(image: seattlepi.com)

In the wake of the largely-seen-as-failed climate talks in Copenhagen this month, news outlets, analysts, and politicians alike are trying to wrap their heads around what happened in Denmark. Most agree that the talks were a failure, many blaming the process itself. After all, getting 193 countries, all with their own challenges and interests, to agree on anything is a tall order.

Bloomberg columnist Eric Pooley takes it a step further. He points out that all parties going in to this conference knew it wasn’t going to produce a strong agreement, and that fact hinged on one country alone: the United States. Without a firm commitment from the U.S. Senate concerning emissions reduction, few others were willing to lay their cards on the table, and talks suffered because of it. George Monbiot of the U.K. Guardian said as much, perhaps in a more blunt fashion, in his commentary entitled “If you want to know who’s to blame for Copenhagen, look to the U.S. Senate.”

According to Pooley, President Obama knew this going into the Copenhagen talks, having decided to direct his focus on health care instead of climate change. He also believes that Obama needs to mount a “full-scale public education campaign” to educate Americans just exactly what is at stake. He needs to convince his public that addressing climate change will help the economy, not doom it to fail. And after all the preparation that went into Copenhagen, all the hoopla, the posturing, and the protest, “we are where we were: waiting for Obama to lead the charge in the Senate.”

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Nigel Lawson, former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher, calls for a Plan B in dealing with climate change. Lawson first acknowledges that Copenhagen “predictably – achieved precisely nothing.” He attributes the failure to the massive costs associated with decarbonizing the world’s economies. Coal and oil are largely used for one reason: they are cheap. And in the developing world, where hundreds of millions of people are still dealing with extreme poverty, switching from these dirty forms of energy while continuing to industrialize is just not feasible.

Lawson proposes what some might see as a radical approach to climate change, which is abandoning Kyoto, abandoning Copenhagen, and adapting “to whatever changes in temperature may in the future arise.” He argues this will allow us to derive the many benefits of a warmer world while at the same time reducing the costs. Addressing these problems directly as they arise, he says, will be far more cost-effective than our current ideas, and does not require a global agreement. Beyond the idea of adaptation, his plan includes “a relatively modest, increased government investment in technological research and development—in energy, in adaptation and in geoengineering.”

He then points out that it will likely never happen, due to the trauma and deprivation many would feel at having no climate conference to attend.

Opinions continue to abound in every direction over the climate talks. An editorial on FinancialTimes.com calls for a revival of international cooperation, arguing that the U.S. and China, not as ideologically far apart as they might think, can take the lead. The U.K. Guardian even had a positive spin on their political blog, saying that if countries come to Mexico (where the next large-scale international meeting on climate change is scheduled to take place) with a greater sense of realism and a new attitude, Copenhagen “may yet be seen as a useful fresh start.” And the staff over at Politico.com posted a bevy of takes and opinions from various politicians and commentators that range from calling Barack Obama the big winner, to calling the U.N. process limited.

The fallout from Copenhagen will likely keep coming for months, if not years. With all their talk of “action now” and making real progress in Denmark, we still walked away from the table with little to show. Perhaps Copenhagen’s greatest legacy will be in teaching the world how not to get things done. Which, at this point, would be a step in the right direction.

A worker builds wind turbines at a GE factory in Shenyang, China. (image: ge.com)

China has been investing in US clean energy projects and many are not happy about it. Last week it was the announcement that China-based ENN will be teaming up with Duke Energy to bid on contracts for utility-scale solar farms and large commercial solar projects in the US.

This week it’s China’s role in a large-scale wind power project in Texas, reports the New York Times. Many unhappy readers wrote to the newspaper after learning that China, along with a coalition of other investors, will be financing the project. The outrage is over the possibility that some of the monies might come from the $22 billion of the economic stimulus package marked for clean energy projects and, more importantly, new jobs.

Although the project will create a few hundred jobs in the US, many more—approximately 2,000—will be created in Shenyang, China, where the 240 new wind turbines will be manufactured by A-Power Energy Generation Systems. The 600-megawatt wind farm will be the largest Chinese investment in US renewable energy, and is expected to cost about $1.5 billion.

The angry letters prompted a politically expedient response from Cappy McGarr, a managing partner with U.S. Renewable Energy Group (US-REG), a partner in the Texas wind deal along with an Austin-based wind developer, Cielo Wind Power. McGarr emphasized that the wind farm will go far in helping the US attain energy independence. Without this international partnership, he said, the project would not have been possible, and the resulting jobs and revenue would not exist. He added that many of the parts for the turbines would be made by General Electric.

Reaction to the project has not been positive. Douglas McIntyre at Daily Finance called it “a sad day for the U.S. renewable energy business,” and said, “it’s a sign that the campaign for America to rely less on fossil fuels is gaining some traction, but the tools to allow it to happen will be marked ‘made in China.’”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage was more neutral, pointing out that Chinese companies will be involved in the sort of higher-value services that white-collar America needs. Seeking Alpha wonders if one of the best places to work in the future may be at a US subsidiary of a Chinese company.

About 330 jobs will be created in Texas as a result of the project, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory JEDI (Jobs and Economic Development Impact) analysis. About 734 indirect jobs will also be created.

Michael Kanellos at Greentech Media weighed in with a discussion about how the deal represents a significant shift from the past several years, when China wanted to remain anonymous about its investments. This, Kanellos maintains, is more proof that China wants to make a serious mark in green energy in the US.

But China has been making a mark in the renewable market in the US for some time; they were just much quieter about it. Russ Choma, a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit investigative journalism project attached to the American University School of Communication in Washington, told the New York Times that China has long dominated the solar panel manufacturing industry, of which 95 percent of its total output is exported to the United States and Europe.

Choma also noted that when it comes to stimulating the economy, it is the manufacturing that matters. He points to a 2004 study from the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research institute based in Washington. The institute found that every 1,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity had the potential to generate as many as 4,300 jobs, of which about 3,000 are created at the manufacturing level.

But until that happens, we can expect to read more letters like this one that appeared in the Times.

“Thank you for killing the U.S. windmill industry,” wrote a reader from Chicago at the Times’ Green Inc. blog. “Thank-you, U.S. industrialists and financiers, for having us buy these things with financing and grants emanating from money borrowed from China.”