SolveClimate: China's green jobs from solar and other cleantech industries are growing faster than the US and other countries, says Clean Edge annual report
Stacy Feldman for SolveClimate guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 11.20 BST
China is prevailing in the global race for green jobs in sectors from solar panels to advanced lighting, and appears to be on an unstoppable upward path, an annual report by cleantech research firm Clean Edge said on Wednesday.
The Chinese government spent $34.6 billion last year to propel its low-carbon economy, more than any other nation and almost double what the U.S. invested. The country is now headquarters for six of the biggest renewable energy employers—up from three in 2008—according to Clean Tech Job Trends 2009.
Ron Pernick, managing director of Clean Edge and a report author, called the economic giant's "meteoric" surge "very striking." But, he said, it is "not a fait accompli that China will dominate" across the entire industry.
There is "serious competition on the global playing field," Pernick told SolveClimate News.
The report said clean energy is spawning millions of high-paying green jobs worldwide, even as the global economy continues to sputter.
Total jobs surpassed three million in 2009, recent data from global research group REN 21 finds. China accounted for 700,000 of that amount, due in large part to measures that promote solar heating.
But Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other nations are still very much in the game, as clean-energy manufacturing grows and becomes more complex.
Clean Edge identified more than two dozen top cleantech job sectors, including solar energy storage, green building materials and smart-grid devices.
The authors said the findings should dispel naysayers' claims that green jobs merely displace employment in other sectors and add no new net jobs.
"Clean-tech jobs are not amorphous as these critics claim, and instead represent some of the most dynamic sectors in the technology landscape," the report said.
"There's no way that any country is going to dominate in every one of those," Pernick said, adding, "The cleantech revolution is going to be a highly dispersed one, and highly distributed."
"Wake-Up Call" for U.S.
Still, Pernick called China's emerging dominance a "wake-up call" for U.S. lawmakers. "Time is running out for us to take a more serious, concerted approach...at the national level," he said.
The U.S. government devoted $50 billion of the $800 billion federal stimulus package to develop cleantech factory jobs. "But results of this attempted manufacturing revival in the U.S. are decidedly mixed," the report said.
Some 70 percent of the parts in renewable energy installations are manufactured overseas, according to estimates from the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, labor unions and politicians.
Part of the reason is cheap labor costs in Asia. But Clean Edge also faults the lack of a federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that would require more use of solar, wind and other sources, and provide a long-term market signal to manufacturers. Around 30 countries have such policies in place, including China, which has targeted 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.
"We believe that the lack of a strong and robust RPS puts countries like the U.S. at a significant disadvantage," the report said.
Another policy absent in America is a national feed-in tariff program like the one that made Germany the world's largest market for solar power. The U.S. also needs significant regulatory and financial support, including "billions in loan guarantees," the report said.
"There are no subsidy-free or regulatory-free energy sources on the planet—whether it's oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind or solar," Pernick said.
Silicon Valley Leads, Houston Surprises
In the U.S., solar power continues to create the most green jobs, followed by biofuels, smart grid, energy efficiency, wind power and clean vehicles, the report said.
California is the national leader, with four of its cities in the top 15 metro areas for cleantech jobs. San Francisco and Silicon Valley ranked first, with Los Angeles coming in second, San Diego seventh and Sacramento fifteenth.
But the report warns of an "uncertain future" for the Golden State if Proposition 23 passes in November. The ballot measure would suspend the state's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act.
If it passes, "it would reduce the leadership of California and set up a roadblock on their ability to mandate emissions standards and a regulatory framework," Pernick said. However, he noted that it would not be "the end of the world," especially given the state's new 33 percent renewable energy goal by 2020.
New polling data by Reuters indicates the measure is headed for defeat by a margin of 49 percent to 37 percent.
After California, Boston, New York and Denver are the next hottest spots for green jobs.
Houston was the biggest surprise, the study said, leaping from 15th to eighth place in one year, driven by the city government's commitment to buy wind power and a local biofuels boom.
Is Mexico the Next China?
Even if the U.S. could shrink China's green jobs lead, it would still have to contend with a rising Mexico, the report suggested.
"With a combination of cheap labor and geographic proximity, the United States' third-largest trading partner is attracting attention from those looking for low-cost access to the North American clean-tech market," the authors said.
So far, Japan-based Sanyo has established a factory in Mexico to churn out solar photovoltaic panels. BP Solar and Michigan-based thin-film maker Energy Conversion Devices recently revealed plans to do the same. In the wind sector, German equipment manufacturer Liebher has constructed a facility in Monterrey to make parts for the American market. Pernick predicts battery manufacturing plants could be next.
