Ten Thousand Miles

"A journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step."
--Chinese proverb

True though the proverb may be, China's authoritarian government is getting out of the block quicker than the U.S. in the race to develop "clean" coal. That's one implication of recent news that China is adopting newer, more efficient coal burning technologies for its newest power plants. While the U.S. dithers, communist leadership delivers.

China, of course, is coming off a decade-long building binge of coal burning plants of much lesser efficiency and higher carbon dioxide emissions. But speedy approval and top-down edicts provide China with an advantage we don't have in getting things going quickly in the right direction.

To be clear, China's overall greenhouse gas emissions from new coal-fired plants will increase, not decrease, but the rate of increase will be less because of the country's centralized decision-making on retiring older technology and replacing it with newer technology.

Meantime, the U.S. under a new energy secretary is taking stock of things. An American initiative to develop "coal gasification and carbon capture-and-sequestration" technologies needs to speed up. Storing spent carbon deep underground or under seafloor beds promises to cut greenhouse gases in half.

U.S. investment and research into the problem are critical to solving the problem on this side of the globe. But political will and leadership are just as important. Obama has to give The Big Speech. Public education and support are crucial. Democracy is different, more deliberative and slower to move. But market and price signals are also going to be key.

The Chinese have a leg up in this regard, because they are already scaling the new technology to, well, China. With so much load to satisfy, the power generation sector is bringing a new coal-fired plant on-line every month. Thanks to economies of scale, per unit costs are reportedly less for building a new "ultra-supercritical" power plant in China than a less efficient coal-fired plant in the U.S.