Investments in clean energy have roared back since their recessionary flatlining, according to a recent report by The Pew Charitable Trust and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Public and private investments in the sector totaled an all-time high of $243 billion in 2010, up 30 percent from 2009.
Though the US was part of this trend, its post-recession bounce wasn’t as high as it was in other countries. Clean-energy investments in the US were 51 percent higher last year than they were in 2009 – reaching a total of $34 billion – but that figure wasn’t substantial enough to keep the country from moving down the top-10 list. Germany slid into the US’s previously held second-place position, with $41.2 billion in investments going to the sector, pushing the US into a distant third.
Far and away the top country in terms of total investment in clean energy was China, which the report deems “the world’s clean energy superpower.” Already in 2009, it had surpassed the US as the country with the most installed clean energy capacity, and in 2010, $54.4 billion went to its clean energy sector. The country is also the world’s leading producer of wind turbines and solar modules.
Does that mean it follows that China has become the world’s “greenest” superpower, too?
In the April issue of Harper’s magazine, the Harper’s Index included this fact: “Rank of Communist China among the “greenest” regimes in history, based on total atmospheric carbon reduction: 1.” That ranking came out of research by Julia Pongratz, a postdoctoral research assistant at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, on the carbon-reducing effects of China’s large-scale reforestation projects between 1950 and 2000.
But Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist who also works at the Carnegie Institution, points out that more context does much to muddle China’s greenest-country distinction.
“China is the biggest investor in green energy technology,” Caldeira says, “but I don’t know if you can say they’re the greenest country. They’re the biggest emitter right now, and they’re growing the fastest, and they’re building lots of coal-fired plants. They’re just the biggest in everything.”
Caldeira adds that when he visited Beijing and spoke with government officials there last year, he got the clear sense that for the Chinese government, investing in clean energy is just one way they’re seeking to diversify their economic and energy bases, rather than holding clean energy up as a primary concern. He says he heard repeatedly from Chinese officials that the country isn’t willing to slow its economic growth to reduce emissions. And yet, even without that singularity of focus, China reigns as the world’s “clean energy superpower.”
Caldeira believes that the US has little chance of competing for that mantle, or anything close to it, until a clear policy framework around energy is put in place – whether that takes the form of a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade system, or something else entirely. Other research from the Pew Charitable Trusts supports the point that public policy – or its absence – will determine the size of the clean energy industry over the next decade. Its December 2010 report, “Global Clean Power: A $2.3 Trillion Opportunity,” predicted that if clean energy policies in the Group of 20 nations are left in their current forms, cumulative investments in clean power assets will total $1.7 trillion over the next decade. But if such policies are strengthened significantly during that time, the industry could attract as much as $2.3 trillion by 2020.
It remains to be seen, then, whether the clean energy industry will have room for a collection of burgeoning superpower nations, or just one.
