Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown. " Changes in Earth’s gravitational field ".

 

Parched land at Cueva de Las Niñas reservoir in the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, in March 2025. Photograph: Borja Suárez/Reuters

 Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

by  Rachel Salvidge

 Changes in Earth’s gravitational field

Vast swathes of Europe’s water reserves are drying up, a new analysis using two decades of satellite data reveals, with freshwater storage shrinking across southern and central Europe, from Spain and Italy to Poland and parts of the UK.

Scientists at University College London (UCL), working with Watershed Investigations and the Guardian, analysed 2002–24 data from satellites, which track changes in Earth’s gravitational field.

Because water is heavy, shifts in groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and glaciers show up in the signal, allowing the satellites to effectively “weigh” how much water is stored.

The findings reveal a stark imbalance: the north and north-west of Europe – particularly Scandinavia, parts of the UK and Portugal – have been getting wetter, while large swathes of the south and south-east, including parts of the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Romania and Ukraine, have been drying out.

 

Climate breakdown can be seen in the data, the scientists say. “When we compare the total terrestrial water storage data with climate datasets, the trends broadly correlate,” said Mohammad Shamsudduha, professor of water crisis and risk reduction at UCL.

It should be a “wake-up call” for politicians still sceptical about cutting emissions, said Shamsudduha. “We’re no longer talking about limiting warming to 1.5C, we’re likely heading toward 2C above preindustrial levels, and we’re now witnessing the consequences.”

Doctoral researcher Arifin isolated groundwater storage from the total terrestrial water data and found that trends in these more resilient water bodies mirrored the overall picture, confirming that much of Europe’s hidden freshwater reserves are being depleted.

Trends in the UK are mixed. “Overall, the west is getting wetter while the east is becoming drier and that signal is getting stronger,” said Shamsudduha.

“Although total rainfall may be stable, or even slightly increasing, the pattern is changing. We’re seeing heavier downpours and longer dry spells, especially in summer.”

Groundwater is seen as more climate-resilient than surface water but heavy summer downpours often mean more water is lost to runoff and flash flooding, while the winter groundwater recharge season may be shortening, he said.

“In south-east England, where groundwater supplies about 70% of public water, these shifting rainfall patterns could pose serious challenges.”

The total amount of water taken from surface and groundwater across the EU between 2000 and 2022 decreased, according to European Environment Agency data, but groundwater abstractions increased by 6%, attributed to public water supply (18%) and farming (17%).

It is a critical resource: across member states, groundwater accounted for 62% of the total public water supply and 33% of agricultural water demands during 2022.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said its water resilience strategy “aims to help member states adapt their water resource management to climate change and to address man-made pressures”.

The strategy aims to build a “water-smart economy” and is paired with a commission recommendation on water efficiency, which calls for improving efficiency by “at least 10% until 2030”. With leakage levels varying from 8% to 57% across the bloc, the commission says cutting pipe losses and modernising infrastructure will be crucial.

Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading, said: “It’s distressing to see this long-term trend, because we’ve seen some very large droughts recently and we’re constantly hearing that this winter we might have less than usual rainfall and we’re already in drought.

“Next spring and summer, if we don’t get the rainfall we need, there will be severe consequences for us here in England. We will face severe water restrictions and that will make everybody’s life very difficult.”

The Environment Agency has already warned England to prepare for drought continuing into 2026 unless there is significant rain over autumn and winter.

The water minister, Emma Hardy, said there is “increasing pressure on our water resources. That is why this government is taking decisive action, including the development of nine new reservoirs to help secure long-term water resilience.”

But simply “promising very large reservoirs that won’t come online for a few decades is not going to solve the problem immediately,” said Cloke.

“We should be focusing on water reuse, using less water in the first place, separating drinking water from those recycled waters that we could use, using nature-based solutions, and thinking about the way that we’re building developments,” she said.

“We’re just not doing these things fast enough to keep pace with these long-term trends.”

 

Europe’s drying trend will have “far-reaching” impacts, hitting food security, farming and water-dependent ecosystems, especially groundwater-fed habitats,” according to Shamsudduha. Spain’s shrinking reserves, he said, could directly affect the UK, which relies heavily on Spain and other European countries for fruit and produce.

