China on path to clean energy leadership (thank you Reagan & Bush Family)

[jpak]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20101031mr.html

China is rapidly becoming a global colossus in renewable energy as it seeks to reduce reliance on polluting fossil fuels and establish itself as a leading clean power manufacturer and exporter.

Its rise in some key sectors of the green energy business has been breathtaking. In 1999, China made around 1 percent of the photovoltaic cells that are put into solar panels to generate electricity. A decade later it was the world's leading producer, with a 40 percent share of the market.

Firms in China are expected to make more than half of all solar panels manufactured this year, as well as nearly 80 percent of solar hot water units. China is also on course to produce nearly half the world's wind power turbines. It sells them at prices significantly lower than those of manufacturers in the West and is preparing for large-scale exports to the United States and Europe.

Leadership in clean energy manufacturing is shifting from the West to Asia as countries like China, India and South Korea give support to renewable energy. A recent survey by Bloomberg, in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program, found that China became the largest recipient of renewable energy financing in 2009, attracting nearly $34 billion of the $162 billion invested worldwide in wind, solar, biomass, small hydro, biofuel and marine energy.

<more>

Thanks to GOP job killers we are not even contenders....

:thumbsdown:

[Nederland]

1. Yeah, it's all Reagan and Bush's fault...

...low labor costs have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that solar and wind manufacturing (like virtually all other manufacturing) is shifting to southeast Asia. :eyes:

[OnlinePoker]

2. Not only labour costs.

China has an absolutely abysmal record when health, safety, and environmental concerns are taken into account. If they had to produce their equipment to the same standards as we do in North America, their prices would be much higher. I keep seeing laudatory posts here about solar systems that have been approved recently, but how many of these are being done with U.S. panels? I hazard to guess that not many of them. It doesn't matter where you sit on the political spectrum, the majority of people will buy items that have the lowest prices regardless of the country they are manufactured in.

[jpak]

3. It IS their fault - the GOP killed the US renewable industry in the '80's- they did on purpose

China is actively promoting renewables with billions in financing.

We did not

yup

[txlibdem]

5. Truth. The best weapon against RW spin.

Good post, Jpak.

In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter began a multi-pronged plan to free America from foreign oil, increase renewable energy production (including tax incentives for solar and energy efficiency).

As soon as Ronny Raygun got into office he took down the solar panels from the roof of the White House and began to systematically destroy or block every part of the energy independence plan. It was NO accident that we went from importing 30% of our oil when Raygun came in, till a high of 70% in 2008 (we've since slid back down to 65% due to the Bush/Big Banks' recesssion/depression).

Had Carter won against Raygun in 1980 he would have continued his plans and we would have been 100% energy independent by the year 2000. Needless to say, I voted for Carter in 1980... so don't blame me.

[Nederland]

6. Nonsense

Carter's energy plan called for spending 100x more money on coal than renewables.

[NickB79]

7. A major part of Carter's energy independence plan called for coal liquification

And gasification.

Don't confuse energy independence with clean energy. They are not always the same thing.

[txlibdem]

8. Since you're both saying the same thing I'll answer only once

Your description of Carter's plan is accurate. Coal gasification is not renewable energy, it is dirty coal. JUST LIKE WE USE TODAY. Yet you fixate on that aspect of the Carter plan as if to dismiss it with that criticism. I gotta give you points for consistency. You are also forgetting that the Carter Energy Plan would have had us energy independent in the year 2000 (if not sooner, I may expand on that point below, if I have time). That removes the pollution from shipping oil from the middle east, and refining that oil (coal gasification would produce pollution, yes, but so does being stuck with foreign oil). Smarter people than I would be needed to tally the total pollution of the one path versus the other. But...

Don't forget that Carter equally focused on energy efficiency (in our appliances, buildings, homes, etc) and on renewable energy. So ask yourself this question: how much renewable energy could we buy with the savings from imported oil each year?

We spent between $250 Billion and $500 Billion on foreign oil each year over that time. That would have bought a heck of a lot of renewable energy. Remember that we would have been starting off in 1979 instead of 2009 for building solar panels. Do you honestly believe that there would have been no improvement in the costs and the technology in that 30 year time period? If so, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

The economic drain on our economy caused by all those Billions of dollars streaming outside our country day after day, month after month, year after year, has to be acknowledged. Where would America be right now if Raygun had embraced energy independence instead of putting us on a path to double our dependence on foreign oil? Where would America be if Carter had won the election and we all remembered Raygun only as a "B" movie actor with some really bad ideas? I can only guess.

PS, when America puts its energies behind something the innovations generated by working toward a well defined goal each year becomes a positive feedback loop. If you doubt that it could have been done I refer you to WWII, the moon landing, the human genome project, the hole in the ozone layer, etc. With a clear plan and a firm goal to get 100% energy independent we would have found the talent, found the innovations that would be necessary to do it better, faster and cheaper.

[Kolesar]

9. Special interest groups got involved and steered the program to "syn fuels"

Thank you for your summary.

I was a teenager when this played out and I remember thinking: what happened?

