Christopher Mims: Chinese Premier Hu Jintao's Visit Prompts Soul Searching in U.S. Energy and Climate Circles

The truly astonishing amount of material that came out after a recent visit by China's President Hu Jintao is a measure of how pivotal energy and climate change are between the U.S. and China. This includes a piece on the importance of energy cooperation between the two nations by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu himself.

Scientific American's Dave Biello describes the relationship between the U.S. and China as the kind of detente that exists between "frenemies," but one of the most comprehensive assessments of the current state of affairs was articulated by Daniel Firger of the Columbia Center for Climate Change Law. He says the year to come in China and U.S. energy news will revolve around three things:

-The U.S. complaint to the World Trade Organization about China's green energy subsidies, which seems hypocritical in light of our failure to make similar complaints about EU subsidies (not to mention our own domestic subsidies), and could be a sticking point in U.S.-China relations;

-China's burgeoning scientific engine, which could drive renewables to become economically competitive with fossil fuels in the U.S.;

-And lastly, the economies of scale achieved by China's enormous domestic market, which could make renewables a reality for the billions of people whose only choice is between dirty energy and no energy at all