Canada's Stake in China's Green Revolution: Event

Late in November Tyee journalist Geoff Dembicki rolled out a widely read series of five reports from Beijing and Canada on the burgeoning cleantech market in China and why doing business there presents special risks and rewards for Canadian firms. The Toronto Star ran a condensed version in its business pages.

You can hear Dembicki discuss his findings when he is hosted in Vancouver by the Asia Pacific Foundation this Wednesday, Jan. 16, at 12 noon. Given British Columbia's ties to China, those attending the talk will no doubt draw on diverse perspectives in posing questions to the energy beat reporter who spent two months on the project, travel funded by an Asia Pacific Foundation Media Fellowship.

As a preview, we directed a few questions of our own to Dembicki:

What is 'cleantech' and why should Canadians care that China is investing billions of dollars to support it?

"'Cleantech' is shorthand for clean technology. Most people think wind turbines and solar panels. But it actually refers to a huge range of innovations on the cutting edge of humankind's fight to preserve a healthy planet. China's massive financial and political gamble on cleantech is restructuring the global economy in ways we don't yet fully understand. It's also created gigantic markets for a new generation of Canadian green entrepreneurs."

Political leaders in Canada and the U.S. often frame climate change as a question of environmental priorities versus the need to maintain a healthy economy. Has China found a new way to resolve that tension? 

"What many people don't realize is that rising labour costs are making it harder and harder for China to be the 'world's factory.' The country's future prosperity may depend on its ability to create innovative ideas and technology -- to go from 'made in China' to 'designed in China.' Cleantech could provide that bridge. No country has yet figured out how to create a sustainable economy. That makes it easier for China to be a world leader."

Why is China, a Communist country, pursuing carbon pricing, an inherently free-market policy, so aggressively? And how come Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper prefers top-down climate regulations instead?

"China's first major attempt to improve the country's energy efficiency was remarkably successful. But it relied on brute-force methods: old factories were simply shut down; in some areas, officials cut off power to entire cities. Carbon pricing potentially offers Chinese industry strong incentives to root out hidden inefficiencies on its own. Harper's repeated rejection of such a policy confounds many observers. But ultimately it's a reflection of Canada's extremely polarized environmental politics."

It's hard not be a bit skeptical about China's commitment to 'green' development. This is the same country, after all, that is widely acknowledged to have wrecked the 2009 climate negotiations in Copenhagen. How do you make sense of that contradiction? 

"China, along with Canada, was widely perceived as one of Copenhagen's major villains. That same year, though, China also set one of the planet's most ambitious climate targets. I had this contradiction best described to me as follows: Copenhagen was China's chance to air historic grievances with the West. And achieving a major climate target set on Chinese terms is no less a matter of national pride."

Do you have a sense how CNOOC's $15.1 billion takeover of Nexen, the Alberta oil sands producer, fits into this discussion? What does China hope to gain from Canada? And should we be worried? 

"This is ultimately a technology question. China has potentially huge reserves of unconventional oil and gas, but lacks the technical expertise to exploit them economically. CNOOC is essentially paying $15.1 billion for a crash course in heavy oil extraction. It's hard to see how the takeover poses major threats to Canadian security. But we should all be concerned about the heavy climate impacts of unconventional fossil fuel production in China."  

Say I'm a cleantech genius with a great product to sell in China. What advice would you give me based on what you found out?

"There's no single 'China market.' The country is an incredibly complex mix of regions, provinces and municipalities, with layers of conflicting rules and ambitions. So don't go there looking for a quick sell. You've got to take the time to really build trust with a Chinese partner. And if you don't have the resources to protect your key technical know-how from being stolen, you're probably not ready."

We hear a lot about how the economic fates of B.C. and China are increasingly intertwined. What did you find in your investigations that told you that was true or else overhyped?

"China clearly represents a huge market for B.C.'s cleantech entrepreneurs, and an equally important buyer of our liquefied natural gas. But we need China in those two instances much more than they need us. That actually gives us much more flexibility than it might seem. Instead of trashing our climate targets in a mad rush to produce and sell off our natural gas, we could be more strategic: develop our fossil resources slowly, and invest some of the revenues into supporting domestic cleantech. That's a safer long-term bet on our future."     

Geoff Dembicki, energy reporter for The Tyee and 2012-2013 Asia Pacific Foundation Canada Media Fellow, will speak on "Canada's Stake in China's Green Revolution" at the APF Canada Vancouver office this Wednesday, Jan. 16 at noon. Those interested in attending please RSVP via email here.