China Chokes on Its Green Dysfunction

China's massive investment bubble has taken many forms over the past few years. One of the most damaging aspects of China's overproduction bubble is the great green dysfunction -- massive overproduction of wind and solar hardware and infrastructure.

President Barack Obama has held up China’s investments in green energy and high-speed rail as examples of the kind of state-led industrial policy that America should be emulating. The real lesson is precisely the opposite. State subsidies have spawned dozens of Chinese Solyndras that are now on the verge of collapse.

Unveiled in 2010, Beijing’s 12th Five-Year Plan identified solar and wind power and electric automobiles as “strategic emerging industries” that would receive substantial state support. Investors piled into the favored sectors, confident the government’s backing would guarantee success. Barely two years later, all three industries are in dire straits.

This summer, the NYSE-listed LDK Solar, the world’s second largest polysilicon solar wafer producer, defaulted on $95 billion owed to over 20 suppliers. The company lost $589 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 and another $185 million in the first quarter of 2012, and has shed nearly 10,000 jobs. The government in LDK’s home province of Jiangxi scrambled to pledge $315 million in public bailout funds, terrified that any further defaults could pull down hundreds of local companies.

...Wind power is seeing similar overcapacity. China’s top wind turbine manufacturers, Goldwind and Sinovel, saw their earnings plummet by 83% and 96% respectively in the first half of 2012, year-on-year. Domestic wind farm operators Huaneng and Datang saw profits plunge 63% and 76%, respectively, due to low capacity utilization. China’s national electricity regulator, SERC, reported that 53% of the wind power generated in Inner Mongolia province in the first half of this year was wasted. One analyst told China Securities Journal that “40-50% of wind power projects are left idle,” with many not even connected to the grid.

A few years ago, Shenzhen-based BYD (short for “Build Your Dreams”) was a media darling that brought in Warren Buffett as an investor. It was going to make China the dominant player in electric automobiles. Despite gorging on green energy subsidies, BYD sold barely 8,000 hybrids and 400 fully electric cars last year, while hemorrhaging cash on an ill-fated solar venture. Company profits for the first half of 2012 plunged 94% year-on-year.

...Many in Washington have developed a serious case of China-envy, seeing it as an exemplar of how to run an economy. In fact, Beijing’s mandarins are no better at picking winners, and just as prone to blow money on boondoggles, as their Beltway counterparts.

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama declared, “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China . . . because we refuse to make the same commitment here.” _Patrick Chovanec

China's huge overinvestment in wind and solar is becoming a serious problem for the middle kingdom, as bad investment and bad debt threaten the destroy all the economic gains previously made in the 1990s and 2000s up to 2008. But despite all that, Obama -- and several leaders in the EU -- have still not learned their lesson.

If the great global green dysfunction has made a monkey out of Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens, US President Obama should not feel too badly about being hoodwinked.

But Obama has already done untold damage to the current and future US economies, but the US cannot afford to let the "empty stool" continue to spew his purulent green policies all over the landscape.

Perhaps China is "in too deep" to cut its losses and move on, but if the US can throw off its own green dysfunction -- as embodied by the Obama regime from top to bottom -- it can still step through the doorway into an abundant energy future.

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