China, not the US, is dominating clean energy output

The National

a day ago

'We are putting up wind. It does not work. Being very weak and expensive, all made in China. I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?'
It is not hard to guess the speaker. Of course, while US President Donald Trump might not himself have seen a wind farm in China, the country is by far the biggest generator of wind power globally. The White House's longed-for energy dominance has arrived – but with clean energy it is in Beijing, not Washington.
Wherever you look in the universe of low-carbon energy, you see two worlds: China, and everyone else. In manufacturing, in domestic demand, in deployment, in exports, in investments, increasingly in science and clean-tech innovation, China outstrips the remainder of the planet.
China's state grid expects 380 gigawatts of solar power and 140 gigawatts of wind to be installed this year. For context, that is almost as much wind capacity, and twice as much solar, as the second-largest user, the US, has – in total.
Costs for renewable energy continue to fall. Batteries, required to back up intermittent wind and solar generation, have also become radically cheaper: lithium-ion batteries costing $137 per kilowatt-hour in 2020 can now be obtained in China for less than $60.
Meanwhile, though US natural gas remains pretty cheap, its price is not far off double that of a year ago. More concerning, long backlogs in gas turbines mean that the favoured option for meeting new electricity demand is going to be slow and costly.
More than half of Chinese motorists now buy an electric car. BYD, NIO, Xiaomi and rivals make inexpensive, increasingly stylish and technically sophisticated EVs, with battery breakthroughs in prospect that would dramatically expand range and cut charging times. They are about to leave the American and European car industries as road kill, unless Detroit and Munich can manage a rapid U-turn.
Rare earth minerals
The Chinese grip over rare earth minerals, used in powerful magnets for electric car motors and wind turbines, receives much press. Less mentioned is China's dominance of graphite for batteries and elements such as gallium for semiconductors, germanium in electronics, or antimony, used in armaments and making the hard plastic PET. Even in oil, where US technology is generally dominant, China is the leading source of tungsten and industrial diamonds, used for ultra-hard drill bits.
Chinese companies have spent decades building vertically integrated supply chains, that make them robust to volatility in often opaque markets, and able to wage price wars against would-be competitors. They have developed extensive overseas operations for minerals that aren't common at home, such as cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo and nickel in Indonesia, both important battery components.
China also has a decisive lead in processing technology for rare earths, nickel and other major minerals. Even as rival nations look for mineral deposits elsewhere, China's near monopoly in processing is likely to prove more durable than its majority share of mining.
Second only to the US in nuclear power generation, it is constructing almost 34 gigawatts of nuclear reactors, far outstripping the 6 gigawatts of the second-largest builder, India. It, like the US and some other countries, is searching for a breakthrough in fusion, the Shangri-la of cheap, clean, limitless energy.
It is also the main producer and leading innovator in a whole range of other key energy technology: for example, electrolysers to produce hydrogen, and ultra-high voltage cables to transmit electricity over intercontinental distances.
The surge in Chinese renewable and nuclear generation, backed up by the still-growing coal fleet, means electricity should be ample and cheap, and it is getting cleaner. Contrast that with the US or Europe, where new electricity is likely to be slow, costly or both, and it provides a potential big advantage for the intensely contested AI terrain.
China is even shooting ahead in space; its Heavenly Questions (Tianwen) programme should make it the first nation to bring rocks back from Mars to Earth for study by 2031, perhaps revealing the first solid evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Meanwhile, the US is dismantling the agency that outshone the Soviet space effort, Nasa, whose own Mars sample return mission is in danger of cancellation.
China invested more than $800 billion in the energy transition last year. This was more than the US, EU and UK put together.
Energy dark age
For now, the US does retain 'energy dominance' in oil and gas. That is probably a wasting asset, as US oil output levels out, electric cars and renewables erode demand for hydrocarbons, and China advances its own oil and gas abilities.
The dragon's rise has been aided by an almost unbelievable series of blunders by its rivals. This story of shame mostly attaches to Washington. The closure of the US Bureau of Mines in 1996, the fake scandal over government loans to solar company Solyndra in 2009, the latest gutting of funding for almost every new energy technology, are milestones in an almost deliberate policy to surrender leadership to Beijing.
The US is now on track to a new dark age where superstition and political ideology replace the quest for scientific truth. It still has unique advantages of risk-seeking capital and tech-savvy entrepreneurs, but their roots of academia, government laboratories and skilled immigration will wither.
The story in Europe is not nearly as bad, but excessive bureaucracy, ideology, fragmentation across national borders, miserly funding for top researchers, an anaemic venture capital scene, painfully slow and expensive construction of big new infrastructure, and the lost decade of the 2010s when clean energy spending stagnated, are all to blame.
The US perceived, rightly, that energy dominance is a path to economic and then political dominance. It was wrong about the dominant forms and country of that energy. Outside the Washington bubble, Beijing 's clean energy superiority is neither a bad or good thing, but simply a fact, to which individual, corporate and national manufacturers, and users of energy must adapt.