Chinese president visits US: Clean energy collaborations top priority

Chinese President Xi Jinping in US for three-day visit

SEATTLE – Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington state Tuesday for a visit to the U.S. that will include talks on how U.S. and Chinese experts and businesses can collaborate on nuclear energy, smarter electricity use and other clean technologies.

The visit comes a year after Xi and President Barack Obama announced their nations would co-operate to fight climate change.

Xi’s plane landed at Paine Field in Everett, where he was welcomed by a group that included Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, former Washington governor and U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.

In Seattle, supporters turned out to welcome the Chinese president and other dignitaries travelling in his motorcade.

Wendy Hu, a native of Guangdong Province who has lived in Seattle for 20 years, brought her 11-year-old daughter, Anna Ni.

“China and the U.S. are good partners now, with Boeing and Microsoft,” Hu said. “I love both countries.”

Hundreds of protesters from the religious group Falun Gong demonstrated outside the federal courthouse, holding banners and banging drums as the motorcade passed.

Falun Gong says its members are persecuted in China.

“It’s about compassion and tolerance,” said Sabrina Chang, 28, who travelled to Seattle with other Falun Gong practitioners for the protest.

Talks in Seattle among a handful of U.S. governors and six of their Chinese counterparts will include improving energy efficiency in buildings, modernizing electrical grids and commercializing renewable energy.

The governors were expected to meet privately with Xi later in the day.

The University of Washington and Tsinghua University in Beijing were expected to sign an agreement to collaborate on research related to clean tech. In addition, TerraPower Inc., an energy company founded by Bill Gates, will be entering an agreement with China National Nuclear Corp. to work together on next-generation nuclear power plant technology.

“These are the largest economies in the world, and we’re the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, so improving co-operation and collaboration is really a necessity,” said Brian Young, Washington state director of economic development for the clean technology sector. “Second, it’s a huge business opportunity. Both sides recognize the opportunity for job creation.”

U.S.-China co-operation on climate-change has been a warm and fuzzy point of relations between the superpowers.

In November 2009, Obama and then-President Hu Jintao formalized a renewable energy partnership, including the establishment of clean-energy research centres focused on electric vehicles, cleaner coal and water energy programs.

Last November, Obama and Xi announced that the countries would work together on climate change, with China announcing it would try to cap its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, or sooner if possible.

By contrast, hacking attacks on the U.S., said to be directed by Beijing; China’s moves to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea; and human rights issues have been sore spots.

Xi is travelling to Seattle on his way to Washington, D.C., for a White House state dinner on Friday.

The trip comes at a time when China’s economic growth has slowed considerably, and when the communist nation is overhauling its economy to put more emphasis on consumer spending and less on exports and often-wasteful investment in factories, real estate and infrastructure such as railways and airports.

That shift will demand vast amounts of energy as China’s middle class expands, noted Tom Ranken, president of CleanTech Alliance, a Seattle-based trade association of companies and organizations with a stake in clean energy technology, including Boeing, the University of Washington and hundreds of others.

The need for China to curb its pollution is obvious to anyone who’s spent time in Beijing or Shanghai, he said.

“For an American going to those cities it’s quite stunning,” he said. “They’re ultramodern, and yet everybody has a story, including me, about going out Monday morning running and almost getting sick after about a half-mile from the air pollution.”

Some clean-tech firms in Washington state, which relies largely on hydropower and where natural gas is currently cheap, may find markets and investment in China sooner than they might domestically, he said.

China invested a record $83 billion in renewable energy last year, according to the Frankfurt School’s Center for Climate and Sustainable Energy Finance in Germany.

“They see this as a huge business opportunity for the future, especially in solar and wind,” said Mikkal Herberg, research director for the energy security program at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

He said China also wants to be a leader in nuclear energy.

The governors meeting with Xi include Inslee, Jerry Brown of California, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Terry Branstad of Iowa and Kate Brown of Oregon.

The Canadian Press