Coal for Electricity

On January 18, at a ceremony at the US-China Strategic Forum on Clean Energy Cooperation in Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and China’s Energy Minister Zhang Guogao and Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang signed an agreement to advance the US-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC).

On January 18, 2011, the Department of Energy released a report detailing the substantial progress made to date on a number of clean energy initiatives between China and the United States.

To download the report, click here

China and the U.S. at the Summit

• Fact Sheet: The U.S. and China at the Summit: Climate & Energy Developments in China and U.S.-China Collaboration
  Background on US-China climate relations, what China has accomplished and the prospects ahead for clean energy and climate progress.
• Ask the ChinaFAQs Experts: “What Outcomes Do You Hope to See From the Hu Jintao-Obama Summit?”
  We asked members of our ChinaFAQs Expert Network what they would like to see in terms of outcomes from the summit. Read their responses here.

As Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Obama prepare to meet in Washington next week, economic and security issues have been receiving the most attention in recent press. However, the visit also presents an opportunity to discuss climate and energy issues, which have long represented areas for cooperation between the two nations, even amid tensions over other issues. We asked several experts from the ChinaFAQs network to provide their views on what they would like to see result from this summit.

Having the intercessional UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in China this week – the last stop before ministers and heads of state meet in Cancun for the sixteenth Conference of Parties (COP-16) – provides a timely opportunity for participants to witness firsthand elements of China’s clean energy and climate policies in action.

LBNL ChinaFAQs Expert Nathaniel Aden analyzes China’s revised energy production, consumption, and intensity data covering the years 1996 to 2008. Aden found the changes and implications to be significant.

Read the full analysis

Coal will remain a critical part of China’s energy mix for decades to come, but growth will slow and then peak at perhaps 3.4 billion tons per year by 2020, Jiang Kejun of China’s Energy Research Institute told a group assembled for the WRI-US CAN-organized briefing on China and coal during the Tianjin climate negotiations on Monday.