Renewable Energy In China and the EU

Vesta Vespa has tipped me off to an international take on alternative energy. The other great powers of our era have at least set meaningful short term targets, even if they may eventually fall short of their ambitious goals, something that the United States again refused to do in this year's energy bill.

China, which has rattled energy markets with its ravenous appetite for oil, declared on Friday that it would generate 10 percent of its power through renewable sources by 2010. . . . the European Union, which has pledged to generate 22 percent of its electricity, and 12 percent of all its energy, from renewable sources by 2010. . . .while some countries, notably Denmark and Germany, have made big strides in wind energy, the progress has not spread widely. In 2001, about 86 percent of the world's capacity for wind generation was in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States.

New York Times, June 5, 2004.