China and the U.S, world’s two largest greenhouse-gas producers are planning to collaborate on a number of clean-energy advances, putting rivalry aside, reports Renewable Energy World.com.
The research center, now in its fourth year, has no physical headquarters. It’s a virtual facility with advanced coal, vehicle and building-efficiency programs running 88 separate projects. Each brings together teams of American and Chinese specialists to work on a specific problem or technology.
The research center’s five-year budget amounts to just $150 million, divided between American and Chinese money.
In research laboratories, Chinese and American scientists are engaged in a joint program on clean-energy technology inventions. Among the U.S. companies teamed with Chinese partners are Dow Chemical, Duke Energy and Ford Motor.
Partnership between the U.S. and China will set the tone for the world, said, Bill Gates, co-founder, former chairman, Microsoft, in a recent meeting in Seattle.
The program contrasts with the enduring differences over a range of issues between two nations, including the conditions of a global treaty on climate change. Innovations from the U.S.-China thinking will move to other countries, allowing nations to minimize fossil-fuel dependence.
What can be more effective than the two largest emitters of CO2, or greenhouse gases, going at it together, arm-in-arm, asked, James Wood, director, advanced coal technology research, U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, West Virginia University.
It sends some signals to people in the world that it can be solved and these are the two giants that can do it, added Wood.
The low-budget cooperation from energy efficient buildings to EV batteries is a chance of hope in the Sino-U.S. relationship. The effort officially began with Obama’s first visit to China in 2009.
The intellectual property worries experienced in the initial stages of the effort were resolved with a government-to-government talk. The political diffidence was overcome after last year’s Airpocalypse incident that saw hazardous air in the atmosphere for several days.
In July 2013, the U.S. and Chinese governments agreed to five specific climate-change initiatives.
The effort helped China last year to implement its first rural energy-efficiency building code, reducing the energy usage to half in a residential footprint equal to the U.S. housing sector.
Though its total greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, China has reduced the amount of carbon it generates per unit of gross domestic product by almost 20 percent and is expected to seek additional reductions.
So far, China has done more efforts to address climate change than has the U.S. China’s $54.2 billion investment in renewable energy last year was 50 percent larger than that of the U.S.
For Dow Chemical, joining the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center offered a chance to develop connections in China and collaborate with top scientific talent in U.S. national laboratories. The company is innovating improvements to a latex-based cool roof that minimize cooling needs of buildings.
The research center is nearing expiration by December 2015 and officials are expecting a brighter second phase. Details will be on the agenda in November when Obama travels to China for an Asian summit.
Duke Energy is among those companies who want this program to continue. It joined the program to learn the carbon-capture technology that China’s Huaneng adapts for its Shidongkou power plant.
Sabeena Wahid
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