With relatively little fanfare, China has made moves to significantly alter the trajectory of its energy policy as its energy needs have exploded in the past few years - thank God. The rapidity with which Chinese policy has refocused on developing and deploying oil-independent technologies to produce electricity and fuel their crazy booming transportation sector (annual car sales in China increased by 70% in 2003) has been pretty stunning, especially compared to the US's experience muddling through three decades of indecisive and largely ineffective attempts to chart a new course in energy policy - curse this democracy and its interests! This week, more news confirming China's shift towards nuclear energy and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles:
Researchers at the China Institute of Atomic Energy in Tuoli, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Beijing, are preparing for a new golden age with a recently strengthened mandate.
After years of weighing the pros and cons, the government has come down firmly in favor of full-scale development of the country's nuclear energy industry in a bid to alleviate worsening power shortages.
Just this month, the Cabinet approved plans by the China National Nuclear Corp, the industry monopolist which is involved in the Tuoli complex, to build two new nuclear power projects in provinces hard hit by electricity shortages.
China has just nine nuclear power units operating in three different locations, accounting for altogether 1.4 percent of the country's total installed capacity. That is even less than India, but the Chinese government hopes to dramatically increase that capacity so that by 2020, it will make up four percent of the total.
In October, it will be 40 years since China exploded its first atom bomb, but its commercial nuclear power industry is a mere decade old.
The previous generation of leaders seemed more keen on harnessing the power of China's rivers, an obsession displayed most dramatically in the world's largest dam project at the Three Gorges, which is still under construction.
Not so with the new rulers that have taken over the reins in Beijing little more than a year ago and are already leaving their mark, according to observers.
"What you have is a new leadership that is very sensitive to the changes in the nature of security, and is very serious about the way technology can be used in new kinds of ways," says Richard Suttmeier, an expert on Chinese technology policy at the University of Oregon.
The security concept has changed and broadened, in China as elsewhere, so that it now also encompasses access to reliable and steady energy sources.
Given the rush to expand the nuclear facilities, China's indigenous technology may not be sufficient to meet demand for at least another decade.
That means new opportunities for foreign companies such as Electricite de France, Westinghouse of the United States and Japan's Mitsubishi, already scrambling for a piece of the action.
[More on the growing interest in nuclear power in China and India here, via Winds of Change].
Hydrogen, too:
China has publicly voiced its support for future hydrogen-based automotive powertrain technologies.
Ahead of a meeting in Beijing to mark the launch of BMW's CleanEnergy project in China, Shi Dinghuan, secretary general of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said: "Developing and implementing hydrogen technology is of crucial importance to sustainable development both in China and in other countries around the world." And he had a special word for the importance of the hydrogen-powered vehicles for reducing emission levels in cities.
BMW says it is initiating a broad range of activities, including a workshop in which its own experts will join Chinese technologists and economists to explore the possibilities of implementing a hydrogen infrastructure. The group is also opening a CleanEnergy exhibition in conjunction with the Science and Technology Museum in Beijing. This will provide interactive and informal means of learning about the production, distribution and application of hydrogen.
This comes soon after the recent HYFORUM 2004 conference held in Beijing:
The 2008 Olympics here in Beijing are shaping up as a milestone test for Chinese hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, and judging by what scientsits presented at HYFORUM 2004 here, China may emerge as a powerhouse, perhaps in the not too distant future - with some western help.
China’s energetic push into hydrogen and fuel cell technology started in earnest only about three years ago. But already Chinese carmakers, typically in cooperation with universities, have built several fuel cell cars and three hybrid fuel cell buses. Chinese researchers are investigating hydrogen production from its abundant coal reserves and other, including renewable, resources, and others are well on their way investigating hydrogen production from advanced nuclear reactors in cooperation with the United States, France, Japan and South Korea.
Not only is China looking towards hydrogen fuel cells down the road, but they're rapidly increasing their use of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) - there are 70,000 NGVs in China today (up from 36,000 in 2001), and Beijing hopes to have 90% of the 11,000 buses in Beijing running on natural gas in time for the 2008 Olympics (which Beijing intends to be a showcase for China's technological progress, in energy technologies especially).
