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China Is Winning Global Race To Make Clean Energy
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, has leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels, and is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China."
These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.
Way to miss the point completely. As has been mentioned already, a wind turbine or solar panels can be built anywhere. Oil, however, can only be found in specific locations.
What this DOES imply is that China will not be a customer purchasing Western manufactured "clean energy" equipment, which in itself is significant when you consider each wind turbine, for instance, costs several million dollars. The less technological equipment they purchase from the West, the more the balance of trade shifts in their favor.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's disappointing that you are misrepresenting what that books says. First, the numbers presented on the page you link to are only for Britain (other areas have much more abundant solar resources), and the author makes lots of assumptions that are not related to physics as he comes up with the numbers (i.e., he talks about how much area is practical to cover, rather than possible, and he talks about the cost, and so on).
People living in Arizona can easily extract all the energy they need from the sun. There are people doing it.
(Of course, I don't think nuclear is a bad idea, especially right now where the main alternative is coal)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
My dayjob is running a steel plate roller at a wind turbine tower construction company. I speak from first hand experience when I say they are NOT 'easily made anywhere'. Even if that were so, the tower sections are most definately not easily transported anywhere. It is a helluva lot easier to transport the flat steel plate than the completed sections, as there are so many restrictions on oversized loads on roadways.
The contracts to supply towers go to the construction facilities near the project sites, precisely because the cost of transporting completed sections is so much higher than transporting the materials. The only competition from Chinese towers will be for sites located within spitting distance of a deep water port.
China is not an autocratic system. It's an oligarchy or if your want to flatter them, an aristocracy. The communist party is basically a private club that runs the country by electing officials from within its own ranks to committees that perform various governance functions. The most powerful committee is the central committee but it is by no means autocratic. BTW, all of China's central committee members have engineering backgrounds.