The Chinese government’s latest five-year roadmap for renewable energy shows continued growth in the wind sector, with 100 GW of projects likely to be developed through 2015 — the amount of capacity developed world-wide in 2008.

And that’s during a “slowdown.” Compared to the breathtaking growth in installations between 2007 and 2009 in China, the 38% growth in 2010 was a noticeable change. With Project developers in the country still facing quality control problems and grid interconnection roadblocks, and manufacturers seeing declining profits in a crowded market, there are plenty of on-the-ground challenges in China.

But strong government targets and a hunger for any energy sources available are pushing a steady increase in installations, making China a continued leader in the global wind market. The Chinese government projects that by 2050, the market will reach 1,000 GW of installed capacity and be worth $1.9 trillion. That would meet roughly 20% of electricity demand in the country.

That’s a staggering amount of wind development. China and the U.S., the number one and number two wind markets in the world respectively, both have installed capacity in the mid 40-GW range. But while the U.S. has only state-level targets that run through the mid-2020′s, China is looking 25 years further and projecting an installation of more than 20 times that amount.

And by 2020, Chinese officials say wind will be competitive with coal there — an economic cross-over of absolute necessity, considering the baffling amount of coal being consumed in China.

In addition to wind, China may see up to 5 GW of solar-photovoltaic installations through 2015, and 20 GW of installs through 2020.

Related posts:

• Video: 30,000 Chinese ‘Occupy’ Highway to Protest Polluting Coal Plants
• Interactive Graphic: China’s Explosive Consumption of Coal
• China’s New Plan for Solar Power Supremacy

Ted Kaufman, former Delaware Senator, is exasperated by lack of climate action.

by Ted Kaufman, reposted from HuffPost

We are beginning a new year, and the silence in Congress is still deafening. Will there ever be a debate about what should be done to deal with climate change?

Oh, you don’t “believe” in it? If you do not, please, suspend that belief system for just a few minutes and take a look at what the major scientific organizations in this country say. Go to their webpages. Examine the mountain of evidence that has convinced 97 to 98 percent of climate researchers that climate change is a stark reality, and that human behavior has been a contributing factor to it.

NASA: The startling timeline chart on the first page leads you directly into a summary of why the evidence for rapid climate change is compelling. There are extensive sections documenting sea level rise, global temperature rise, warming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, declining arctic sea ice, glacial retreat, extreme events and ocean acidification.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO₂ has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)

National Academy of Sciences: There are more than forty reports on this web page, each of them supporting the Academy’s conclusion that “climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems.”

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Last fall, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) sought to kill the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution rule, one that requires coal-fired power plants to curb smog and particulate-forming pollution in 27 states. Known as a “good neighbor” protection, the rule ensures that air pollution created in an upwind state doesn’t add to unhealthy pollution levels in downwind states — like New Hampshire.

Thus, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte (NH), along with five fellow GOP senators, joined with Senate Democrats to defeat Paul’s effort to overturn the rule.

At the NBC/Facebook GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire today, Mitt Romney was asked whether he sides with his endorser Ayotte or believes that the rule is another example of “job-killing regulation.” Following his non-committal playbook, Romney suggested, “I’m not familiar with the specific regulation as it applies to New Hampshire.” Watch it:

Romney was willing to make vague statements in an attempt to win over New Hampshire voters who support the rule, adding, “We have to find ways to keep pollution from one state overwhelming the ability of another state to have clean air.”

Time to Stop Being Cynical About Corporate Money in Politics and Start Being Angry

by Bill McKibben, reposted from Tom Dispatch

My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve — dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for.  It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

Here’s my case in point, one of a thousand stories people working for social change could tell: All last fall, most of the environmental movement, including 350.org, the group I helped found, waged a fight against the planned Keystone XL pipeline that would bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Canada through the U.S. to the Gulf Coast. We waged our struggle against building it out in the open, presenting scientific argument, holding demonstrations, and attending hearings.  We sent 1,253 people to jail in the largest civil disobedience action in a generation.  Meanwhile, more than half a million Americans offered public comments against the pipeline, the most on any energy project in the nation’s history.

And what do you know? We won a small victory in November, when President Obama agreed that, before he could give the project a thumbs-up or -down, it needed another year of careful review.  (The previous version of that review, as overseen by the State Department, had been little short of a crony capitalist farce.)  Given that James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, had said that tapping Canada’s tar sands for that pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate,” that seemed an eminently reasonable course to follow, even if it was also eminently political.

A few weeks later, however, Congress decided it wanted to take up the question. In the process, the issue went from out in the open to behind closed doors in money-filled rooms.  Within days, and after only a couple of hours of hearings that barely mentioned the key scientific questions or the dangers involved, the House of Representatives voted 234-194 to force a quicker review of the pipeline.  Later, the House attached its demand to the must-pass payroll tax cut.

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by Randy Essex, cross-posted from the Rocky Mountain Institute

With Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint for the passage of 17 percent of globally traded oil, this is a good time to introduce myself to Outlet readers. This set of issues—oil addiction and the vehicle-centric, land-abusing society it engenders—has a lot to do with why I joined RMI as editorial director after a 30-year newspaper career.

This week, as an old headline about oil insecurity reappears, I feel mounting frustration about a newer storyline being adopted in my former industry: the supposedly faltering launch of mass-produced electric cars.

These stories, of course, are related, but the media, politicians and the public either don’t see the connection or don’t want to.

Let me step back for a moment to personal history.

Gasoline topped 40 cents a gallon in my hometown on the day I got my driver’s license in January 1974, in the midst of the Arab oil embargo. Over the next few years, I saw a clear connection between U.S. oil dependency and my struggle to gain traction in the economy as oil price spikes drove inflation. The experience led me to study political science and journalism in college and to buy the most fuel-efficient vehicles I could afford.

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