Is the West sleeping when it comes to Alternative energy?

Tthe sheer volume of wind, solar, mass transit, nuclear and more efficient coal-burning projects that have sprouted in China in just the last year are just amazing. There have been so many new solar panel makers emerging in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to Keith Bradsher, the NY Times’s bureau chief there. Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour — from Wuhan to Guangzhou. As Bradsher noted, China “has nearly finished the construction of a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of euro 16 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in just five hours, compared with 12 hours today. By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.”

“By the end of this decade, China will be dominating global production of the whole range of power equipment,” said Andrew Brandler, the C.E.O. of the CLP Group, Hong Kong’s largest power utility. In the process, China is going to make clean power technologies cheaper for itself and everyone else. But even Chinese experts will tell you that it will all happen faster and more effectively if China,the EU and America work together — with the EU and US specializing in energy research and innovation, at which China is still very weak, as well as in venture investing and servicing of new clean technologies, and with China specializing in mass production.

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