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US, Japan should aid China on clean energy

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-18 11:18

The United States and Japan should work with China on clean energy as it faces the heavy energy use that usually comes with industrialisation, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.

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Making her first trip abroad as the top US diplomat, Clinton said that if China followed the development paths of the United States and Japan "we would overload our environment with carbon-based emissions."

Instead, she proposed that Tokyo and Washington find ways to help China use energy-efficient designs for homes, office buildings and vehicles, a process that she said could help stimulate sustainable growth in all three countries.

"Here is an opportunity for Japan and the United States to work in partnership with China to help ... leapfrog over the harmful pattern of development," Clinton told students at Japan's elite Tokyo University.

"Japan is, as you know, a leader in clean energy and there is an opportunity for Japan, working with China, to help make buildings more energy efficient, to help create more energy-efficient vehicles."

Climate change is a theme of Clinton's trip to Asia, which will include stops in Indonesia, South Korea and China.

"If China and India don't join with us in our efforts to control the emissions and begin to stop and reverse the damage to the earth from everything we have already done, I don't think we can achieve the sustainability goals that we must set for ourselves," she said.