GRANTHAM: China Has The Money To Become The 'Terror Of Capitalism' Within 30 Years

GMO's Jeremy Grantham has maintained a gloomy slant on the economy.

However, he does see reasons to be optimistic.

Last week, The Guardian's Leo Hickman conducted a lengthy interview with Grantham. And during the interview, he talked about how China has the capacity to completely change the face of energy.

"They have it within their capabilities of coming back in 30 years with the guarantee of complete energy independence – all alternative and sustainable forever," he said

"To hell with their five-year plans, they should move up to 25-year plans for alternative energy - energy security, reducing pollution and low cost.. They would have such low-cost energy at the end of it they will be the terror of the capitalist system. With low energy and low labour, that's the ball game."

Here's what he said about China:

China is my secret weapon. I call them the Chinese cavalry riding to the rescue. They have the capital. They have an embarrassment of capital – 50% of their GDP is capital investment. We have a shortage of capital and also have debts. Their problem is how to invest all that capital. My partners worry all the time about them wasting their money. What better programme could they possibly have, with huge social pay-off, than a massive replacement of sustainable energy? When you think what it would mean to them – it would get rid of their pollution – it makes sense. Because of that pollution, they announced recently an incredible increase of 65% in their plans to install by 2015 – just three short years away – 36GW, which is equivalent to 20 vast, state-of-art coal plants, of solar. Throw in wind, too. And, by the way, we will have many breakthroughs in storage. If I had to make a bet, I would say that's the most promising, important breakthrough of the next several years. Everyone is working on this. If you have a big smart grid – and all the desert of Xinjiang and all the wind of Inner Mongolia – and it's all swirling around with relatively little loss and you have a grid smart enough to go in there Chinese-style and turn your fridge off for half an hour to save energy, and do this and do that, you don't need nearly the back-up. The bad guys will tell you that you need 100% back-up and messianic environmentalists will tell you that you need 0%. But maybe 20% back-up will be needed as everyone is working on storage. I'm certain it will happen. Some technologies take time then go, "Bang!". Look at video conferencing. It has been around forever and the quality was terrible. But now it is so clear and instant. Technology has a habit of boring you to death and disappointing you for 20 years then suddenly it delivers a new world…

I have very high hopes for China because they have embedded high scientific capabilities in their leadership class. And that is huge. They know this is serious. They can calculate the social threat of getting this pollution, weather instability, water out of control. And they are acting much faster now than we are. They have it within their capabilities of coming back in 30 years with the guarantee of complete energy independence – all alternative and sustainable forever. They have an embarrassment of capital. We have an embarrassment of debt. So they can set a stunning pace, which they are doing. And they could crank it up. To hell with their five-year plans, they should move up to 25-year plans for alternative energy - energy security, reducing pollution and low cost. They would have such low-cost energy at the end of it they will be the terror of the capitalist system. With low energy and low labour, that's the ball game. Five years into a 25-year programme and any capitalist will be urging their government to copy them.