Renewables and Alternative Energy

The watchword in today’s global energy markets is change. This change in part includes the advance of solar and other renewable energy technologies – advances that can boost economic growth, improve energy security, and help address global warming. However, reaping these benefits, and particularly the jobs that go with these global industries, requires a strategic approach to clean technology innovation. This blog discusses how the United States might use an innovation-centered strategy to compete in the increasingly tough global solar power industry.

This week, the U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to issue a preliminary decision on a trade petition filed by SolarWorld Industries America, Inc. SolarWorld alleges that the Chinese have used subsidies to artificially suppress solar panel export prices, and has asked Commerce to levy a duty to eliminate that price discrepancy.

ChinaFAQs expert Melanie Hart and Kate Gordon at the Center for American Progress analyze this trade case and the implications of the decision for the U.S. solar industry and U.S. energy policy in “The Complexities of the U.S. Decision on Chinese Solar Panel Imports.”

Today I testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission during a hearing on China’s Global Quest for Resources and Implications for the United States. In my testimony, I described the prospects for shale gas in China and its implications for the United States.

The UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa, concluded over the weekend with a consensus to negotiate an agreement that will include all major emitters of warming gases. The conference agreed to a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, extended the work of the group for Long-term Cooperative Action, and most significantly established new negotiations under the Durban Platform. Launching these negotiations was hailed as major progress around the world (Bloomberg, The Statesman, Xinhua). For the first time the world’s three major emitters (by total amount of greenhouse gases emitted), China, the United States and India, have agreed to begin negotiations for an international “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force,” indicating that there will be actions and efforts by all countries. (For the implications of this complex legal wording, see my colleague Jake Werksman’s discussion on WRI Insights).

China once again hosted its largest wind power expo, China Wind 2011, surpassing last year’s exhibition with the number of companies and the exhibition floor space increasing by 50%. Not surprisingly for an event in Beijing, the China market continued to be a major focus, but this year there was much more sense of a global market with increasing interest in new emerging markets, in particular Latin America.

In the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy and amidst reports of an impending trade dispute against China’s solar subsidies, many are asking how US solar manufacturers can possibly compete with Chinese manufacturers. Sure, Chinese solar companies now dominate global solar photovoltaic (PV) markets (see figure below), but that does not mean the US is not still playing an important role in the solar industry. If we just look at how many solar panels are being manufactured here, we miss the more important metric—the total value created by the solar industry in the United States. A significant portion of the revenue from solar projects comes not from manufacturing the panels themselves, but site preparation and system installation, which must be done locally with local jobs.