When California’s SunPower and China’s Suntech strode onstage at an industry conference last week, onlookers braced themselves for a bit of sabre-rattling, or at least an animated debate about two global superpowers’ role in solar energy.

Some bet on an entertaining battle of words just a day after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr took to the stage at the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim, California and said that the United States was in an “arms race” with the Chinese to make solar panels.

Instead, Tom Werner with California-based SunPower and Zhengrong Shi at Chinese panel maker Suntech were all smiles and even bordeline chummy — on the surface at least — preaching cooperation rather than competition.

 Asked about the potential for U.S. manufacturers to do business in China, SunPower’s chief executive Werner said the country would be a “huge opportunity.”

“Understanding the market and being proximate to the market is always an advantage … Partnering with a Chinese company would be a distinct advantage,” Werner said.

“I look forward to seeing Dr. Shi some time in the next few months and you can help me meet the right people,” Werner added, as he extended his hand.

“We will work together,” Shi said as the audience laughed and applauded their handshake.

Earlier in the session, Shi said U.S.-based First Solar’s plans to build a massive solar plant in China shows that “the Chinese market is also open to all technologies, to all manufacturers. Anybody can participate in the market.”

But Werner did slip in later that, while he believed there was indeed an “arms race” brewing, he said the only way to win wasn’t by dropping the price.

“Do you really think the solar customer is completely satisfied and it’s all about price?” he told reporters after the panel.

Taiwan, hit by its worst typhoon in 50 years in August, has found a culprit for the disaster that killed about 770 people and begun using it to get precious attention overseas where the island is usually overlooked in favour of its giant political rival China.

Global warming is taking blame for Morakot, which was freakish as Taiwan’s only major typhoon of the year and because it lingered instead of blowing straight through. The island’s foreign ministry says that as global warming’s victim it should get to participate in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change  in time for its December talks in Copenhagen. Sixteen countries have already voiced support.

“We are a victim of this problem. It’s closely related to the public’s economic interests,” said Yang Kuo-tung, director general of the foreign ministry’s treaties and legal affairs. Morakot’s incessant rain caused agricultural losses of T$16.47 billion ($510 million).  ”It’s no laughing matter.”

But Taiwan’s bid for participation faces a new kind of storm despite recent detente with China, a powerful veto-wielding Security Council member. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949 and blocked more than a decade worth of applications to enter the United Nations on grounds that the self-ruled island lacks statehood.

Taiwan dropped an the annual bid to join the whole United Nations this year  to avoid upsetting China, but figures that knocking at the door of a small U.N. agency would cause little stir, especially with the woes of Morakot in its back pocket. Taiwan would both teach and learn as a Convention participant, Yang said.

But although China-Taiwan ties have improved via trade talks since mid-2008, officials in Beijing have resisted opening international organisations to Taiwan. Unless it whips up a powerful public relations storm that generates the kind of populist momentum at home and abroad that followed Taiwan’s colourful, music and video-enhanced U.N. bids, the island won’t make it for the Copenhagen talks and may wait up to two years before it can participate in the Convention, political analysts say.

“I don’t think ordinary people know about this organisation,” said Alex Chiang, international politics associate professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “You have to let other people know we’re qualified for participation. That’s the job for the government, telling people about it. They haven’t done much for public relations.”

((Pictures — Top right: Motorcyclists stop at an intersection in Taipei September 23, 2009. Taiwan is known as the one of the highest motorbike-density country in the world and motorbikes are responsible for a big share of Taiwan’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to local media. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang. Left: Damaged buildings are seen after Typhoon Morakot swept Kaohsiung county, southern Taiwan August 11, 2009.  REUTERS/Stringer))

Some politicians may be accused of dragging their heels when it comes to dealing with climate change, but you can't say members of the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism's executive board aren't clocking in the hours.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an emissions trading scheme under the Kyoto Protocol worth $33 billion last year according to the World Bank, allows companies and countries to outsource their greenhouse gas reduction efforts by investing in clean energy projects in emerging countries like China and India, where making emissions cuts costs less.

Projects are submitted to the CDM for registration and a staff of over 100 examine and scrutinize each one to ensure environmental integrity.

The whole scheme is supervised by a 20-member executive board, chaired by Lex de Jonge of the Netherlands' environment ministry.

"The members are all employed by governments and assigned to the board. They don't get a salary from the UN but they receive a daily subsistence allowance to pay for meals, hotel and travel costs," de Jonge said at the Reuters Climate and Alternative Energy Summit.

