China Is Changing The Global Balance Of Political Power With Renewables – CleanTechnica

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10 years ago, the leaders of the world gathered in Paris to address the issue of a warming planet. There were hundreds of speeches made and scientific reports presented. The attendees meet far into the night on several occasions, trying to hammer out an agreement that would put the world on a path toward a lower carbon future.

At the conclusion of that conference in Paris, 195 nations agreed to seriously consider taking steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Wealthy nations agreed to assist poorer nations in reaching their climate goals by investing in their economies. There was a sense that a breakthrough had occurred — a momentous sea change that meant the entire world would embrace the idea that treating the Earth as a communal toilet was not a good long term strategy.

There was singing and dancing in the streets. The whole world had a kumbaya moment and many allowed themselves to believe that we were well on our way to actually doing something about global heating. Then everybody went home and kept on doing what they had always done — making more stuff using more fossil fuels and focusing on corporate profits and shareholder value.

Progress Since COP 15

Ten years later, there has been progress. Bloomberg recently reported that in the past decade, $10 trillion has been invested in clean energy and low carbon technologies since the Paris climate accords were signed. That is not a  trivial amount of money, yet the mood at COP 30 in Brazil this week is fairly downbeat.

Those poorer countries, mostly in the global south, are asking where the investments they were promised are. Wealthy countries, especially those in Europe, and the United States, are furiously backpedaling on their commitments. There’s a war in Ukraine to worry about and the world is just getting back to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic. Plus, too, and also, the fossil fuel industry is fighting tooth and nail to preserve its profits.

Writing in the New York Times, Somini Sengupta describes some of the good things that resulted from the Paris agreements. All the signatories are still committed to doing what they agreed to do in 2015 — except one. As a result, the world is likely to experience a 2.5 to 2.9 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures by the end of this century. Prior to Paris, the Earth was on a trajectory that would have seen average temperatures that were about one full degree Celsius hotter than that.

Better, But Not Great

Now we are merely facing a brutal combination of hotter temperatures, slowing of ocean currents, more frequent and more powerful storms, an increase in sea levels of several feet, and catastrophic flooding in some areas or severe drought in others. Before we were facing the extermination of perhaps 80 percent of more of all humans. There is some comfort there, but not much. Writing from COP 30 in Brazil, Sengupta and Brad Plumer report:

“A surprising shift is taking hold in many large, fast-growing economies where a majority of the world’s people live. Countries like Brazil, India, and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power.

“Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years.

“Key to this shift is the world’s new renewable energy superpower — China. Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world. What’s more, they’re investing billions of dollars in factories that make things like solar panels in Vietnam and electric cars in Brazil.

“In effect, Chinese industrial policy is shaping the development trajectory of some of the world’s fastest-growing economies (emphasis added).”

A Shift In Leadership

“From a climate point of view, the developing countries are showing solutions,” said André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat in charge of the COP 30 conference. “I think that emerging countries are appearing in this COP with a different role.”

That is a big change from Paris ten years ago when the US and European countries were leading the charge for lower emissions. Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, told the New York Times reporters, “Emerging economies are a very important part of the story. The reason we should be paying attention is that they have the most people in the world, they have the largest number of poor people in the world, and their energy demands are growing. If these economies don’t change, there’s no chance for the world to get to a safer place.”

Ethiopia last year banned the import of new gasoline-powered cars. Nepal reduced import duties on electric vehicles, which has made them more affordable than cars with internal combustion engines. Chinese companies like BYD are busy building factories in countries around the world.

Cars with plugs now account for about 20% of global new car sales. As a result, electric vehicles are displacing 2 million barrels of oil demand every day, which is approximately equal to total daily demand in Germany, according to BloombergNEF.

Much of the promised financial assistance to poorer counties has failed to materialize, which suggests the promises made in Paris a decade ago were largely illusory. However, something else has happened in the past ten years that may actually be more important.

China Emerges

China has become a clean energy manufacturing powerhouse, which has moved it front and center in the effort to slow global heating. The Times reports that, “Chinese manufacturing investments around the world have exceeded $225 billion in total since 2011, according to the Net Zero Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.” Three-quarters of that money has gone to countries in the global south. “Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than the United States poured into the Marshall Plan after World War II,” the Times says.

India is now taking a page from the Chinese industrial policy playbook and using incentives to install huge amounts of solar power and begin manufacturing more solar equipment domestically. It used the COP 30 form to announce that it now gets half its electricity from renewables and has reached its 2030 target five years ahead of schedule.

“Ten years ago, you had the political commitment, but you didn’t have the markets,” Kaysie Brown, the associate director for climate diplomacy and geopolitics at E3G, told the New York Times. “Now I think we’re in an inflection point where in some cases, like renewables, you do have the markets. So there’s a question about where in this changing landscape you start to see political leadership come from.”

Taking The Reins

China is making it clear that it is willing to provide that political leadership. “Green and low carbon transition is the trend of the time,” Chinese vice premier, Ding Xuexiang, said at the start of COP 30. “We need to stay confident, balance such goals as environmental protection, economic development, job creation and poverty eradication.”

With Chinese exports of solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage batteries setting new records n 2025, Beijing has a vested interest in making sure the rest of the world moves faster in adopting renewable energy. It’s not a matter of policy; it’s simple economic self interest. For decades, the US has been content to export movies, music, and high fashion jeans. China has focused on manufacturing.

Many American and European leaders are alarmed by China’s growing economic power, but in Brazil this week, many poorer nations seemed perfectly fine with what China is doing. “You can’t insist that China has to lower its emissions” and then “complain that China is putting cheap EVs all over the world,” Mr. Corrêa do Lago said. “If you are worried about climate, this is good news.”

The First Shall Later Be Last

Yes, actually it is good news, but not for the nations who think of themselves as “first world” countries. China is doing what China does best — out-competing the West and beating the capitalist countries at the game they dominated for so long. Wouldn’t it be a dramatic plot twist if Chinese-style mercantile policy eventually provides the key to taming global heating everyone has been looking for?

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, the adage goes. China has built a better mousetrap in the form of renewable energy products that are so inexpensive, everyone can afford to buy them. Will that disrupt some established economies? Absolutely, but “creative destruction” is one of the basic tenets of capitalism. What we are witnessing today is the global application of that principle.