Right-wing wokeism can't stop green tech winning the global energy war

Yahoo

31-01-2025

The mass exodus of America's biggest banks from the UN climate alliance will make no measurable difference to the global energy landscape or to the level of carbon emissions, and nor will Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
One can only laugh at the spectacle of Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs hastily swapping the mask of Left-wing cultural wokeism for the mirror-image mask of Right-wing cultural wokeism, just in time to deflect Trumpian retribution. They are largely brown-washing in aligning with Trump's fossil revivalism.
In the intervening years – above all since Paris in 2015 – clean technology has performed a market miracle. More than $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) a year now goes into renewable capex, and just $1 trillion into the last hurrah of the hydrocarbon industry. That has little to do with climate policy. The money is chasing profit.
Renewable costs have fallen faster than ultra-optimists dared to think possible. They already undercut coal and gas plants on pure price and a 24/7 basis in areas holding 80pc of mankind, even in the fracking fiefdom of Texas.
'We're seeing a stampede into solar plus batteries. Together they are the killer app of the clean energy age,' said Lord Turner, head of Energy Transitions Commission, which includes China, India and the global South, as well as the West.
The US energy department published a 'Moon shot' paper in 2010 arguing that it was theoretically possible to cut solar costs to $1 a watt, and if achieved this would amount to fossil parity without subsidy. Sceptics said it was delusional. That target has since been beaten ten times over.
The price of Chinese solar panels has dropped to nine cents a watt, which is why the ill-run electricity grid in Pakistan is now shrinking at a double-digit annual rate. Every village and every neighbourhood in Lahore or Karachi is erecting off-grid solar panels in a dash for cheap power and energy freedom, lifting solar capacity by 22 gigawatts (GW) in a single year. The government had nothing to do with it. The free market speaks Urdu.
This is happening everywhere, to varying degrees, in latitudes from 40 degrees North to 40 degrees South, so long as regimes do not actively stand in the way, as they often do to favour cabals of vested interests. It is why Trump's plan to flood the world with US liquefied natural gas at $6 MMBtu is make-believe. The International Energy Agency predicts an LNG glut by the late 2020s.
'Nobody is going to build coal or gas plants in Africa. Solar with storage is cheaper everywhere. The vast majority of the world's population live in tropical climes where the sun shines almost every day. I don't think we have woken up to how absolutely transformational this is going to be,' said Lord Turner.
Battery cell costs have been plummeting along the same vertiginous cost curve. They were $1,100 kWh in 2010. The US energy department said then that the holy grail was $100, the take-off point for mass adoption. Lithium ferrous phosphate (LFP) batteries in China are today selling at $50 kWh, and sodium batteries for solar back-up will come in below $25 with scale.
These LFP batteries do not require cobalt from child labour in Africa or nickel from Indonesia rain forests. 'One challenge after another is disappearing in front of our eyes. Remember all that talk about running out of critical minerals? It was rubbish,' said Lord Turner.
Lithium carbonate prices have crashed by 87pc from the peak of the bubble, and cobalt prices by three quarters, even as global sales of electric vehicles rose a further 24pc last year.
Pakistan's solar story is an apt analogy of what will happen as Chinese EVs flood Asia at prices near $10,000, with Indian EVs undercutting even that: the Indian-made MG Comet starts at $7,000, and the Tata Tiago at $9,000. Once cheap EVs meet cheap rooftop solar across the developing world, the direction of travel is only one way.
This ought to be some comfort for those in despair about rising global CO2 levels, rising temperatures, and rising levels of Luddite reactionary wokeism in the liberal democracies. The instant snapshot of where we are today is misleading. The 'second derivative' tells us where we are going, and that points to a short-term plateau, followed by a cascading collapse of the old fossil order.
The world as a whole is quietly weaning itself off carbon fuels with remarkable success, contrary to the impression one might have from political noise in the Anglo sphere, in turn amplified by enemy cyber-manipulation urging us to commit self-harm.
Unfortunately, it is China that is running away with the prize, while America tries to turn back the technology clock, or if you prefer, commands the waves to retreat.
Trump can certainly slow things down with his blizzard of executive orders – some beyond his constitutional authority – whether by halting offshore wind, freezing permits for onshore wind on federal land, stopping the rollout of EV charging stations or suspending $300bn of funding for the Inflation Reduction Act. But there is much theatre in his daily provocations, and he has so far spared solar, calling himself a 'big fan'.
At the end of day, America's energy economy is driven by private contracts on private land under local state laws. It is the customer who buys, not the White House, said Joe Kaiser, from Siemens. What he has seen from Trump so far 'doesn't move the needle'.
If Trump goes further and actively suppresses the free market or violates state rights, he will clash with his own Republican base. Wind made up 59pc of Iowa's electricity last year, yet the governor is Republican and so are two thirds of the state legislature.
Trumpian Texas is America's renewable capital, with more installed wind power than Britain, and for good reason: off-take contracts in the Texas Panhandle can be as low as $20 MWh. Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation said royalties from renewables make up half the income of some counties, funding school gyms and the town pool.
Farmers can make $30m in rents from a 100 MW solar array on their arid empty land, and the panels shade livestock from extreme heat. A firm called Freedom Solar is rolling out panels across the state, proclaiming a war of liberation against big government and the utility mafia. Try telling Texans they can't have it.
Trump cannot save his beautiful fossilised world, however hard he tries. It is too late, even in America. The 'green scam' has already beaten him.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.