On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules

(New York Times)

Until very recently, Hunan Province was known mainly for lip-searing spicy food, smoggy cities and destitute pig farmers. Mao was born in a village on the outskirts of Changsha, the provincial capital here in south-central China.

Now, Changsha and two adjacent cities are emerging as a center of clean energy manufacturing. They are churning out solar panels for the American and European markets, developing new equipment to manufacture the panels and branching into turbines that generate electricity from wind. By contrast, clean energy companies in the United States and Europe are struggling. Some have started cutting jobs and moving operations to China in ventures with local partners.

The booming Chinese clean energy sector, now more than a million jobs strong, is quickly coming to dominate the production of technologies essential to slowing global warming and other forms of air pollution. Such technologies are needed to assure adequate energy as the world’s population grows by nearly a third, to nine billion people by the middle of the century, while oil and coal reserves dwindle.

But much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times. Read more here.

Renewable Energy Trade Mission to Australia in September

(Canada-Asia News)

The Consulate General of Canada in Sydney is inviting Canadian companies to join a trade mission to the EcoGen Conference and Exhibition 2010, Australia’s business-to-business event for the clean energy industry. EcoGen, taking place in Sydney from September 5-10, will feature an exhibition that includes the latest clean energy solutions. Over 700 clean energy decision makers will attend the conference and exhibition. Canadian trade commissioners will also organize individual programs for participants that will consist of one-on-one meetings in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Find out more information here.

Green Rule Draws Flak

(Financial Post)

As investment in Ontario’s alternative-energy sector continues apace, legal experts are warning the provincial government may be violating international trade agreements with its local-content requirements. At the same time, energy producers are finding it difficult to meet the “made-in-Ontario” rules, which require a certain percentage of a project’s cost be sourced within the province.

“The EU is really fuming about this,” said Milos Barutciski, an international trade partner with Bennett Jones LLP, in Toronto.

“While on the one hand they’re negotiating with Canada about access to government procurement, the main province that they’re interested in getting access to comes up with this fairly straightforward discriminatory restriction on government procurement.”

Officials from the European Union have recently joined a call from the government of Japan asking Ontario to drop the domestic-content requirements of its legislation, saying it views Ontario’s rules as protectionist and a violation of international trade agreements. Read more here.

U.S. Seeks to Push Ahead With Trade Deal on Green Technologies

(Bloomberg BusinessWeek – Mark Drajem)

The U.S. is talking with Canada, the European Union and Australia about eliminating tariffs on solar, wind and related energy technologies to spur their use, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said today. Kirk said the U.S. is seeking an “early harvest” for an agreement on so-called green technologies, which means an environmental deal wouldn’t have to wait for completion of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks. Negotiations on environmental goods have taken place since 2008.

“We think it only makes sense to make the trade of those goods more open,” Kirk said at a Washington event on patent protections. “We think it is important enough” that it could move ahead on its own, he said. Read more here.

Europe’s Biodiesel Producers Seek EU Anti-Fraud Probe of Canadian Shipments

(Juliane Von Reppet-Bismark — Globe & Mail)

The seizure by Italian customs officials of a shipload of Canadian biodiesel highlights the global battle for a slice of the growing renewable energy market.

A regional judge in Italy on Wednesday approved the seizure of 10,000 tonnes of biodiesel labelled as coming from Quebec and bound for the ports of Venice and Trieste. Italian customs officials blocked the cargo last month after receiving a tip that the material originally came from the United States.

Last May, the European Commission imposed duties on U.S. biodiesel for a five-year period, in response to what it said were illegal U.S. subsidies and export pricing practices. The duties have sent U.S. exports to Europe plummeting, to less than 400,000 tonnes in 2009 from 1.5 million tonnes in 2008.

The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which represents European producers, believes the duties are being circumvented by the shipment of U.S. biodiesel through other countries, including Canada. The European producers claim the U.S. fuel is being labelled as coming from Canada, or that it is being mixed into Canadian biodiesel, for sale at a lower price than EU biodiesel of comparable quality. Read more here.

U.S. Behind Foreign Competitors in Manufacturing Green Technologies

(NextGov.com – Jill R. Aitoro)

The United States is falling behind other countries in developing and manufacturing green technologies and will continue to do so unless the federal government provides financial incentives to American companies and changes domestic trade laws, according to a panel of government and industry experts that testified before Congress on Wednesday.

The U.S. trade balance in green technologies fell from a $12 billion surplus in 1997 to an $8.9 billion deficit in 2008, according to the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy think tank.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, referenced the statistic in his opening statement during a hearing on Wednesday. He also noted that only six of the top 30 green technology companies worldwide are American.

"Through insufficient investment and lack of policy leadership, the U.S. continues to lose ground to countries willing to back their companies with capital and create incentives" that support the development of green technologies, said Andrea Larson, an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. "First we must get our own house in order. It is only then that we will have built the necessary platform for leadership in world trade."

Larson acknowledged that the United States declared in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to have 25% of the nation's energy demands supplied by renewable sources by 2025. But she said, "We come to the table late. Read more here.

Obama, McCain Mislead America About “Foreign” Oil

(Yael T. Abouhalkah — Kansas City Star)

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are engaging in xenophobia with their complaints about America’s use of foreign oil. Check it out:

Obama says on his Web site that “energy security requires stemming the flow of money to oil-rich regimes that are hostile to America and its allies....” Obama fails to give any examples, however.

McCain says on his site that the next president needs to make “the hard choices that will break our nation’s strategic dependence on foreign sources of energy...”

Both presidential candidates ignore some facts with their statements.

The largest supplier of petroleum to America is ... Canada, which meets about 25% of our monthly needs. Mexico is the third biggest with around 13%. In other words, 38% of the U.S.’s monthly imports come from our two most important North American allies.

Sandwiched at second place (supplying 15% of our petroleum) is Saudi Arabia, which certainly sits in a long-unstable region. But Saudi Arabia is hardly “hostile” to America, as Obama implies. In fact, it’s been one of the steadiest suppliers America has had in the past two decades.

Indeed, the only nations that supply a rather significant amount of petroleum and are openly hostile to America are Venezuela and Nigeria, both at about 12%. So where’s Iran? The United States buys little or no oil from that nation, which supplies China and other countries instead. Others in the top 15 suppliers include Russia, the Virgin Islands, Brazil, Kuwait and the United Kingdom.

Hardly a list of rogue nations.