The City of Los Angeles and China's Jiangsu Province signed on Friday a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on solar energy cooperation, the first of its kind between the United States and China.

Under the MOU, Los Angeles municipal government and Jiangsu provincial government agreed to help strengthen bilateral cooperation in the solar energy sector, including expertise exchange, respective market access and dialogue on business expansion.

Fei Shaoyun, deputy director general of the Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of Jiangsu Provincial Government, and David Freeman, deputy mayor of Los Angeles, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective governments, which have both laid out aggressive renewable energy development strategies and supporting policies.

The Los Angeles-Jiangsu MOU was signed days after US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited China on a mission to boost bilateral cooperation on clean energy between the two countries.

Los Angeles is the first US city that has an ambitious clean energy plan, under which the city is expected to have 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources in more than 10 years, with 1,280 megawatts supplied by solar energy, according to Freeman.

Meanwhile, Jiangsu Province has become a world-renowned solar energy production and innovation base, with more than 500 solar energy equipment manufacturers, and its annual solar energy product exports are at more than US$6.5 billion, said officials from Jiangsu.

The province is also the first in China to introduce a clean energy stimulus plan, encouraging the use of solar energy, they noted.

With the objective of expanding cooperation between photovoltaic companies in Jiangsu and their US counterparts, a one-day conference titled "US-Jiangsu China Solar Business Summit 2009" was held on  Friday in Los Angeles, gathering more than 200 government officials, businessmen and solar energy researchers.

(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2009)