
China Struggling to Respond to U.S. Energy Revolution
BEIJING -- While China's much-hyped clean energy drive has become bogged down in problems of impracticality and policy incoherence, the U.S. has quietly effected a genuine energy revolution that creates huge cost advantages for America’s manufacturing base going forward. With major structural shifts already underway, changing international energy market dynamics present Washington with an opportunity to fundamentally reorient its foreign policy approach, toward China and a broader range of actors, in the decades to come.
In 2011, China overtook the U.S. in terms of renewable energy investment and under current plans will surpass the European Union in 2014. Beijing plans to invest $470 billion in renewables during the 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP), more than double the $211 billion allocated in the 11th FYP. China aims for 11.4 percent of total energy to come from renewables by 2015, up from 7.5 percent in 2007. But for a variety of reasons, China's renewable energy drive has failed to deliver the desired results. ...