China's edge in the energy-efficiency industry

China has overtaken the U.S. as the top greenhouse gas emitter, the fallout of breakneck development and its role as workshop for the West’s cut-rate goods. Deforestation, overgrazing and poor water management are expanding its deserts; many of its rivers are flush with toxins. To environmentalists, China’s crimes against nature threaten the planet.

Yet even as it has alarmed green activists, China has also stirred their hopes. Although the U.S. unseated Germany last year as the world leader in generating wind energy, this year, China is expected to be first in building the industry’s machinery, largely for foreign firms. It’s also installing wind turbines at a fast pace to generate clean electric power. The top two firms in the field, General Electric and Denmark’s Vestas, have factories there.
Similarly, many solar companies have factories in China. Yet virtually all their wares are exported. In the 2008 sales derby, China-based Suntech beat all independent makers, trouncing U.S. champs SunPower and First Solar.

The auto industry is key to President Obama’s plans to overhaul the way Americans consume energy — he wants to leave imported oil in the dust. His agenda, however, has been detoured by Detroit’s car crash. China now reigns in auto sales, and the oil-importing nation has its foot on the electric accelerator.

Warren Buffett, the renowned American investor, owns no part of GM or Ford. Last fall, however, his holding company took a $230-million stake in BYD of Shenzhen. BYD, like China itself, has disrupted the order of things, generating buzz for its advanced auto batteries and plug-in cars. Buffett and his colleagues told Fortune magazine that they believe BYD could become the world’s largest carmaker on the strength of its electric vehicles.

Los Angeles Times