China To The Rescue?

It's well known that China are building coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week just to keep up with their economic growth. As a consequence, they threaten to undermine the fight against climate change. Indeed, many people like to use them as a handy excuse for not joining the fight themselves: What's the point they say, the Chinese are undoing everything anyway.

However, it's less well known that the Chinese are deeply concerned about climate change. After all, it would have dire effects for their agriculture amongst other things. What they plan to do about this is unclear to me. I think economic growth is their priorty but they'll be working hard on cleaner energy behind the scenes.

One sign of this approach is in this recent BBC report. It seems that China invested almost double what the US did during 2009. Not only are they expanding their domestic wind and solar energy capacity but, more interestingly, they seem set to become the world leaders in exporting the technology. If the US doesn't watch out, they'll be left behind.

To me, that sounds like the beginning of just the sort of competition that could benefit to us all: There is a multi-billion Pound market at stake here, one to rival even the oil industry in the long term. The Americans aren't going to let the Chinese grab it all for themselves. The resulting competition will drive prices down, making the technology more affordable, and accelerate it's spread.

So, ironically, the Chinese may end up being the climate change heroes.