US and China collaborating on clean energy projects

The threat of climate change is driving China and the US - frequent rivals and the world's two largest greenhouse-gas emitters - to collaborate on dozens of potential clean-energy breakthroughs.

In research laboratories on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, more than 1,100 Chinese and American scientists are engaged in a joint programme marrying public and private money and talent. Among the US companies teamed with Chinese partners are Dow Chemical, Duke Energy and Ford Motor.

The cooperation contrasts with the two nations' longstanding differences over a range of issues, including the terms of a global treaty on climate change. While US President Barack Obama plans to join other world leaders in New York tomorrow for a UN climate summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping won't be there. Nor will Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, the third largest emitter.

The diplomatic inaction means that advances in technology may represent the planet's best hope for avoiding runaway warming. Innovations from the US-China brainstorming could spread to developing countries, allowing the world's fastest- growing nations to avoid repeating the advanced economies' fossil-fuel dependence.

"What can be more effective than the two largest emitters of CO2, or greenhouse gases, going at it together, arm-in-arm?" asked James Wood, director of advanced coal technology research for the US-China Clean Energy Research Centre at West Virginia University. "It sends some signals to people in the world that it can be solved and these are the two giants that can do it."

The low-budget cooperation on everything from energy-efficient buildings to new lithium-sulfur vehicle batteries is a rare bright spot in the Sino-US relationship. Tensions have risen this year over the South China Sea and China's treatment of foreign multinational corporations.