China and the US: The potential of a clean-tech partnership - McKinsey Quarterly - Energy, Resources, Materials - Environment

China and the US: The potential of a clean-tech partnership - McKinsey Quarterly - Energy, Resources, Materials - Environment: "China and the US: The potential of a clean-tech partnership
Only a collaboration between the two countries will create an environment where clean-energy technologies can thrive.

AUGUST 2009 • Jonathan Woetzel

Source: Climate Change Special Initiative
Energy, Resources, Materials, Environment article,
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China and the United States, the world’s dominant producers of carbon emissions, have adopted aggressive programs to reduce oil imports, create new clean-energy industries and jobs, and generally improve the environment. But the environment that will be most critical to making or breaking the two countries’ efforts to curb the dangers of global warming could well be the market that they jointly create in pursuit of their aims. Unless the two work together to provide the scale, standards, and technology transfer necessary to make a handful of promising but expensive new clean-energy technologies successful, momentum to curb global warming could stall and neither country will maximize its gains in terms of green jobs, new companies, and energy security.

The risk is real. Electrified vehicles, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and concentrated solar power, among other emerging “green tech” sectors, will need massive investment, infrastructure, and research to get off the ground. While the Chinese and US governments, along with private investors, are pursuing all of these technologies, they cannot achieve separately what they could jointly."