By David Gelles in New York; Somini Sengupta in Brasília and in Tirunelveli, India; Keith Bradsher in Beijing; and Brad Plumer in Washington.
In China, more wind turbines and
solar panels were installed last year than in the rest of the world
combined. And China’s clean energy boom is going global. Chinese
companies are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil,
Thailand, Morocco, Hungary and beyond.
At the same time, in the United States, President Trump is pressing Japan and South Korea to invest “trillions of dollars”
in a project to ship natural gas to Asia. And General Motors just
killed plans to make electric motors at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y.,
and instead will put $888 million into building V-8 gasoline engines
there.
The race is on to define the
future of energy. Even as the dangers of global warming hang ominously
over the planet, two of the most powerful countries in the world, the
United States and China, are pursuing energy strategies defined mainly
by economic and national security concerns, as opposed to the climate
crisis. Entire industries are at stake, along with the economic and
geopolitical alliances that shape the modern world.
The
Trump administration wants to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels
like oil and gas, which have powered cars and factories, warmed homes
and fueled empires for more than a century. The United States is the
world’s largest producer of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas,
offering the potential for what Mr. Trump has called an era of American
“energy dominance” that eliminates dependence on foreign countries, particularly rival powers like China.
China is racing in an altogether
different direction. It’s banking on a world that runs on cheap
electricity from the sun and wind, and that relies on China for
affordable, high-tech solar panels and turbines. China, unlike the
United States, doesn’t have much easily accessible oil or gas of its
own, so it is eager to eliminate dependence on imported fossil fuels and
instead power more of its economy with renewables.
The dangers for China of relying on politically unstable regions for energy were underscored recently when Israel attacked Iran, which sells practically all its oil exports to China.
While
China still burns more coal than the rest of the world and emits more
climate pollution than the United States and Europe combined, its pivot
to cleaner alternatives is happening at breakneck speed. Not only does
China already dominate global manufacturing of solar panels, wind
turbines, batteries, E.V.s and many other clean energy industries, but
with each passing month it is widening its technological lead.
China’s biggest automaker, its biggest
battery maker and its biggest electronics company have each introduced
systems that can recharge electric cars in just five minutes,
all but erasing one of the most annoying hassles of E.V.s, the long
charging times. China has nearly 700,000 clean energy patents, more than
half of the world's total. Beijing’s rise as a clean power behemoth is
altering economies and shifting alliances in emerging countries as far
afield as Pakistan and Brazil.
The
country is also taking steps that could make it hard for other
countries, particularly the United States, to catch up. In April,
Beijing restricted the export
of powerful “rare earth” magnets, a business China dominates, unless
they’re already inside fully assembled products like electric vehicles
or wind turbines. While China recently started issuing some export
licenses for the magnets, the moves signal that the world may face a
choice: Buy China’s green energy technology, or do without.
China
has also begun to dominate nuclear power, a highly technical field once
indisputably led by the United States. China not only has 31 reactors
under construction, nearly as many as the rest of the world combined,
but has announced advances in next-generation nuclear technologies and
also in fusion, the long-promised source of all-but-limitless clean
energy that has bedeviled science for years.
“China
is huge,” said Praveer Sinha, chief executive of Tata Power, an Indian
conglomerate that makes solar panels in a high-tech factory near the
southern tip of the country but relies almost entirely on Chinese-made
silicon to make those panels. “Huge means huge. No one in the world can compete with that.”
While
China is dominating clean energy industries, from patented technologies
to essential raw materials, the Trump administration is using the
formidable clout of the world’s biggest economy to keep American oil and
gas flowing.
In a full reversal
from the Biden administration’s effort to pivot the American economy
away from fossil fuels, the Trump White House is opening up public lands
and federal waters for new drilling, fast-tracking permits for
pipelines and pressuring other countries to buy American fuels as a way of avoiding tariffs.
Washington
is essentially pursuing a strong-arm energy strategy, both at home and
abroad with allies and friends. It’s premised on the idea that the
modern world is already designed around these fuels, and the United
States has them in abundance, so exporting them benefits the American
economy even if solar energy is cleaner and often cheaper.
The competition between the United
States and China to sell the world their wares has serious consequences
for the health of the planet.
Burning
fossil fuels for more than 200 years has helped create the modern world
while delivering great prosperity to developed countries such as the
United States, which ranks historically as the biggest emitter of
greenhouse gases. But it has also led to what scientists now say is a
growing crisis. The carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by the
burning of oil, gas and coal acts as a heat-trapping blanket, leading to
rapid global warming.
Cheap
Chinese-made solar, batteries and E.V.s have made the pivot to cleaner
technologies possible for many large economies including Brazil, South
Africa and even India, a regional rival to Beijing. That affordability
is crucial for bringing down global emissions.
The
scientific consensus is that warming, if unchecked, will continue to
cause increasingly severe droughts and storms, potentially alter ocean
currents and global weather patterns, disrupt food production, deepen a
biodiversity crisis and inundate some of the world’s biggest cities as
sea levels rise, among other risks.
The Trump administration has dismissed
those concerns. The United States energy secretary, Chris Wright, a
former natural gas executive, has described climate change as “a side effect of building the modern world.”
Asked
about the diverging energy pathways of China and the United States, Ben
Dietderich, a Department of Energy spokesman, said, “The United States
is blessed with an abundant supply of energy resources and the Trump
administration is committed to fully utilizing them to meet the growing
energy needs of the American people.” Past efforts to encourage cleaner
energy like solar or wind, he said, “harmed America’s energy security.”
Amanda
Eversole, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute,
which lobbies for fossil fuel companies, said her organization
monitored Chinese advances and that she was downplaying their strategic
threat. “We continue to keep a very close eye on what the Chinese are
doing, because we believe it’s in our national security interests and
our economic interest to continue to dominate from an American energy
perspective,” she said.
The White House declined to comment on energy strategy and China’s advances.
Most
of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. Yet as countries
try to address the perils of climate change, they’ve been steadily
adopting cleaner alternatives. By 2035, solar and wind power are
expected to become the two largest sources of electricity production, surpassing coal and natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency.
As
the cost of renewables keeps falling, the U.S. strategy may leave China
poised to capitalize on the world’s growing appetite for not only
cleaner but cheaper power.
“The U.S.
will champion a fossil fuel economy, and China will become the leader
of the low-carbon economy,” said Li Shuo, who heads the China Climate
Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “The question for the U.S. now
is, where do you go from here?”