- So here's a little news quiz: Guess who's the seventh-richest
man in China today, with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.43
billion?
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- Answer: Shi Zhengrong. Now guess what he does. Real estate?
No. Banking? No. Manufacturing for Wal-Mart? No. Construction? No.
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- Mr. Shi is China's leading maker of silicon photovoltaic
solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity. Yes, the seventh-richest
man in China is a green entrepreneur! It should only happen in America.
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- Mr. Shi thinks, as I do, that renewable clean power -
wind, solar, bio-fuels - is going to be the growth industry of the 21st
century, and he wants to make sure that China and his company, Suntech
Power Holdings, are the leaders. Only 43 years old and full of energy himself,
Mr. Shi hopes to do for solar energy what China did for tennis shoes: drive
down the cost so that millions of people who could not afford solar photovoltaic
panels will be able to do so.
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- As an environmentalist, I wish him well. As an American,
I worry that if we don't start doing everything we can to develop our own
clean power, we're going to miss out on the green industrial revolution.
Today, most of our hybrid cars are imported from Japan. Tomorrow, if Mr.
Shi has his way, most of our solar panels will come from China.
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- What Mr. Shi understands is that China is going to have
to go green. Its rivers and air are becoming so polluted it has no choice.
In fact, as he and I spoke in his 66th-floor office in Shanghai, the air
was so dirty you could barely make out the skyscrapers down the street.
America, alas, still seems to think it has a choice in going green. So
while China will be compelled to move into this industry, U.S. companies
may or may not, depending on whether states, or Washington, require power
providers to generate energy from renewables.
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- For years our brain-dead Congress thought it was helping
our power companies and manufacturers by not imposing tough energy-efficiency
standards on them. In fact, it was just helping some of them commit suicide.
Congress's idiotic decision not to impose higher mileage standards on U.S.
carmakers helped Detroit miss the market and almost go bankrupt. China
already has higher mileage standards for its autos than we do.
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- "People at all levels in China have become more
aware of this environment issue and alternative energy," said Mr.
Shi. "Five years ago when I started the company people said: 'Why
do we need solar? We have a surplus of coal-powered electricity.' Now it
is different; now people realize that solar has a bright future. But it
is still too expensive."
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- Mr. Shi founded Suntech in Wuxi, China, near Shanghai,
after earning a Ph.D. in engineering in Australia in 1992. As The Wall
Street Journal put it in a recent profile, Suntech combines "first
world technology and developing world prices" - so effectively it
has become one of the world's four top solar manufacturers, along with
Sharp and Kyocera of Japan and BP.
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- The key, Mr. Shi explained to me, is that he uses more
low-cost Chinese labor, rather than high-tech machines, to make his solar
modules and handle the fragile silicon, and he takes advantage of the subsidies
offered by different Chinese provinces dying for him to open a Suntech
factory in their region.
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- Roughly 90 percent of his business today is abroad. But
as he brings the price down, the China market will open up, and he expects
to use that to gain much greater scale and drive the price of his solar
modules down further.
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- "If we have a market here, we feel confident we
will be a cost leader," he says. "Now we are at around $4 per
watt. In 10 years time, I'm pretty sure we will be below $2 per watt,"
which would make solar competitive and scalable.
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- Thanks to Suntech's success, "now there is a rush
of [Chinese] business people entering this sector, even though we still
don't have a market here," added Mr. Shi. "Many government people
now say, 'This is an industry!' " To help, the Chinese government
just passed a law mandating that China get 10 percent of its energy from
renewables, like solar, by 2020.
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- China is setting high standards for renewables, but is
still weak on enforcement. America is better at enforcement, but still
weak on setting high standards. We need to get our act together, because
eventually China will bring its enforcement in line with its regulations
- or it won't breathe. And when that happens, China's emerging green power
entrepreneurs could clean our clock in the clean power business.
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- Oh, well, you can always buy a share. Suntech is already
listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
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- Patrick Dunne, Publications Officer
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- UVic Communications Services
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BC, Canada V8W 2Y2
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