The new US President has used his first 24 hours to pull all US government support for the green energy transition. He wants to ban any new wind energy projects and withdraw support for electric cars. His new energy policy refused to even mention solar panels, wind turbines, or battery storage - the world’s fastest-growing energy sources. Meanwhile, he wants to pour money into dying and declining industries - like gasoline-powered cars and expanding oil drilling.
China was the global leader in 21st-century energy before, but its future global dominance is now assured. There will be trillions of dollars to be made supplying the planet with green energy infrastructure in the coming decades. Decarbonizing the planet, and electrifying the global south with renewables will be the largest industrial project in human history.
The US is just 16% of Chinese exports. Any tariff disruption will be made up for many, many times over by being OPEC of 21st century renewable energy to the rest of the world.
https://wits.worldbank.org/countrysnapshot/en/chn
It is not going to be the OPEC of the 21st century. The important part with oil, is that you need to buy more of it ones it is burned. With most green technologies, the products last decades. So any country being cut off can just work on developing their own. Obviously there are more countries then China and the US as well, which also have green technology companies.
It’s indeed going to be different, because your selling some independence with renewable energy tech. Buy a solar panel from Chian now, and you have 25 years or more to figure out how to built your own replacement. but in the short to medium term at least (I expect) China will dominate these markets. I don’t expect the EU or India, or other countries to catch up soon on the level and price of green tech that China now has.
Europe is big on wind turbines, at least. Vestas, Siemens, and Nordex supply far more of the world outside of China than their Chinese competitors do based on this https://gwec.net/wind-turbine-manufacturers-see-record-year-driven-by-growth-in-home-markets/
Europe would be smart to mandate some of the billions they are going to spend on this, come from Euro-sources. It makes it much easier to match Chinese manufacturing economies for Euro-exports elsewhere.
Green tech is a wide field. In wind turbines the two largest companies in the world are from the EU. High speed rail also has a lot of European companies with great technologies, as well as Japan. In the battery world Japan and South Korea have some large companies as well.
Solar is one of the areas, where China just rules though.
Thanks for the nuance, I was a bit generic, but you are right, their is more clean tech in other countries out there. But besides solar China is also big in EVs and batteries as well. We will see how it goes - really interested how some countries are leapfrogging in their development using more green energy technologies.