U.S. - China Energy Cooperation

“China and the United States represent the world’s two biggest economies . . . the two largest consumers of energy, and . . . the two largest emitters of global greenhouse gasses,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said recently in Beijing at an energy cooperation event.

U.S. - China Energy Cooperation

“If any two nations . . . [have] an imperative for action, it is us," he said. "What the United States and China decide to do . . . will send a signal to the world about how serious we are . . . [about] meeting our 21st century energy and environment challenges, and . . . the challenge of global climate change.”

The U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program, founded three years ago, is a non-government organization initiated by the private-sector to focus on U.S.-China business development in the clean energy sector, and to support sustainable development of the energy sectors in both countries.

“The U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program has already taken real steps that have produced a real difference," Secretary Kerry said. "Our businesses have successfully partnered to test-drive the smart grid technology that China and the United States will need as we introduce more renewable energy into the electricity mix . . . [and a] biofuel project . . . [which] put both American and Chinese technology together with the result that by 2011 China successfully conducted its first ever demonstration flight of a jet using biofuel instead of jet fuel.”

“The innovations that we have developed . . . are . . . critical [and] immediate . . .and are going to make us take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity, ”
Secretary Kerry continued.

In 2001, Chinese companies invested in just one energy-related deal in the United States, and that was a one million dollar deal. By last year, China had more than 70 energy deals with investments valued at almost $9 billion. "It’s vital to our economies and vital to this transformation,” said Secretary Kerry.

“The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age is not going to end because we run out of oil,” Secretary Kerry said in conclusion. “It’s going to end because of innovations . . . and because people come to understand the beauty and the power of a marketplace of . . . billions of people who need to be brought into modernity through modern energy systems.”