U.S. Announces "Smart Cities-Smart Growth" Trade Mission to Mainland China

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced 11 December 2014 that Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz will lead a “Smart Cities – Smart Growth” business development mission to mainland China during 12-17 April 2015 to promote U.S. exports and support companies in launching or increasing their business in the mainland. The trade mission will focus on products and services such as green buildings; building energy retrofitting; building management; green data centres; carbon capture, utilisation and storage; energy efficiency technologies; clean air and clean water technologies, waste treatment technologies; and smart grid and green transportation. The U.S. delegation will be composed of senior executives from 20 to 25 U.S. firms representing the mission’s target sectors.

Originally announced during President Obama’s recent visit to Beijing, the trade mission will build on climate change progress made during the president’s first six years in office to help achieve the post-2020 climate targets announced by presidents Obama and Xi last November. The mission is one of several measures designed to strengthen and expand bi-lateral clean energy co-operation and support the deployment of cutting edge, innovative technologies to combat and adapt to climate change.

According to the DOC, mainland China is the world’s largest market for power transmission and distribution as well as the world’s leading consumer of smart grid technologies. Mainland China is currently constructing a series of ultra-high voltage grids and urban-rural distribution grids, including the construction of smart grid operation and control systems and the installation of tens of millions of smart metres across the country. The country currently has nearly 250 million metres installed and is expected to continue to build out and update its metering system through 2017. The total of these investments is expected to grow to nearly US$20 billion annually through the end of the decade. The U.S. government is already co-operating with mainland China in the smart grid space through several U.S. Trade and Development Agency programmes as well as the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group, the U.S.-China Renewable Energy Partnership and other initiatives.

The U.S. Department of Energy is also collaborating with 13 mainland Chinese cities to both reach low-carbon urbanisation goals and increase U.S. clean energy technology exports to the mainland. These collaborations focus on the policy development that primes mainland Chinese municipal markets for U.S. technologies. Specifically, the DOE provides technical assistance with the development of mainland China’s urban sustainability plans and deployment of demonstration projects, which include U.S. companies and products and provide data back that strengthen U.S. modelling capabilities.