Cleaner Greener China: Clean Technology, Green Products, New Ideas, Clean China

One of the graphs that was presented at the Copenhagen Business School conference I attended last week was from Professor Andrew Hoffman of University of Michigan.  Covering both Economics and Environment, Hoffman was able to bridge a number of very important topics related to what we view as “common practices”.

… and he had a number of excellent examples of where people failed to either understand the potential of technologies, or of the market failing to appreciate an opportunity that literally walked right in front of them.   So, when presented with the graph above, I was immediately struck by the fact that no one questioned the structure of the data points or the underlying economics of how this graph came to be presented in the way it had been.

For me, something was wrong.

Anyone care to take a guess as to what I saw?

1) The bottom line (representing coal) does not include the capital costs that must be made.  It is a pure cost of generation figure, while the renewable energy lines reflect the average costs including capial investment costs.

2) the bottom  line fails to account for its environmental and health impacts.  Impacts that are being recognized now as significant.