This is how I see it, also:

Remember that we would have been starting off in 1979 instead of 2009 for building solar panels. Do you honestly believe that there would have been no improvement in the costs and the technology in that 30 year time period?

We would have crossed the price point where it is cheaper to put photovoltaics on one's home or business than to buy power from the electricity industry.

[txlibdem]

11. Well, sorta.

Syn fuel is just short for synthetic fuel, aka coal gasification. It was unfortunate that they allowed the abbreviation to continue uchecked: SIN fuel must surely be a bad thing, far worse than foreign oil.

I do agree with you that there was a heavy front loading of syn fuel in the plan. But think about the technology level of 1979. There were no advanced batteries as there are today, the best we could do was lead acid batteries (which would have been pretty easy for the oil corps to cast as inferior in the media). We had a thriving economy and almost no national debt (Ronnie hadn't had his hand in the pie yet).

That's the point at which American invention and innovation would have worked its magic, in my opinion. Would we have built up a network of millions of EV chargers? Would we have electrified the roadways? Would something similar to Project Better Place have sprouted from the fertile ground?

[Kolesar]

16. good point about batteries/energy-density

back to work.

[Nederland]

12. A couple points

Don't forget that Carter equally focused on energy efficiency (in our appliances, buildings, homes, etc) and on renewable energy. So ask yourself this question: how much renewable energy could we buy with the savings from imported oil each year?

We spent between $250 Billion and $500 Billion on foreign oil each year over that time. That would have bought a heck of a lot of renewable energy.

First of all, I don't understand why you think that our spending on foreign oil would drop to zero. US oil production is a little over half of what it was in the 1970's, and most of it gets converted into gasoline. Would we all be suddenly driving electric cars or using biofuels? I don't think so. Second, I think it is an extremely bad assumption to think that every dollar that we saved in purchasing foreign oil would have gone to purchasing renewable energy.

Remember that we would have been starting off in 1979 instead of 2009 for building solar panels. Do you honestly believe that there would have been no improvement in the costs and the technology in that 30 year time period? If so, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

Yes, there probably would have been some improvement, but it is exceeding difficult to say for certain. If money was guaranteed to purchase technological innovation, by now we should have cured cancer, had cost competitive ethanol, and dozens of working fusion plants. Money is required for innovation to occur, but it is no guarantee. It is instructive to look at the improvement in photovoltaics over the last 35 years:



You can see that the pace of change has pretty much been slow and steady, and it is not as if innovation stopped when Reagan got elected. In fact, the largest jump on the chart happens in 1988 while Bush Sr. was President.

Would it have been better if we had continued to put a few more million into R&D like Carter planned? Probably, but I doubt you can point to this graph and show me a specific innovation that would have come sooner as a result of Carter's research dollars. All in all, I simply don't think we would have seen some huge leap in technology. Also, keep in mind that much of the improvement we've seen in production cost and efficiency of solar cells has been the result of research originally done for semi-conductors. Just look at many of the names responsible for some of the big leaps forward on the graph above: Varian Semiconductor, Spire Semiconductor, RCA, Sharp, Sanyo, Sunpower (a division of Cypress Semiconductor) and IBM. It is no coincidence that these are semiconductor firms: silicone is silicone, and advances in one field are frequently applicable to the other. Given the fact that literally trillions of dollars has gone into producing better computer chips, I think its hard to argue that continuing the Carter plan would have produced a game changer.

[txlibdem]

15. Oh, ye of little faith...

I am shocked that you do not believe the magical, mystical ability of Capitalism to solve every problem thrown at it with equanimity and ease. :-) Ok, I agree with you on that point but probably not for the same reasons.

"If money was guaranteed to purchase technological innovation, by now we should have cured cancer, had cost competitive ethanol, and dozens of working fusion plants. Money is required for innovation to occur, but it is no guarantee."

Q. Why have we not cured cancer?
A. Because Big Pharma are run by Capitalistas who see quarterly profits only. There is no other consideration. Cancer has not been cured for the same reason that HIV/AIDS has not been cured, same reason as for a whole host of other diseases and conditions: it is far more profitable to treat you than cure you! Jonas Salk is rolling over in his grave...

Q. Why do we not have cost competitive ethanol?
A. Ethanol has only been receiving significant investment in the past few years. The pilot plants for cellulosic ethanol haven't even been completed. Big industries follow a process. I don't like that they can't just jump to full scale production but I do not have the inside info on how many process, software, management, etc., issues need to be ironed out during the pilot plant stage in order to have successful full scale production. Corn ethanol in my opinion is nothing but a stepping stone. It is cellulosic ethanol and algae/biomass biofuel to replace diesel that will be the "magic bullet" that will be competitive with fossil fuels.

Q. Why don't we have dozens of working fusion plants?
A. Now you've activated my cynical side. I can only relate it to the German scientists working on the atom bomb on the orders of Hitler. These scientists faked test results, slowed down their progress on purpose, and went down dead ends on purpose, all in an effort to slow down the research to give allied scientists time to perfect the bomb for the west. How would WWII have ended had Hitler gotten the bomb first? Would Washington D.C./London/Moscow be a smoldering ruin to this day? Ah... yup. But that's only a guess on my part - it's what I would choose to do if I were working on the American fusion project. I also have to admit that fusion has been achieved in experiments, with a net energy generation but fusion may be one of the most difficult of nuts to crack due to the very nature of the forces at work.

