co.'s China office.

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[OHdem10]

1. While we talk talk talk aout Green Tech Jobs, China does it.

What is new???

[David__77]

2. China isn't the biggest per capita source of emissions.

And the cumulative historical pollution emanating from China is very low compared with Western countries. And yet China is striving even with its limited resources to protect the environment in ways no one cared about when the US was at a similar level of economic development - that is truly admirable.

[TxRider]

3. Don't assume motive

Chinese leaders know their future isn't in making shoes, furniture and toys for Walmart.

They are pulling state subsidies for factories manufacturing cheap goods, letting them go out of business, and moving all their subsidies to high tech ventures of any sort available.

They know if they can become the worlds technology leader they are better positioned to advance their country and their interests.

That and walking around in black soot you can't even breathe or see through like London once had is not making their people very happy.