Reblog: How Green Is China’s Stimulus Package? [VIDEO]
There is obviously a lot of interest in China’s growing renewable energy industry. Over the past year, China’s $586 billion green stimulus has emerged as a serious contender to win the global clean energy race at the expense of the U.S. In a recent post for the Green Leap Forward, Chief Editor Julian Wong dissects the Chinese stimulus and asks how green it really is. Wong is also a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.
– By Julian Wong
I had the opportunity to answer this question as a member of a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington DC foreign policy think tank, two weeks ago. The event was held on February 17 to mark the one year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and sought to explore the effectiveness economic stimulus packages in the US and globally in catalyzing green investments (Wong’s remarks start at about 24′21).
My simple answer? There is no simple answer. The lack of transparency of what exactly is being allocated, how those allocations are being spent, and how the uncertainty around the lesser known story of bank lending (or monetary policy), that is separate from the fiscal stimulus figures into clean energy investments makes it nearly impossible to know just how much money is hitting the clean energy road in China. Read More »