As to your chart, I appreciate your effort to track that down. It's a very informative chart and nicely shows that improvements in solar panels have been achieved despite the fact that government funding was basically ZERO for 30 years. But it is only telling one side of the story: efficiency of the panels. The more important part of the equation is the cost per watt. My own personal opinion is that I do not care how efficient the panel is, as long as it is cheap enough to be affordable.

Take for example the thin film solar panels. They are not super efficient but due to their manufacturing process they are less expensive on a cost-per-watt basis. That is the innovation that my earlier post talked about was really all about making solar affordable, not fantastically efficient but also fantastically expensive. Does that make any sense to you? In other words, we've always had super efficient cells, they are used in satellites and the space station, but they are VERY expensive so I don't care about them at all.

From my perspective, as soon as the government began to state publicly that we need innovation in solar panels all of a sudden we had several companies bringing out advances in solar technology. It has been the lack of a plan that has hurt the solar industry more than anything else. The cost of solar panels has been dropping but I have no hard evidence that Carter's plan would have kicked that into high gear -- I just firmly believe that it would have.

FOR 40 years or so, the price of solar panels fell steadily, as volumes grew and technology improved. But in 2004 Germany enormously increased subsidies for solar power, prompting a surge in demand. The supply of pure silicon, the main component of most solar cells, did not keep pace. Its price rose from $25 a kilogram in 2003 to as much as $250 this year, abruptly halting the downward march in the price of panels. If making energy from sunlight is ever to become as cheap as burning fossil fuels, the price of silicon will have to fall.

Happily, it seems likely to do so soon. Silicon producers, whose biggest customers were always chip makers, have been slow to cater to the solar industry. They were scarred by the memory of the technology bust of 2001, which had weighed them down with excess capacity, and so delayed expansion—despite the boom in solar. Moreover, it takes three years or so to get a new plant going, so new silicon supplies are only just beginning to materialize.

New Energy Finance, a research firm, expects the output of silicon for the solar industry almost to double next year. It has asked big buyers and sellers what prices they have agreed on this year for silicon to be delivered in the future. The responses suggest that participants in the industry expect prices to fall by more than 40% next year, and over 70% by 2015 (see chart).

http://www.economist.com/node/12010071?story_id=12010071

The outrageously high feed in tariffs in Germany have skewed prices, causing a flattening over the past couple of years in panel prices. But most experts expect solar panel prices to resume their downward movement in the near future.

[bananas]

13. Also, CIA Director George Bush told Carter that peak oil would hit in 6 to 8 years

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on
April 18, 1977.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with
you about a problem unprecedented in our
history . With the exception of preventing war,
this is the greatest challenge our country will
face during our lifetimes . The energy crisis has
not yet overwhelmed us , but it will if we do not
act quickly.
...
Each new inventory of world oil reserves has
been more disturbing than the last. World oil
production can probably keep going up for
another six or eight years . But some time in the
1980s it can ' t go up much more . Demand will
overtake production . We have no choice about
that .
...

[txlibdem]

14. Are you talking about "world" peak oil or "US" peak oil?

The US hit peak oil in 1965, if memory serves. But if you're referring to world peak oil then that is a great addition to the conversation (and I thank you!). I love to learn something new, unlike Teapublicans who like to force themselves to believe 12 impossible things before breakfast.

It may have been the truth as they understood it at the time and not some kind of sinister or bogus prediction meant to harm the President or the nation. Any projection is based on a set of definitions and agreed upon premises that make sense at the time of writing. I would say that they forgot that American innovation can benefit the oil industry just the same as it can renewable energy. You formulate your views of the world based on what you know up to that point and sometimes you do not have all the facts or sometimes events are in flux and your view can quickly be shown wrong in the harsh light of historical 20/20 hindsight.

If you detect a note of reverence for President Carter, you've busted me. Guilty as charged.

[bananas]

17. world: "World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years"

That was a major policy address broadcast on national tv three months after his inauguration.
It would be impossible to transition off oil in that time frame, which is why the urgency for synoil and conservation while developing renewables and efficiency.

I love Jimmy Carter too.

[NNadir]

4. Actually, this is, unintentionally I'm sure, true. China recently announced a $120B investment in

nuclear power over the next 5 years.

They plan to produce as much nuclear electricity as the US produces electricity in the next twenty years.

While our little anti-science anti-intellectual brats whine on and on and on and on about their wind and solar fantasy, which has not worked on scale in 50 years of uncritical applause, China is providing for its future.

Whose fault is that?

[madokie]

10. China sounds like a great opportunity for you

'cept'n of course you only write bullshit screeds on an internet board and I'm sure they'd be really impressed with what you've written. So I guess maybe China wouldn't be such a great opportunity for you after all. :rofl: Damned if I can make myself laugh sometimes :rofl:

peace and have a great evening while you're inside that bottle of yours