Falling Behind the Clean Energy Race

Manufacture This (Capazolla) - Center for American Progress has published an interesting report, How Germany, Spain, and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity and Why the United States Risks Getting Left Behind by Kate Gordon, Julian Wong, and JT McLain. (Photo Source: AP/Eric Draper)

The report makes a number of key points about clean energy technology, including the steps that countries like China, Germany, and Spain are taking to grow their own wind and renewable energy manufacturing production. Of particular note are their efforts at building up the domestic content of their clean technology products. Some key points:

• By 2020, clean energy will be one of the world’s biggest industries, totaling as much as $2.3 trillion.
• Over the past year, other countries made huge investments to seize the economic opportunity provided by the historic shift from fossil-based energy to renewable, low-waste electricity and fuel.
• These investments were…a result of intentional public policies, which in turn provided a strong stimulus for new public and private investment in new clean-energy markets, infrastructure, and human resources.
• China…has made a serious commitment to building that revolution with low-carbon, low-waste technologies and infrastructure.
• Several European Union countries—notably Germany and Spain—have also turned from old energy policies to embrace the new.
• The United States came in second just behind Germany in absolute sales in a recent global country ranking
• of 2008 clean-energy technology product sales. But when product sales were expressed as a proportion of respective gross domestic product, the United States was far down the list at 19th, compared to Germany at third, Spain at fourth, and China at sixth. The United States also lags on installed renewable energy per capita as well as per unit of gross domestic product.