There has been a constant critique of UK climate policy (and European) that we are going it alone, that green energy is too expensive , and that the fate of the world actually depends on what US and China do. Let’s ignore for a moment the principle which all Governments have signed up to, which is that climate change is a problem caused predominantly by the rich industrialised nations like the UK, and that it is their job to tackle the problem first.
So it’s worth seeing how UK and China compare in terms of renewables investment.
Much is being made in UK about the Electricity Market Reform proposals that require £110bn investment in electricity supply and grid upgrades over about 10 years up to 2020, identified by Ofgem in 2009 (and taken as a benchmark by DECC ). Thus UK should spend around £11billion per year, or $16.7bn per year.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg report that China will invest $294 billion in renewable energy in the five years until 2015, or $58.8bn per year.
Now China’s economy is a lot bigger than UK so one might expect it to be spending more, so what do these figures amount to as a proportion of the respective country’s GDP?
According to World Bank figures, China’s GDP in 2012 was $8.23 trn, whilst the UK’s was $2.44 trn.
Using the figures above, China will spend 0.71% GDP per year on renewables, whilst the UK figure is 0.68%. And remember the UK figure includes grid upgrades and (at time of calculation) nuclear power.
