Navajo power plant. (CreativeCommons License)

But Chinese leaders have begun looking across the Pacific to California, which uses one-third less energy per capita than the rest of the United States, and recently prohibited its utilities from investing in new coal sources. Only 20 percent of California’s electricity comes from coal, compared to 80 percent of China’s. One economy utterly dependent on coal and another actively weaning itself from the dirty energy source, China and California appear unlikely partners in the fight for clean energy. But a unique partnership between California and the Jiangsu province of China has shown that clean technology is inexpensive and presents a viable alternative to constructing new coal-fired power plants. Indeed, California might help to break China’s addiction to coal.

A Special Partnership

 This is not the first time China has glanced across the Pacific for a model for its energy policy. In the 1990s, China’s energy supply was unable to keep up with growth. Intending to increase competition between utilities and create a stable, yet inexpensive, electricity grid, California decided to deregulate its utilities. China was ready to follow suit until the California Energy Crisis of 2000, which brought rolling blackouts and high energy prices to the state. “They suddenly froze any attempt to deregulate and went bust,” said Barbara Finamore, president of the China-U.S. Energy Efficiency Alliance and director of the China Program at the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), a New York-based environmental action group that recently opened its first international office in Beijing. “That’s when they turned to us.”

Despite its burgeoning economy, the coastal province Jiangsu was the NRDC’s first target. Jiangsu is energy poor and receives 76 percent of its energy from coal. In order to maintain the province’s growing industry, regulators originally tried to manage the immense energy load by staggering factories’ operation hours and building more plants. But they soon ran out of quick fixes. “When they finally ran out of room to shift the clock, Jiangsu woke up,” Finamore told the Globalist. “And we turned to California for something to share.”

In 2005, the Chinese government and the NRDC invited a delegation from California to visit Jiangsu to convince the provincial government that it would be more productive to invest in shrinking energy demand than in new coal-fired plants to fuel it.

The delegation included representatives from California’s major utilities and the commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the California Energy Commission. During the discussions, the regulatory commissions and the Jiangsu Provincial Economic and Trade Commission drafted a Memorandum of Understanding detailing the areas of cooperation to reduce Jiangsu’s dependency on coal-fired power plants through exchanging expertise in technology and energy regulatory mechanisms.

The effort is based on the philosophy that environmental progress does not require massive infusions of capital. “Most people don’t realize that in the United States efficiency improvements in refrigerators are saving as much energy as all the nuclear power plants in United States put out,” said Art Rosenfeld, a physicist who now serves as commissioner on the California Energy Commission and who traveled to China in 2005. “People tend to believe that a problem takes money to solve. It is difficult to convince them that saving money and applying brain power is just as effective a solution to deal with climate change.”

California uses one-third less electricity per capita than the national average thanks to its unique building and appliance standards and regulatory mechanisms like decoupling, which ensures that utilities do not receive profits from greater electricity sales. Together the NRDC and California have promoted these policies in Jiangsu. Saving energy may not be as glamorous as building a new renewable power plant, but it can be just as effective, with a far smaller price tag. “In China there is a major gap between supply and demand of energy. Energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit. It allows a company to improve its productivity and competitiveness,” explained Bo Sheng, Energy Efficiency Expert at the NRDC’s Beijing branch.