The kinds of climate impacts long seen across the global south, from south Asia to Africa and the Middle East, are now “much closer to home”, with climate change “clearly affecting Europe itself”.

“We need to accept that climate change is real, it’s happening and it’s affecting us,” Shamsudduha said, calling for better water management and openness to “new, even unconventional” ideas, including widespread rainwater harvesting in countries such as the UK.

Globally, drying hotspots are emerging across the Middle East, Asia, South America, along the US west coast and across swathes of Canada, with Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard also showing dramatic drying trends.

In Iran, Tehran is closing in on “day zero” when no tap water is available, and water rationing is being planned. The country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said that if rationing fails, Tehran may have to be evacuated.

Changes in Earth’s gravitational field 

Flooding in southern Asia leaves 600 dead

Search and rescue operations are ongoing across Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, with hundreds still missing

 by Jessica Rawnsley

 

Torrential rains have triggered floods and landslides across parts of southern Asia, killing about 600 people.

Monsoon rain exacerbated by tropical storms caused some of the region's worst flooding in years, with millions affected in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Intense rainfall began on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday. "During the flood, everything was gone," a resident of Bireuen in Sumatra's Aceh province told Reuters news agency. "I wanted to save my clothes, but my house came down."

With hundreds still missing, the death toll is likely to rise. Thousands remain stranded, some awaiting rescue on rooftops.

 

As of Saturday more than 300 people had died in Indonesia and 160 in Thailand. There were also several deaths reported in Malaysia.

In Sri Lanka, which has been battered by Cyclone Ditwah, more than 130 people are dead and some 170 missing, officials said.

In Indonesia hundreds are still missing after heavy rains wreaked havoc on the island of Sumatra

An exceptionally rare tropical cyclone, named Cyclone Senyar, caused catastrophic landslides and flooding in Indonesia, with homes swept away and thousands of buildings submerged.

Indonesia's disaster agency said on Saturday that nearly 300 people were still missing after flooding devastated Sumatra.

"The current was very fast, in a matter of seconds it reached the streets, entered the houses," a resident in Aceh Province, Arini Amalia, told the BBC.

She and her grandmother raced to a relative's house on higher terrain. On returning the following day to retrieve some belongings, she said the flood had completely swallowed the house: "It's already sunk."

After waters rapidly rose in West Sumatra and submerged his home, Meri Osman said he was "swept away by the current" and clung onto a clothesline until he was rescued.

The bad weather has hampered rescue operations, and while tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds are still stranded, the Indonesian disaster agency said.

Tens of thousands of people have taken refuge in shelters in Thailand

In Thailand's southern Songkhla province, water rose 3m (10ft) and at least 145 people died in one of the worst floods in a decade.

Across the 10 provinces hit by flooding, more than 160 people have been killed, the government said on Saturday. More than 3.8 million people have been affected.

The city of Hat Yai experienced 335mm of rainfall in a single day, the heaviest in 300 years. As waters receded, officials recorded a sharp rise in the death toll.

At one hospital in Hat Yai, employees were forced to move bodies to refrigerated trucks after the morgue became overwhelmed, news agency AFP reported.

"We were stuck in the water for seven days and no agency came to help," Hat Yai resident Thanita Khiawhom told BBC Thai.

The government has promised relief measures, including compensation of up to two million baht ($62,000) for households that lost family members. 

Sri Lanka's government has declared a state of emergency and appealed for international assistance

In neighbouring Malaysia, the death toll is far lower, but the damage is just as devastating.

Flooding has wreaked havoc and left parts of northern Perlis state under water, with two people dead and tens of thousands forced into shelters.

Sri Lanka is also grappling with one of its worst weather disasters in recent years, and the government has declared a state of emergency.

More than 15,000 homes have been destroyed and some 78,000 people forced into temporary shelters, officials said. They added that about a third of the country was without electricity or running water.

Meteorologists have said the extreme weather in South East Asia may have been caused by the interaction of Typhoon Koto in the Philippines and the rare formation of Cyclone Senyar in the Malacca Strait.

The region's annual monsoon season, typically between June and September, often brings heavy rain.

