BUSINESS: U.S. junket to seek 'clean energy' deals in China, India (05/29/2008)
Michael Burnham, E&ENews PM senior reporter
A Commerce Department delegation will visit China and India this summer to help U.S. companies seize opportunities in Asia's fast-growing environmental and energy markets.
Assistant Secretary David Bohigian will lead the Sept. 1-12 Clean Energy and Environment Trade Mission, the department announced today. The trade mission is part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate -- a public-private partnership among the United States, Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
"As Chinese and Indian economies expand, the need for clean, sustainable energy grows," Bohigian said in a statement.
Commerce officials aim to help broker new or bigger business deals for more than a dozen U.S. energy and environmental goods and services companies that will be represented on the trip, said Matt Englehart, an agency spokesman.
The agency is in the process of selecting the companies, whose goods and services include anything from wastewater treatment to renewable energy to energy efficiency, he said. The U.S. firms will meet with potential partners, distributors, licensers and retailers in each country.
China, with double-digit annual gross domestic product growth, is particularly alluring to foreign companies.
China plans to invest $175 billion in water treatment, air pollution control and other environmental technologies during the next five years, the Commerce Department noted.
The so-called Red Dragon's current five-year plan calls for cutting energy consumption 20 percent per unit of gross domestic product by 2010 while reducing sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants by 10 percent.
The central government has also vowed to ramp up its renewable electricity portfolio to 15 percent by 2020 and 25 percent by 2025. Hitting the 25 percent target would require an annual investment of more than $12 billion in research and development, government officials said during a recent renewable energy conference in Washington.
"Global energy demand is growing quickly," noted Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice chairman of China's state-level National Development and Reform Commission. "Energy prices are going higher, higher and higher. Energy security and greater utilization of energy have to be our major goals."
He also called for international cooperation to reduce environmental pollution and poverty.
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