With a lot of talk lately about the heated competition between the U.S. and China over green technology development, the New York Times reports that actually the two countries are engaging in important cooperation in the field:
The number of clean energy partnerships between the United States and China reached a new peak when the U.S. Energy Department announced two new consortia aimed at tackling clean vehicles and ‘clean’ coal technology earlier this month.
Along with a substantial funding pool totaling $100 million, split evenly among the two countries, the new consortia have put universities arm-in-arm with car companies, national laboratories, electric utilities and think tanks.
Dennis Assanis, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and lead investigator for the clean vehicles consortia said these partnerships were not simply born out of President Obama’s trip to Beijing last November, where he and Chinese president Hu Jintao first announced the endeavor. Instead, the new consortia network many researchers already looking to pool their resources into a coordinated national effort.
“When this was announced, it was simply music to our ears,” said Assanis, who with several colleagues had discussed such a partnership for about three years. “Finally, what we’ve been dreaming and working on kind of quietly to establish,” he said, had come to fruition.
Read more about green tech in China via CDT.