Climate change has altered storm patterns, including the intensity and duration of the season, resulting in heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger winds.

Africa’s forests transformed from carbon sink to carbon source, study finds. Alarming shift since 2010 means planet’s three main rainforest regions now contribute to climate breakdown

 

A logging truck deep in the jungle of Cameroon in central Africa. Researchers said urgent action was needed to save the world’s great natural climate stabilisers. Photograph: imageBroker.com/Alamy

by  Jonathan Watts

 

Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilisers.

The alarming shift, which has happened since 2010, means all of the planet’s three main rainforest regions – the South American Amazon, south-east Asia and Africa – have gone from being allies in the fight against climate breakdown to being part of the problem.

Human activity is the primary cause of the problem. Farmers are clearing more land for food production. Infrastructure projects and mining are exacerbating the loss of vegetation and global heating – caused by the burning of gas, oil and coal – thereby degrading the resilience of ecosystems.

 

Scientists found that between 2010 and 2017, African forests lost approximately 106bn kg of biomass per year, which is equivalent to the weight of about 106m cars. The worst affected were the tropical moist broadleaf forests in Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and parts of west Africa

The study, published on Friday in Scientific Reports, was led by researchers at the National Centre for Earth Observation at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh. Using satellite data and machine learning, they tracked more than a decade of changes in the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation.

 

They discovered that Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, but since then widespread forest loss has tipped the balance so the continent is contributing more CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The authors said the results show that urgent action is needed to stop forest loss or the world risks losing one of its most important natural carbon buffers. They say that Brazil has launched an initiative, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which aims to mobilise more than $100bn (£76bn) for forest protection by paying countries to leave their forests untouched.

So far, however, only a handful of nations have invested a total of $6.5bn in the initiative.

Prof Heiko Balzter, a senior author and director of the Institute for Environmental Futures at the University of Leicester, said the study showed the importance of scaling up the TFFF rapidly.

 

“Policymakers ought to respond by putting better safeguards in place to protect the world’s tropical forests,” Balzter said.

“Four years ago, at Cop26 in Glasgow, world leaders declared their intention to end global deforestation by 2030. But progress is not being made fast enough. The new TFFF is intended to pay forested nations for keeping their trees rooted in the ground. It is a way for governments and private investors to counteract the drivers of deforestation, such as mining for minerals and metals, and agricultural land take. But more countries need to pay into it to make it work.”

Vietnam floods leave at least 90 dead and 12 missing

 

 by Ottilie Mitchell

 

At least 90 people have died and another 12 are missing after days of heavy rain in Vietnam led to flooding and landslides.

The Vietnamese government says 186,000 homes have been damaged across the country, with more than three million livestock swept away. Officials estimate there has been hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage.

The mountainous province of Dak Lak has been severely impacted, recording more than 60 deaths since 16 November, according to news agency AFP.

The floods are the latest extreme weather event to hit Vietnam in recent months, after typhoons Kalmaegi and Bualoi hit the country within weeks of each other.

 

Some 258,000 people were without power on Sunday morning and sections of major motorways and train tracks were blocked, officials said.

Military and police resources have been mobilised to assist in the hardest hit areas.

The government said the most severe impacts had been observed in five provinces - Quang Ngai, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, Khanh Hoa, and Lam Dong - clustered in south and south-central Vietnam.

Mach Van Si, a farmer in Dak Lak, told AFP: "Our neighbourhood was completely destroyed. Nothing was left. Everything was covered in mud."

Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính chaired a virtual emergency meeting on Sunday morning from South Africa, where he had been attending the G20 summit.

Rainfall had exceeded 1.5m (5ft) in several areas leading up to Friday, with some areas surpassing a 5.2m level not seen since 1993. The rain is forecast to ease in the coming days.

Scientists say that Vietnam has been left more exposed to extreme weather events by human-driven climate change, which has made typhoons stronger and more frequent

This oil-rich country has stood in the way of climate action. It’s quietly building a clean energy empire

 

By Laura Paddison

A dark geometric sprawl breaks up an expanse of ocher-hued sand in Saudi Arabia. Close up, the structure is made up of row after row of solar panels, glimmering in the intense sun as it beats down on this scrubby, arid land about 60 miles south of the city of Jeddah.

