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China could beat the United States in a race to deploy clean energy technology that can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, said Frances Beinecke, leader of a leading environmental group, speaking this week at MIT. "I just got back from China, where there is tremendous investment in the clean tech sector," said Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "They have a national renewable energy standard, a national efficiency standard, and China will build more of everything--more coal, more nuclear, more renewables--and they'll invest in more efficiency than any other single country in the world."
Given the progress in China, Beinecke says the U.S. needs policy changes to compete. "There's a global race going on," she said. "We need to get moving as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is through smart policies. We need to both pull the market and push the companies through regulation." ...
China has increased its investment in clean technology in recent years. According to a report released in August by The Climate Group, a nonprofit group based in London that supports clean technology development, "in an incredibly short space of time China has taken the lead in the race to develop and commercialize a range of low carbon technologies." The report highlighted that China plans to produce half a million electric vehicles in 2011, and that it produces 30 percent of the world's solar panels and is the world's fourth-largest generator of wind power. A report from the British bank HSBC earlier this year noted that China's economic stimulus package invested $221 billion in technology for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, about twice the amount invested in such technology through the U.S. economic stimulus package enacted earlier this year.
