BEIJING, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The West's paranoia of China's "overcapacity" in clean energy is a false proposition, Bloomberg has reported.
Right now, the big headache for clean technology is mostly that much of the world is fretting about what's being deemed as Chinese overcapacity, said Bloomberg columnist David Fickling in an opinion piece on Saturday.
The strong growth of China's wind industry has triggered the West to complain that China's ambition is pushing down prices and leaving too little space for other countries to build up their own clean-tech sectors.
"That protectionism is wrong on the economics, and will serve only to slow the energy transition," Fickling said in the article titled "China is keeping the wind power revolution blowing."
Only in China is the supply chain sufficient to keep wind energy growing without speed bumps, the columnist said, explaining that China dominates the wind power supply chain, but largely because it also dominates demand.
"That gives the lie to the paranoia about China's clean-tech ambitions seen in recent weeks," he wrote. To the extent that there are grounds for hope around the energy transition right now, it's largely thanks to the availability of cheap, clean Chinese products.
Promoting the fourth industrial revolution to rewire the world's energy systems requires welcoming government support whether it is in China, the United States, or Europe, rather than kicking off a destructive trade battle.
"If the tools to prevent global warming are getting built on a scale that the job requires, it's not overcapacity. It's just the basic level of capacity the world needs," Fickling said. ■
