Blog #4 The Race to Green

In the president's State of the Union address he said that green energy was this country's sputnik moment. The new race isn't to the moon now, it's to clean, alternative, renewable energy. The leading countries of the world have been working on new alternative sources of energy. In wind energy the United States has been the leader until recently. China has now surpassed the production capacity of the U.S. with their new wind turbines. One thing that I noticed in an article was the fact that not all of the turbines are connected to their power grid system so, the reality could be that the U.S. is still actually producing more wind energy even though China now has the capacity to produce more energy than the U.S. The main thing to make note of is that despite the fact that China has created a number of programs to make alternative energy a provider of their national energy supply, they are still going to be heavily dependent on their main source of cheap fuel: coal. Coal is plentiful and cheap in China and is not going to be something that the country can so easily let go of as source of energy. By 2020 China's projected power capacity will be 1,600 GW, 1,000 of this be coming from coal, gas, and oil. So while, China is certainly on the right path to achieving a majority alternative energy they are a long way off to having that actually happen. China has made a leap in the wind energy field though and it is clear that if we want to win this race to "green status" that we have to stop taking baby steps like we have been the past 20 years. China has increased by 42 GW in 10 years. Can we, the most powerful nation in terms of economic status alone, keep up with this budding industrial nation?

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/barun-roy-green-star-over-china/424570/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/daily_chart_alternative_energy