Foreign Perspective

China Leads Push to Go Green

(Associate)
Updated: 2011-05-10 11:08

Denmark earns the biggest share of its national revenue from producing windmills and other clean technologies, and the United States is rapidly expanding its clean-technology sector. But no country can match China’s pace of growth, according to a new report.

China’s production of green technologies has grown a remarkable 77 per cent a year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. The report was expected to be released Monday at an industry conference in Amsterdam.

“The Chinese have made, on the political level, a conscious decision to capture this market and to develop this market aggressively,” said Donald Pols, an economist with the organization.

The United States ranks 17 in the production of clean technologies with 0.3 percent of G.D.P., or €31.5 billion, but those industries have been expanding at a rate of 28 percent per year since 2008.

“The U.S. is growing substantially,” Mr. Pols said, but its growth could not compare with that of China.

“When you speak to the Chinese, climate change is not an ideological issue. It’s just a fact of life. While we debate climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy, the debate is past in China,” Mr. Pols said. “For them it’s implementation. It’s a growth sector, and they want to capture this sector.”

The report was prepared by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, a global firm based in Germany. It gathered data on 38 countries from energy associations, bank and brokerage reports, investor presentations, the International Energy Agency and a score of other sources.

It measured the earnings from producing renewables like biofuels, wind turbines and thermal equipment, and energy efficiency technology like low-energy lighting and insulation.

“Clean technologies are really growing fast, but China is responsible for the majority of that growth,” said Ward van den Berg, who compiled and analyzed the data for the consulting firm.

Until recently, Chinese production of solar cells was aimed at the export market, but the Chinese are now making solar systems for the home market, as they have been doing for several years in wind energy, Mr. Van den Berg said.

Following Denmark and China, other countries among the top five clean-technology producers, in terms of percentage of G.D.P., are Germany, Brazil and Lithuania, the report said.