"As chair of the board, I spend 75% of my time on CDM issues and 25% on domestic issues relating to my actual job," he added.

The CDM's executive board holds some 7 to 8 week-long meetings a year, up from 5 meetings in 2005, the year international emissions trading really began to take shape.

"They're quite long days. We start at 9am and it's seldom that we finish before 7 or 8pm. The worst I've ever seen was we worked until 3am," de Jonge said.

Between board meetings, de Jonge said members must attend meetings for other related panels or working groups to which they belong. These extra-curricular duties can take an additional 6-8 weeks a year. Factor in the additional work required to prepare for these meetings and you're looking at months, not weeks.

"If you add it all up, between 25 and 40 percent of a member's working year is devoted to the board, and that is sometimes difficult for board members because they have other jobs to attend to," de Jonge explained.

Would you work this much for climate change?

To read our Summit interview with Lex de Jonge, click here

The U.S.  is out to create a clean-air zone around its coastlines, targeting diesel ships that look pretty dirty from shore. The cost will be only a penny per pair of sneakers, the EPA advises. Of course the cost of shoes can sneak up on you — the total is $3.2 billion per year by 2020. Health savings will more than compensate for costs, they say.

The idea of who should pay for carbon in the course of trade is getting a bit hazier, it seems. China only a couple of weeks ago said importers should pay for the carbon costs of goods they buy which are produced in China. The thinking largely has been you-make-it-you-pay-for-the-carbon, but maybe it will become you-bought-it-you-bought-the-carbon. It’s all up for grabs as nations talk about what to do once the Kyoto protocol runs out in 2012. At least the U.S. and China are making nice noises at each other as discussions in Germany get under way.

BTW — to be fair that Reuters pic is of a cruise ship’s laundry room on fire.  Perhaps another issue to debate is how many changes of clothes should be allowed in international waters.

“The south has plenty of water and the north lacks it, so if possible why not borrow some?” China’s revolutionary communist leader Mao Zedong said in 1952.

That probably seemed a great idea at the time.

But it is causing pollution as well as discontent among farmers facing forced resettlement to make way for a mammoth construction to help the parched north — the South-to-North Transfer Project. Much of the system, of dams, canals and tunnels, is due for completion in 2013-14.

Read my colleague Chris Buckley’s fascinating feature about the project as well as a related story and a factbox. The photo above left, by David Gray, shows a fisherman near the village of Shizigang, located on the Danjiangkou Dam that is part of the project in Henan province.

Among the statistics — about 12.5 million Chinese have been moved to make way for 86,000 dams since 1949, according to one study.  (12.5 million people is more than the entire population of countries such as Greece, Cuba, Belgium or Tunisia). And the “dam migrants” (as they are known) have long fanned unrest.   

“We have eaten too much suffering already,” farmer Zhao Jingzhou said in Shizigang, using a common Chinese saying. He is among the survivors of an exodus to the high northwest from 1959 — thousands of others, lured by the promise of a more secure life in the arid highlands of the northwest province next to Tibet, died from hunger.

The picture above right shows work on the Danjiangkou Dam in 2008.

So what should China do?

A Chinese campaigner has urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to prove his green credentials, asking him to offset the emissions generated by his inauguration by funding a forest in China.

A carbon fund named “Obama, future” could invest in increased forest coverage in another country and Obama himself could plant a tree there, Lin Hui said in an open letter, published on www.ditan360.com. Lin hopes that country will be China.

Lin’s appeal is based on estimates by conservative U.S. think-tank, the Institute for Liberty, that people travelling to attend Tuesday’s inauguration would generate 220,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“Obama’s presidency is a big opportunity. The whole world is pinning their hopes on him, even the greens, believing he’ll be different than Bush,” Lin told Reuters.

The website, run by a team of volunteers, contains news articles and information designed to educate Chinese about a low-carbon lifestyle.

The Chinese government, which has been active in encouraging Western firms to invest in carbon-offset projects in China, approved the website in April, Lin said.

Lin’s posting in Chinese is illustrated with photos of Obama’s “whistle-stop tour”, his itinerary for Tuesday, and pictures from the inauguration of predecessor George W. Bush. He tried sending a copy of the open letter, which is in English, through Obama’s public email address, “but I doubt he’ll receive it.”