"It's not just low-cost manufacturing in China" that the U.S. has to watch out for, Pernick said: "It could be low-cost manufacturing south of the border."
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Hi-tech bubble car pops back into fashion
Congested roads, the fight against pollution, and dwindling oil reserves have revived interest in the smallest car on the block
By Andrew McCorkell
Sunday, 3 October 2010
The bubble car, symbol of the Fifties and Sixties, is returning to the UK's roads with a futuristic facelift more reminiscent of sci-fi films than of the German cockpit chic of its airplane- inspired predecessors.
The new models hark back to a golden age of Messerschmitt, Heinkel, and classics such as the French Velam Isetta – but with designers and scientists challenging each other to cram in the technology to tackle scarce road and parking space, pollution emissions, and dwindling fossil fuels.
Kia's electric Concept Pop made its public debut at the Paris Motor Show yesterday, while Renault launched its latest range of electric cars in London last month, fronted by the lithium-ion battery-powered Twizy, which charges overnight, when the cost of electricity falls.
In the vanguard of this apparently science fiction future, is the two wheeled EN-V, the product of a partnership between the American firm General Motors and one of China's biggest car manufacturers, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.
The car uses the two-wheeled balancing system developed by personal transport company Segway. The car and the Segway use "dynamic stabilisers" with electric motors fitted to wheels to counter rotate and so balance a central platform.
The EN-V's platform is its chassis, which shifts forward on to a pair of landing wheels. Getting out through its transparent dome-shaped door is easy once the car is parked in a space less than half the size of a Mini.
The vehicle can reach 25mph, has a range of 40km, and offers infrared detectors to recognise body heat, ultrasonic detectors and radars to recognise objects, and can talk to other cars via a communication network.
Jim Jaimson from the Microcar Club in York, a group which celebrates and restores bubble cars, said: "This is an idea that people have been working on for many decades. It's just now the technology of the power source has caught up. They are reliable, reusable, and you can now get a decent speed out of them as well.
"Before, we were relying on acid batteries, but now we have various power cells that we can put in the vehicles. It's the way forward."
By Andrew McCorkell
Sunday, 3 October 2010
The bubble car, symbol of the Fifties and Sixties, is returning to the UK's roads with a futuristic facelift more reminiscent of sci-fi films than of the German cockpit chic of its airplane- inspired predecessors.
The new models hark back to a golden age of Messerschmitt, Heinkel, and classics such as the French Velam Isetta – but with designers and scientists challenging each other to cram in the technology to tackle scarce road and parking space, pollution emissions, and dwindling fossil fuels.
Kia's electric Concept Pop made its public debut at the Paris Motor Show yesterday, while Renault launched its latest range of electric cars in London last month, fronted by the lithium-ion battery-powered Twizy, which charges overnight, when the cost of electricity falls.
In the vanguard of this apparently science fiction future, is the two wheeled EN-V, the product of a partnership between the American firm General Motors and one of China's biggest car manufacturers, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.
The car uses the two-wheeled balancing system developed by personal transport company Segway. The car and the Segway use "dynamic stabilisers" with electric motors fitted to wheels to counter rotate and so balance a central platform.
The EN-V's platform is its chassis, which shifts forward on to a pair of landing wheels. Getting out through its transparent dome-shaped door is easy once the car is parked in a space less than half the size of a Mini.
The vehicle can reach 25mph, has a range of 40km, and offers infrared detectors to recognise body heat, ultrasonic detectors and radars to recognise objects, and can talk to other cars via a communication network.
Jim Jaimson from the Microcar Club in York, a group which celebrates and restores bubble cars, said: "This is an idea that people have been working on for many decades. It's just now the technology of the power source has caught up. They are reliable, reusable, and you can now get a decent speed out of them as well.
"Before, we were relying on acid batteries, but now we have various power cells that we can put in the vehicles. It's the way forward."
How pension funds can plug the investment gap
Projects such as London Gateway might soon only be possible with the financial muscle of pension funds
Tim Webb The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010
The London Gateway, a £1.5bn project to build a giant deep-water port and logistic park on the banks of the Thames near Thurrock, Essex, received its latest ministerial delegation last week.
Vince Cable, pictured, the business secretary, followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, and then prime minister Gordon Brown, in donning a hard hat for the obligatory tour and photo-call.
The reason why London Gateway gets more than its fair share of flying visits by politicians – its proximity to Westminster aside – is the fact that there are precious few examples of other major infrastructure projects to point to in the UK.
