Michael Phelps’ seven eight gold medals are impressive. But with an Olympic gold medal’s actual value at around $220, he would have to win 1,204,545,448 (7) more of them to raise the money China will need to meet its aggressive alternative energy goals of 137 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2020. Or, put another way, if China were to pay for clean energy with Olympic gold medals, they’d need another 172,077,922 Michael Phelps on their side.
By 2020, China’s bill for ramping up renewables to 16% of the nation’s total energy will come to $265 billion USD (2 trillion yuan). Then again, with the second largest economy in the world, China should have little trouble funding this investment — even without the mighty efforts of Phelps.
How Will China Really Pay for Renewable Energy?
The $265 billion needed to build China’s 21st century renewable energy infrastructure is, in fact, just under 3.8% of China’s GDP, when measured on purchasing power parity (ie. matching prices for goods/services with prices for the same goods/services in the United States). Some of the money will come from utilities taxes, but most will come from big business.
As Chen Deming, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told Reuters, “We expect the majority of the funds to come from companies.”
To break it down, China has four (non-olympic related) plans to raise the money, according to The China Sustainability Energy Program.
- Public benefits funds (PBF). This is a standard tax on utility bills that goes into a public projects fund. Read more about China’s PBF’s and renewable enery in this PDF document.
- Mandatory market share (a.k.a., renewable portfolio standards). This means that utility companies must buy a certain percentage of renewable energy.
- Incentives for distributed generation technologies.
- Renewable energy pricing regulations.
Sources: The China Sustainability Energy Program, Reuters, Wesh, CIA World Factbook: China.
Read More About China, Alternative Energy, and the Olympics
- China Launches Its First Chicken Manure-Biogas Plant
- China: ‘Top Priority to Developing Renewable Energy’
- The Olympics – Green or Bad?
- China’s Second Pebble Bed Reactor Steam Plant; World’s Third Commercial HTGR
ohmy…
Is that all a gold medal is worth $220? I guess materially, that could be the case. But I bet they would sell for upwards of $20,000 at any auction.
Still, great points today. China is using the Olympics as a screen to shield them from the responsibility they have to the planet.
When China really decides to do renewables in earnest, look out world. That’s the lesson I take from the Olympics. China will have to cooperate or compete with the Masdar project in Dubai. I am hoping for great technology out of Masdar, a project with MIT.