As he did with the Republicans last week, President Obama met with Democrats yesterday, Feb. 3, 2010, for a similar C-Span televised Q&A session, during which he mentioned not only electric cars and battery technology, but also the following article in the New York Times about China's aggressive push into wind power.
Here is the most chilling part of the article in terms of the future of a clean energy industry in America.
China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.
As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.
While clearly alarming if you're an American and you're concerned about being competitive in the 21st century, from a larger global perspective, a horse race like this is a good thing for everyone, especially if most of China's wind production stays in China and helps them cut their use of coal. But it will also lead to them needing and developing more battery storage capacity and rare earth minerals, meaning they will have less to export.
Everyone seems a bit surprised that Toyota Motor Sales President and COO Jim Lentz would come out and unequivocally state that it is Toyota's official view that peak oil -- the point at which demand for petroleum will outstrip production on a global scale -- will happen sometime in the 2020 time frame, give or take a couple years. But Toyota's energy and technology point man, Bill Reinert has been warming this for years now.
And Toyota isn't alone. Just recently GM's Bob Lutz basically said the same thing. In short, we've got about a decade to get serious about finding practical, sustainable, greener ways to move ourselves and our goods that isn't dependent on petroleum.
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