From boston.com.
Standing sentinel on the edge of Deer Island, facing east toward the entrance to Boston Harbor, is a new wind turbine that was installed in April. It rises about 15 stories high. The rotor is encircled by a pair of white rings that help direct the breeze through – not around – the three spinning blades.
Designed by a Waltham company called FloDesign Wind Turbine Inc., the turbine looks a bit like a jet engine. It takes advantage of some of the same aerodynamic principles, which enable it to extract more energy from wind, without needing to be as big or tall as traditional turbines.
The FloDesign turbine and other leading-edge technologies are the best hope that Massachusetts and the United States have at remaining relevant in a clean-tech era that China seems determined to dominate. “One of every two wind turbines installed in the world is made and installed in China,’’ observes Lars Andersen, FloDesign’s chief executive. “They are growing an enormous local industry.’’
Already, the third-largest maker of wind turbines, Sinovel Wind Group, is based in China. (Two other companies in the top 10 are also Chinese.) Half of the 10 largest producers of solar panels are based in China. In Wired magazine recently, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was quoted complimenting the lithium-ion batteries made by a Chinese car company – which could one day compete with those made by A123 Systems Inc. of Waltham.
“While there are opportunities for collaboration between the US and China, there’s also a real competitive race with serious economic stakes,’’ says Dan Reicher, a Stanford University professor who served in the Department of Energy during the Clinton administration. “We’re talking about a multitrillion-dollar opportunity.’’
The big question for Massachusetts companies is whether cultivating alternative energy breakthroughs that produce more power, use materials more intelligently, or are easier to install can succeed in a market where low wages and copious government incentives make China the low-cost leader. And China is moving incredibly fast to develop big power projects that will use its home-grown products; on Governor Deval Patrick’s first foreign trade mission in 2007, the Chinese were asking basic questions about building off-shore wind farms, according to former Massachusetts energy secretary Ian Bowles.
Three years later, they had plunked 34 turbines into the East China Sea, which today produce 102 megawatts of power for the denizens of Shanghai. Cape Wind, the offshore power project that could soon be built in Nantucket Sound, was first proposed in 2001.
Just about every company working on new energy technologies has to think about how its products, research-and-development programs, and manufacturing strategy connect to China.