Lin signed his congratulatory letter as “A Chinese citizen, also your friend in green career”.

After one of the briefest honeymoons in history, developing nations at U.N. climate change talks in Poland are saying that President-elect Barack Obama’s goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions don’t go far enough.

Delegates from China and India told Reuters at the Dec. 1-12 talks that they welcomed Obama’s plan to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 compared to less ambitious goals set by President George W. Bush. (Emissions are now about 14 percent above 1990 ).

But they say Obama isn’t going far enough. See story here.

Developing nations want all developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by far more. That, they say, is the condition for the poor to start slowing their own rising emissions from factories, power plants and cars.

Is that realistic? Can the United States cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020? And how far should developing nations curb their own emissions as part of a new deal on global warming meant to be agreed by the end of 2009?

No pun intended but for the world’s carbon community, times are looking a little black.

The global financial crisis, or GFC as it is being called this week during Australia’s largest ever carbon market gathering, is deeply troubling many participants. But a larger, more worrying issue remains “post 2012″.

This is when the Clean Development Mechanism under the current phase of the U.N. Kyoto Protocol runs out, along with the hundreds of CDM projects already approved and the 3,000 still awaiting approval by a U.N. board.

U.N. talks at the end of next year aim to agree on a broader replacement for Kyoto from 2013 and market players are hoping those talks don’t fail. Already there are fears that some rich nations will use the financial crisis as an excuse to say now is not the time to be negotiating tougher emissions curbs that might hurt industry and cost jobs.

“The volume of primary CDM activity is declining. Every month virtually this year, the number of new CDM transactions has been in decline. And that’s because the 2012 deadline is approaching and we’re running out of runway,” said Paul Bodnar, Manager of  Carbon Markets at London-based Climate Change Capital.

In China, the largest source of Kyoto offsets called CERs, the number of projects there are in decline, just as they are elsewhere, said Alex Wyatt, director of Emissions Zero, which helps Chinese entities to become carbon neutral.

“If you wanted to put it on a scale, the financial crisis and the post-2012 uncertainty, many times more significant is the post-2012 uncertainty. If you know what’s going on past 2012 you can invest with a much longer-term horizon,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland state.

A lot of people are still taking the risk to invest in CDM projects, said Wyatt, whose company has about 130 projects in China, many of them focused on renewable energy.

“But the willingness to do so is decreased. You see it now.  People are investing a lot more in short-term projects that will only take a year or so to build.”

He said the financial market had yet to affect CDM project development in China.

“It’s too early to see any real effects. Projects take a long time. But if there are any effects, they will be seen in a few months.”

“The impact on the VER market is a lot more direct in the sense that a VER is like any retail good. It’s discretionary spending,” he said, referring to verified emission reductions, which must meet firm standards but are outside the Kyoto Protocol.

Renewable power sources like wind and solar are some of the fastest growing sectors in the energy business.

But this graph forecasts that coal, the dirtiest power source in terms of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, will still dominate global power generation growth for decades into the future.

The forecast, released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistics branch of the Department of Energy, shows that global power generated from coal will grow 115 percent to 15.36 trillion kilowatt hours from 2005 to 2030.  It assumes no changes in emissions laws or policy.

Global power generation from renewables including hydropower, meanwhile, will grow 58 percent to 5 trillion kilowatt hours over the same time period.

The world is trying to come to an agreement on a new greenhouse gas regulation pact at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen late next year. Would a new pact eventually make this coal forecast overcooked?

The fate of a Chinese species may rest on whether the turtles in this photo mate.   

Biologists believe only four Yangtze giant softshell turtles are left on the planet.  So this month they shipped a more than 80-year-old female that had been living in China’s Changsha Zoo more than 600 miles to the only known male in China, who is more than 100 years old and lives at the Suzhou Zoo.

“I hate to call this a desperation move, but it really was,” said Rick Hudson, a conservation biologist at the Fort Worth, Texas Zoo who helped coordinate the move. “With only one female known worldwide, and given that we have lost three captive specimens over the past two years, what choice did we have?”

Biologists blame hunting, pollution and rampant development for leading to the dire situation.

The good news is the female still lays eggs, but not as many as the up to 100 that younger ones do.  And although in this picture she may appear to be ignoring the male, whose head can be seen emerging from the water in the bottom right, biologists say her journey went well and that the two are getting used to each other nicely. 

Photo by Gerald Kuchling/TSA