I came across a cool photo slide show today in the NY Times featuring Applied Materials’ massive solar energy research lab in Xian, China. It’s fascinating to see how China’s full-throttle economy has simultaneously created staggering pollution problems as well as tremendous clean energy innovations. True, most news covers China’s horribly polluted cities–and that by no means should be ignored–but it’s really cool to see how the country is acting as a leader in the clean energy revolution as well.
“While the United States talks about creating clean-energy jobs, China is taking action,” writes the NY Times. “The Xian city government sold a 75-year land lease to Applied Materials at a discount, and is covering some of the lab’s initial operating costs.”
What’s most interesting to me is that companies like Applied Materials are actually sending their R&D operations to China. Traditionally, foreign companies have only looked to China for cheap manufacturing. Now, China is competing not just in manufacturing brawn, but in brains.
