Opinion
Eamon Ryan: China sees an opportunity in Trump’s climate denial
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I remember a dinner the International Energy Agency hosted back in 2008, where members met to discuss the possible entry of China and India into the club – which was slightly tricky because members of each delegation were sitting at the table beside us as the merits of the case were discussed. At a side meeting from that event, the Chinese minister said they had decided to “dematerialise their development model”. They were going to advance the electrification of everything, using renewable and battery power, and in doing so tackle the chronic air pollution that was choking the residents of their cities at the time.
Four years later, Bloomberg New Energy Finance outlined how China was already dominating wind and solar manufacturing and investing heavily in the battery and grid technologies of the future. Recent reports indicate that the Chinese government provided some $50 billion (€43 billion) in subsidies to the solar industry between 2011 and 2023 to support this industrial revolution.
Three years ago, I met some of the leading Chinese solar companies who said their production of polysilica, the base product for photovoltaic (PV) panels, was about to triple. Sure enough, the data for the first six months of this year shows the Chinese installed 250GW of solar power in their country, which was twice as much as the rest of the world’s solar power combined. China is expected to increase its overall PV production to 1200GW annually, which is about what is needed for us to meet our global emissions-reduction goals.
The increase in supply has driven down prices and countries such as Pakistan are now importing huge quantities of solar panels, which is transforming their power system. PV installations in Africa are similarly starting to rise, after years of underinvestment. Chinese companies are going farther by investing in new PV manufacturing facilities in a host of countries, which will give further impetus to the switch to solar and strengthen their geopolitical hand.
Even in cloudy Ireland we are seeing the transformation take place. Each day 100 more households are getting solar panels on their roofs. We are likely to have more than 2GW of PV capacity installed by the end of this year, along with a similar growth in domestic and large-scale battery storage systems. This is where all the money, innovation and smart people are going.
We have not seen this scale of change to the energy system since the first industrial revolution. China will argue it is leading the climate response, promising cheap power along with battery storage and new inward investment, while the US is promoting a polluting and tariff-laden alternative.
At his speech to the UN General Assembly last week, US president Donald Trump described climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world … If you don’t get away from the green energy energy scam your country is going to fail … the carbon foot print is a hoax”. There were ripples of nervous laughter from the audience during the speech. I heard one commentator ask afterwards whether they were laughing with him or at him.
I can’t imagine the German delegation was laughing as Trump lavished praise on Germany, related no doubt to its recent conversion to focus more on gas-fired power generation rather than on the continued growth of renewables. That will leave Germany dependent on the more expensive power that comes from using imported liquefied natural gas. It is a remarkable decision for a country that knows the risks of import dependency.
Europe has little to laugh about in any case, because members have yet to agree on an updated collective nationally determined contribution (NDC) – a climate action plan under the Paris Agreement – which has to be delivered before the upcoming Conference of the Parties (Cop) in Brazil. It has been expected for months but is being held up by a blocking minority, including the French and German governments. It is not as if we have an alternative to going green and clean: Europe will never be competitive or secure when we are reliant on imported fossil fuels.
The camera didn’t show the reaction of the Chinese delegation in the UN General Assembly hall, but with their rival power in the room openly denying climate science and pushing an unsustainable energy model from the past, they will surely know they can grab the economic advantage by promoting the better energy future that is already at hand. It’s hard not to imagine they were smiling.
Financial Times correspondent Martin Wolfe reported from Beijing earlier this year on local opinion on what was happening in America. His Chinese sources saw what Trump is doing as inflicting the same sort of damage that was done in their country during the cultural revolution.
Last week Trump in effect doubled down on the cultural war he is inciting globally, focusing on climate action and renewable solutions as his objects of hate. It will be seen as one of the greatest historical mistakes of all time.