It's not that there isn't a need to build new railways, roads, ports and, most of all, new pieces of energy kit such as power stations, wind farms and electricity grids. The estimated investment required in energy alone by 2020 is a cool £200bn. It's the same story globally. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an eye-watering $1,900bn (£1,200bn) a year needs to be spent on roads, rail, telecoms, electricity and water every year until 2020.
So where is the money going to come from? Certainly not the banks, who need to repair their battered balance sheets after the credit crunch. Governments such as the UK's are too steeped in debt to make any meaningful contributions. Oil-rich foreign investors cannot be expected to meet the challenge on their own: the London Gateway is being bankrolled by Dubai-based DP World, which almost scrapped the project because of its debt problems and a slump in global shipping markets.
Step forward, then, the pension funds. With stock markets no longer offering the steady growth they once did, and interest rates at rock bottom, pension funds' traditional investments – in shares, bonds and sovereign gilts – are no longer so attractive. Increasingly, they are putting money into new infrastructure funds, which offer long-term, steady returns – particularly if they invest in regulated assets such as electricity networks – to match the long-term liabilities of their members.
Yet pension funds, like any other investor, will contribute only if they think they will get a decent return. So to justify huge up-front investment in low-carbon technologies whose economics are uncertain – such as nuclear power, offshore wind farms and clean coal – governments need to guarantee a radical regime of subsidies stretching out for decades. One chief executive of a major UK energy company claimed that getting pension funds to invest in this way could solve two of the biggest crises facing society: supporting an ageing population and climate change.
Others are less optimistic. One banker compares today's infrastructure challenge with that faced by 19th-century London, when a lack of adequate sanitation turned the Thames into an open sewer, most notably during the "big stink" of 1858, leading to cholera epidemics. Only then was civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette given the funds to build an effective – and expensive – sewer network in London. This banker thinks that we will need an energy crisis of similar proportions before the political – and public – will exists to foot the bill for the billions needed to invest in infrastructure.
Tim Webb The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010
The London Gateway, a £1.5bn project to build a giant deep-water port and logistic park on the banks of the Thames near Thurrock, Essex, received its latest ministerial delegation last week.
Vince Cable, pictured, the business secretary, followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, and then prime minister Gordon Brown, in donning a hard hat for the obligatory tour and photo-call.
The reason why London Gateway gets more than its fair share of flying visits by politicians – its proximity to Westminster aside – is the fact that there are precious few examples of other major infrastructure projects to point to in the UK.
It's not that there isn't a need to build new railways, roads, ports and, most of all, new pieces of energy kit such as power stations, wind farms and electricity grids. The estimated investment required in energy alone by 2020 is a cool £200bn. It's the same story globally. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an eye-watering $1,900bn (£1,200bn) a year needs to be spent on roads, rail, telecoms, electricity and water every year until 2020.
So where is the money going to come from? Certainly not the banks, who need to repair their battered balance sheets after the credit crunch. Governments such as the UK's are too steeped in debt to make any meaningful contributions. Oil-rich foreign investors cannot be expected to meet the challenge on their own: the London Gateway is being bankrolled by Dubai-based DP World, which almost scrapped the project because of its debt problems and a slump in global shipping markets.
Step forward, then, the pension funds. With stock markets no longer offering the steady growth they once did, and interest rates at rock bottom, pension funds' traditional investments – in shares, bonds and sovereign gilts – are no longer so attractive. Increasingly, they are putting money into new infrastructure funds, which offer long-term, steady returns – particularly if they invest in regulated assets such as electricity networks – to match the long-term liabilities of their members.
Yet pension funds, like any other investor, will contribute only if they think they will get a decent return. So to justify huge up-front investment in low-carbon technologies whose economics are uncertain – such as nuclear power, offshore wind farms and clean coal – governments need to guarantee a radical regime of subsidies stretching out for decades. One chief executive of a major UK energy company claimed that getting pension funds to invest in this way could solve two of the biggest crises facing society: supporting an ageing population and climate change.
Others are less optimistic. One banker compares today's infrastructure challenge with that faced by 19th-century London, when a lack of adequate sanitation turned the Thames into an open sewer, most notably during the "big stink" of 1858, leading to cholera epidemics. Only then was civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette given the funds to build an effective – and expensive – sewer network in London. This banker thinks that we will need an energy crisis of similar proportions before the political – and public – will exists to foot the bill for the billions needed to invest in infrastructure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