In both cases, this is great news for two reasons - 1), the more China can do to reduce its huge-and-getting-huger need for oil imports, the better for the US and everybody else involved, and 2), China's demand for high-tech nuclear and alternative-fuels technology will have to be met by the US or other high-tech countries until China's domestic industries catch up, presenting a potentially huge emerging market for US companies in these sectors that have been struggling to gain a foothold in the US. One particularly intriguing (and optimistic!) perspective on US/China relations highlights the significant potential for US/China cooperation on energy policy, and is explored in-depth in the lame-named but extremely excellent paper "Crouching Suspicions, Hidden Potential," published by the Woodrow Wilson Center:
Perhaps no country besides the United States will have greater impact on global energy and environmental strategies in the coming years than the People’s Republic of China (PRC).The world’s most populous nation already consumes more energy and emits more greenhouse gases than any country except the United States, and may surpass the United States in both categories within two to three decades. If China maintains economic growth rates of 5 to 7 percent per year its economy will increase three to fivefold by 2025—with enormous consequences for the rest of the world. Chinese experts predict that China’s ability to meet energy demand from domestic sources will fall short by approximately 8 percent in 2010 and 24 percent in 2040—the resulting increased demand for energy imports could result in higher global energy prices. Moreover, China’s breakneck pace of modernization already has left it with nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities and its sulfur emissions lead to acid rain throughout Northeast Asia. Even countries halfway around the globe are feeling the impact of China’s pollution problems and inefficient use of natural resources—industrial contaminants and dust from China are now reaching the United States via the Gulf jet stream.
Despite these alarming trends and the growing role China undoubtedly will play in shaping future global energy markets and environmental trends, energy issues have not occupied a prominent position in U.S.-China relations. To the extent that energy and environmental issues have been considered at all, U.S. policy regarding cooperation with China in these areas has not been sustained or consistent, reflecting tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, disagreements between past administrations and Congress, and the higher priorities given to other issues in the relationship.The perceived incoherence of U.S.policy has not served well U.S. firms and citizens, the people of China, and key allies in the strategic East Asian region. President Bush’s announcement during a February 2002 visit to Beijing to "take active efforts" to cooperate with China on energy and environmental protection marks a welcome departure from the administration’s previous year of silence on these issues. However, it will be critical for U.S. credibility and strategic well being for the government to make good on this statement and genuinely move forward with an active agenda.
It is strongly in the interest (politically and environmentally) of the United States to help China bolster its use of clean energy, energy efficient technologies, and energy conservation strategies in order to help prevent intensified competition for limited global energy resources and further environmental degradation in the PRC. Moreover, in the aftermath of September 11, U.S. relations with China, which shares borders with both Afghanistan and North Korea, have gained greater strategic significance. Reaching agreement on sensitive security issues likely will prove difficult, especially without a reservoir of goodwill to draw from in other aspects of the relationship. As the United States and China share concerns over energy security and confront many of the same environmental challenges, cementing cooperation in these areas might help address not only immediate environmental concerns but also may help secure broader U.S. foreign policy and domestic goals, including:
• Improve U.S. and global energy security, for China’s oil imports will increase over time and China may also play an important role in developing new pipelines in central Asia;
• Help offset tensions in other parts of the Sino-U.S. relationship;
• Improve political and economic stability in a region of key economic and strategic interest to the United States by decreasing tension over energy supply, natural resource utilization, and environmental degradation issues in East Asia;
• Promote sales of U.S. energy-efficient and environmental technology and services to China, a potentially huge—but fiercely competitive—market;
• Reduce the potential for ecological damage to the U.S.West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii from Chinese pollution and dust storms;
• Demonstrate U.S. commitment to international environmental issues by engaging a key emerging nation;
• Improve cooperation between the United States and China on critical international environmental issues, such as climate change while encouraging China to become a leading example of "developing country participation" in an international climate mitigation effort;
• Stabilize global food supply by bolstering Chinese food production through the amelioration of environmental problems such as acid rain and desertification;
• Promote the growth of civil society and citizen involvement in China by strengthening nongovernmental energy and environmental contacts between the United States and the PRC;
• Decrease the likelihood of China becoming dependent on unstable oil-rich states— Chinese oil companies already have acquired concessions in Sudan, Iran, and Iraq; and,
• Improve the health and living standards of hundreds of millions of people in Asia by reducing environmental degradation in China and along its borders.
As it is, China's enormous growth in oil consumption, and oil imports from the Persian Gulf in particular, is going to start making the US's already-painful energy security problem approximately 1 billion times more difficult in the near future. And it's not like there's nothing else that's going to be causing tensions with China in the near future... The threats posed by the jihadi movement (funded extensively by oil profits in terror-supporting states in the Gulf) on one hand and an ascendant China (with a huge craving for oil and an independence-craving Taiwan) on the other hand are likely to be the two biggest challenges to US security in the 21st century, and closer collaboration with China on energy technology could be a hugely important step towards addressing both threats.