FACT CHECK DEPARTMENT: ChinaFAQs Experts Finamore, Levi Comment on Lomborg

In a recent exchange, ChinaFAQs experts set the record straight on China’s clean energy actions in commenting on an op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg.

Michael Levi, Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations writes in his April 21 blog, “Truth and Nonsense on Chinese Clean Energy”:

Lomborg claims that “almost all of [China’s] investment, however, is spent producing green energy for Western nations that pay heavy subsidies for consumers to use solar panels and wind turbines.” That’s not true. Chinese renewables investment is dominated by wind power, and Chinese wind turbines are deployed overwhelmingly at home.

Barbara Finamore, Director of the China Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, writes in an April 26 letter to the editor in the Washington Post, “No myth: China’s clean energy”:

…Bjorn Lomborg used outdated figures to make light of China’s successes in deploying clean energy. In 2010 China invested $45 billion in wind power (more than the entire U.S. clean energy economy), which led to 17 gigawatts of new installations (more than three times that installed by the United States).

Read Lomborg’s original op-ed in the April 21 Washington Post here.