Al Shuaibah 2 is Saudi Arabia’s largest solar farm, with a capacity of more than 2 gigawatts, enough to power around 350,000 homes. But it won’t keep its crown for long. Even larger installations are already in development as mega solar farms proliferate across the country’s desert lands.

“There is a solar boom, no one can deny that,” said Nishant Kumar, renewable and power analyst at the research firm Rystad Energy. Saudi Arabia has pledged to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and the race is on to meet it.

At first glance, it may seem an unlikely reinvention; this is oil country after all. Saudi Arabia boasts the world’s second-largest oil reserves, is the largest oil exporter and has consistently pushed back against global efforts to move away from fossil fuels. But what’s happening here shows even the planet’s ultimate petrostate is making a bet on clean energy — just as the Trump administration seeks to strangle it.

The pace of Saudi Arabia’s solar boom has been breathtaking. “No country is going faster,” said Dave Jones, co-founder of the climate think tank Ember. 

 In 2020, the country had next to no renewables. By the end of this year, it’s predicted to have 12 gigawatts of solar, Kumar told CNN. Saudi Arabia has added so much in 2025 that it’s broken into the top 10 global markets for annual new solar for the first time, according to BloombergNEF data. 

The boom shows no signs of slowing. ACWA Power, the country’s utilities giant, which jointly owns the Al Shuaibah complex, announced in July — along with companies including state-owned oil and gas firm Saudi Aramco — an investment of $8.3 billion into 15 gigawatts of renewables, dominated by solar.

By 2030 solar will be growing “at a very fast pace,” Kumar said. Rystad projects more than 70 gigawatts will be installed by the end of the decade. “On top of that, they’re installing onshore wind as well,” he added. 

 There are plans to power huge infrastructure developments with clean energy, including the $500 billion futuristic city of NEOM and a luxury Red Sea tourism project. 

Arrays of solar panels help power the Jazlah Water Desalination plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, in 2024.

Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times/Redux

 

 

It’s a striking move for a country built on oil. “Black gold” funded Saudi Arabia’s transition from nomadic desert country to a significant global power in just decades.

But experts say its solar surge makes sense for several reasons, one of the biggest being economics. Simply put: it’s cheap.

“Solar is so cost competitive, it makes financial sense,” said Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. This is especially true given the accelerating electricity demand in the kingdom, driven by cooling needs and water desalination. 

 

Costs of solar have plummeted thanks to a flood of cheap Chinese-made solar panels into the market. The last two years have seen “just unprecedentedly low prices,” Ember’s Jones said. Battery costs have fallen, too, with average prices dropping by 40% in 2024 alone, according to Ember. Batteries make solar, which is otherwise only available when the sun shines, more flexible and even more attractive.

And solar suits Saudi Arabia: The sun reliably shines throughout most of the year, it has cheap and plentiful land, and grid connection is inexpensive, as there is space for huge solar farms near big cities, Jones said.

The country also benefits from economies of scale. “All of their installations are vast” allowing them to negotiate down equipment and construction costs, said Abdullah Alkattan, Middle East and North Africa energy transition analyst at BloombergNEF.

Another key reason for Saudi Arabia’s renewables push, experts say, is to displace oil from electricity generation at home — and instead sell it overseas. 

 

Under its Vision 2030 strategy, aimed at diversifying its economy away from reliance on oil, Saudi Arabia pledged to source 50% of its electricity from clean energy and 50% from gas by the end of this decade.

There are big economic drivers for this. Burning oil domestically is inefficient and taking it out of the electricity mix frees it up to be sold on global markets, Alkattan said. “That’s where the profit is.” 

 

This doesn’t mean climate considerations are absent from the country’s clean energy policies, Alkattan added. “To argue that ‘50% renewables, 50% gas’ is the cheapest electricity system available to Saudi Arabia is false,” he said. “This is part of the Saudi green initiative.”

