The Washington Post reports today that the U.S. risks falling behind in the race to become the world’s clean tech superpower:
[India, South Korea, China and Japan] are pouring money into renewable energy industries, funding research and development and setting ambitious targets for renewable energy use. These plans could outpace the programs in Obama’s economic stimulus package or in the House climate bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.).
“If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is the United States’ entry into the clean energy race, we’ll be left in the dust by Asia’s clean-tech tigers,” said Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that favors massive government spending to address global warming.
…[E]ven though developing nations refused to agree to an international ceiling for greenhouse gases last week, China and other Asian nations are already devoting more attention to cutting their use of traditional fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.
Still, many opportunities for success in clean tech remain open to the U.S., particularly the export of “next generation” technology:
[Mark Levine of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] said the United States is unlikely to “become the or even a leading photovoltaic manufacturer. But our scientific talent . . . has a good chance of developing the next-generation PV systems which we could either manufacture in China or another country . . . or license to foreign companies. . . . Even if the manufacturing is done abroad, this will lead to very real and large benefits to the U.S. from licensing fees, not to say sales in the U.S. and elsewhere.”
Years ago as a camp counselor in upstate New York, I slept in a converted chicken coop. Boy, was it cold at night–and this was during the summer.