China ahead of the US in clean Energy ... WTF ?

Amplify’d from seattletimes.nwsource.com

Clean energy: China charges ahead of world China's Shanghai Expo has drawn more than 30 million visitors and showcases the country's ambitions to become not just factory to the world but a global leader in technologies of the future — particularly green energy. STR / AFP/GETTY IMAGES China's rush to dominate clean energy is on display at the Shanghai Expo, where one of six "sun valleys" looms near the red Chinese pavilion, at left. By day, the giant funnel-shaped canopies direct natural light to the levels below. At night they display light shows. FENG LI / GETTY IMAGES A Chinese worker walks among the solar modules of a new power project in China's northwest Gansu province. ERIC FEFERBERG / AFP/GETTY IMAGES More than 30 million people have visited the Shanghai Expo, which China is using to assert its clean-energy clout. In the China pavilion, highlights include a concept car that absorbs carbon dioxide and emits oxygen, and a display that shows the conversion of algae into biodiesel. ALEXANDER F. YUAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS A green-energy fair in Beijing in March included a giant solar dish. ANONYMOUS / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Workers hunch over solar cells as they help produce solar panels in a factory run by Suntech Power in Wuxi, China. Government ministries subsidize half the investment cost of solar-power systems connected to the public grid.

SHANGHAI — Inside China's massive, $220 million pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, exhibits charting that nation's path toward modernization start with the humble transistor radio and end with electric cars and homegrown technology powered by sun, wind and algae. The largest Expo in history has drawn more than 30 million visitors. It showcases the country's ambitions to become not just factory to the world but a global leader in technologies of the future — particularly green energy. For a visitor from the Pacific Northwest, it's hard to escape the parallels with the Seattle World's Fair of 1962, when American ambitions pointed skyward with the Space Needle, and Boeing helped propel aerospace technology to new heights. The Shanghai Expo, like the Seattle gathering nearly 50 years earlier, seems a watershed event, in this case heralding both a shift in global economic power and a leap in China's imagination. Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com

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