United States Trails in Clean Energy Market

With the United States economy already suffering greatly, the last thing that the economically-concerned public needs to hear is that we are not leading the charge in Clean Energy investments. In an article on CNNMoney.com, Steve Hargreaves notes that China destroyed the US in eco-friendly energy investing by $16 billion in 2009, while in the previous year, the United States led China by $8.9 billion.

Many will argue that clean energy should be one of the United States’ top priorities, such as the director of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Warming Campaign, Phyllis Cuttino, “‘The United States' competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy.’” I will not argue with this point for several reasons. First, the need for clean energy increases daily as we take every step closer to depleting our current sources of energy (natural gas, fossil fuels, etc). Secondly, new markets create new jobs. The move towards clean energy investments created over 700,000 jobs in 1998, and because such a market is a technologically driven one, it can continue to grow as long as there is a need for energy.

I would never disagree with any of the points stated above, but I am realistic. The concept that so many people fail to understand is the fact that a lack of investment in this field is an undesirable, but highly unavoidable, byproduct of the US economy’s downturn, and I’m not referring solely to the clean energy market. There just is not enough wealth available for companies to continue dumping gratuitous amounts of money in Research & Development because there is no direct line-of-sight between investing money in R&D and returns on profits. Put simply, a company could invest heavily in a new and promising method to refine oil in a way that makes it twice as potent as before (which would technically double the Earth’s remaining supply of oil), but if some calculations were wrong and the new method does not work as planned, all the time and money spent in that investment was more-or-less wasted (not entirely wasted because such developments can be used in other projects).

One of the major worries here is that many people will lose their jobs. While this is probably true, the fact that so many of these companies are cutting back on investments shows that they are working to keep people on board because when they can’t continue to afford both a large workforce and heavy investing, they are cutting the investing first.

What worries me even more is the fact that we are losing to China. With companies like Google and GoDaddy.com cutting many of their operations in China, tensions are beginning to rise. China is one of our largest competitors in many markets, and is also our primary financier of debt. The last thing the United States needs on its plate right now is to allow China to overtake the US in such a lucrative market because when it comes down to it, the country with the cheapest and largest amounts of energy have the ability to work at some of the least costly rates. This is definitely a “bargaining” chip because lowering the cost of production in a country also lowers the cost of the products it sells in foreign markets, allowing that country to undercut everyone else.

The United States’ trailing in the clean energy market to China is discouraging in many aspects, but until the US can stabilize its debt, investing in clean energy is not a solution to the United States’ economic recession (I use this term loosely).