[xtypo_dropcap]W[/xtypo_dropcap]ASHINGTON—In 2000, the United States manufactured close to half of the world’s supply of solar cells, while today its contribution to the world’s clean energy market has dwindled to around 5 percent.
According to testimony before a July U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, today there are only four American companies among the top 30 global solar, wind, and advanced battery manufacturers supplying the world’s clean energy products.
“With clean energy manufacturing increasingly shifting abroad, it’s little surprise that the U.S. is running a clean energy trade deficit,” said Devon Swezey, project director at the Breakthrough Institute, before the committee.
No recent figures were provided by the hearing participants during testimony, but in 2008, the U.S. clean energy trade deficit leaped to $6 billion, increasing by 1,400 percent since 2003.
Shifting Clean Energy Investments Abroad
“What is perhaps even more concerning is that as clean energy manufacturing has shifted overseas, particularly to Asia, research and innovation activities—the area that has historically been America’s ‘comparative advantage’—have started to follow,” Swezey stated.
Swezey pointed out that the global semiconductor manufacturing giant Applied Materials Inc., based in California, is building “the world’s largest, most advanced nongovernmental solar energy research and development facility in Xian, China,” claiming that China will grow into the largest solar energy market in the future.
International Business Machines Corp., another global company with roots in the United States, is transferring more of its R&D facilities to China with an initial investment of $40 million, claiming that China’s clean energy market has the support of the Chinese government.
Other global giants, including General Motors Co., Dow Chemical Co., and Intel Corp. have already established high technology research laboratories in China.
In 2009, $34.6 billion were invested in China’s clean energy programs, almost double the $18.6 billion of investments in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, with $11.2 billion in investments.
The money for China’s rapid expanse into the clean energy sector came from the West’s private equity funds, China’s government, its state-owned banks, and other small and large investors from throughout the world.
America needs at least $15 billion annually and a wide-ranging, targeted clean energy investment strategy. “With China and other nations moving aggressively to capture market share in the growing clean energy industry, current U.S. energy and climate policies are insufficient to keep the United States competitive,” Swezey warned.
The Chinese wind power sector has grown more than 10 times since 2006 and 130 percent between 2008 and 2009, according to Ethan Zindler, head of policy analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Although there are a number of major Western players in the clean energy sector, “today, there is no disputing that China is number one. Last year, manufacturers there had capacity to produce solar cells for use in 4,500MW of solar modules. That represented a bit over 1/3 of the world’s overall supply,” Zindler testified.
