Global Clean Energy Investment $243 billion; US Drops to 3rd

Anonymous said:

In the mid 90s a productive inventor developed a technology with the help of a retired UC Berkeley Professor and then spent 93k getting worldwide patents.   When China and Singapore saw the patent app. they each flew reps to have a meeting with the inventor and offered him full funding to build working prototypes of the technology.  The state department then told the inventor that because the invention could have military application they forbid the inventor from taking any offshore funds or granting any license on his foreign patents.  They then put a 3 year hold on the US patent.  The IRS then fined the inventor for thinking that the legal expenses were a business expense.  After 6 years of working to get out of debt from the IRS fines and interest and paying all the taxes on the money spent on patent attorneys,  the inventor starting building workable prototypes this took more time and thousands of after tax dollars that he was generating with his professional work.   After five generations of prototypes the IRS again told him that operating his money making design business which funded this energy R&D out of a business incubator where he was doing energy R&D violated IRS rules and he was fined again.  This resulted in 5 more years of indentured servitude to the IRS.  Well this guy now after 15 years of getting the shaft from the Feds is thinking of going off shore.  He has two offers from governments that will give him either a 7 or a 14 year tax holiday.   Can you blame him the feds have wasted 15 years of his life, and withholding his technology has caused billions of tons of carbon to get into the atmosphere.  Carbon that his invention could have blocked.   Check it out.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvwdQA26fcc

Paul O said:

David Lewis said:

China defines "clean" energy as including nuclear power.  Its stated goal to reduce its carbon intensity has nuclear power as the largest source of "clean" energy that will be added to its grids, if you take the total power delivered each year as opposed to the nameplate capacity.  

Pew doesn't include nuclear.  The word "nuclear" does not appear in the source document for your post, i.e. Pew's Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?

China would be winning the "race" whether nuclear was included or not.  But it is getting tedious to have to sort out what various people mean by the words "clean", "low carbon", and "renewable".  The Chinese understand that if its the climate problem you want to solve, its carbon that matters, and sources of power that emit low amounts of carbon are what you want.