Some experts, however, urge caution about the extent of Saudi’s solar ambitions. “It is significant in the sense that they were doing absolutely nothing… and then in the last couple of years, you could really see a shift,” said Ana Missirliu, a climate policy analyst at Climate Action Tracker, which monitors governments’ climate policies. “But I would say, compared to what’s needed, it’s really still very, very insufficient,” she told CNN.

Saudi Arabia’s overall climate policies and action are rated “critically insufficient” by CAT. Renewables only made up around 2% of Saudi Arabia’s electricity mix at the end of 2024, Missirliu said. Large amounts have been added through 2025 but she believes the 2030 target is far from feasible.

Others take a more optimistic view. Rystad projections show Saudi Arabia is on track to get more than a third of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and that its 50% goal will be achievable a few years later.

 

Saudi’s solar aspirations can still send a message, regardless of whether the renewables goal is met, Missirliu said. “Even a petrostate like Saudi Arabia knows and recognizes that renewables are unavoidable.” 

 

It’s a striking contrast to what’s currently happening in the US, where the Trump administration is trying to strangle solar and wind projects in the name of “energy dominance,” a strategy that is shorthand for ramping up fossil fuels only.

Saudi Arabia’s approach is “truly an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy, which is where (it) is actually more engaged on clean tech and renewables than the US (is now),” Columbia University’s Young said. The country is also interested in developing a domestic solar manufacturing supply chain, including battery storage, and producing electric vehicles, she added.

This attraction to clean energy isn’t just a Saudi phenomenon. Other Middle East countries are building out renewables, including the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Even Iran, another major petrostate with huge oil and gas reserves, is turning to solar in an attempt to navigate power crunches linked to aging infrastructure, mismanagement and sanctions.

None of this signals the end of the fossil fuel era, however, not least in Saudi Arabia. There might be a solar surge, but the country remains a petrostate. 

 

Saudi Arabia is still planning to get 50% of its electricity from planet-heating natural gas, for example, “so we are seeing a surge in gas capacity,” Kumar said. Power consumption in the kingdom is also increasing so quickly that even with the rush of renewables, it’s not yet displacing large amounts of fossil fuels, he added.

Meanwhile, the country remains a standard-bearer for oil, both in business and at the diplomatic negotiating table. Saudi Arabia, along with the US, played an important role in helping scupper a tax on the shipping industry’s climate pollution last month. It may be solar domestically, Kumar said, but “globally, they are pushing that oil is not going to go anywhere.”

As COP30 unfolds in Brazil, experts will be watching Saudi Arabia closely. The country “has always had a very disruptive role in climate negotiations,” said Missirliu. Whether that might now shift “is still something that we are waiting to see.”

'They're just so much further ahead': How China won the world's EV battery race

China is home to six out of the 10 largest battery makers in the world (Credit: Alamy)

by Xiaoying You

 

In 2005, China only had two EV battery manufacturers. Twenty years later, it produces more than three-quarters of the world's lithium-ion cells. How did it happen?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, athletes, journalists and officials from all over the world were transported by a fleet of sleek buses sporting a white, blue and green design as they zipped between different venues in the Chinese capital.

Different from the diesel-powered vehicles that ruled Beijing's streets at the time, the Olympic buses, numbering around 50, ran on lithium-ion batteries to help Beijing host a "green and high-tech" Olympic Games. It also marked the country's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (EVs), laying the groundwork for China's ascension to world leader of this technology two decades later.

The Olympic e-bus campaign had been set in motion as soon as Beijing won the bid in 2001, according to a 2020 documentary aired by China's state media. But developing and producing EV batteries for the global event was no easy feat.

The buses at the Beijing Olympics marked the China's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (Credit: Getty Images)

In late 2003, Mo Ke and his colleagues at the Beijing New Materials Development Centre – a government-affiliated research institute – were tasked to analyse China's lithium battery industry as part of Beijing's preparatory work for the Olympics.

But back then, China's lithium battery industry was "very small" with only two EV battery producers, as Mo's team found. In 2005, they hosted China's first conference for the lithium battery industry as a part of their research.

"All companies in the industry came, but there were only around 200 people in total," Mo says.

At the time, CATL, the world's current largest EV battery maker, was a department of ATL, a Japanese-owned company that made lithium batteries for electronic gadgets. BYD, the world's current second-largest EV battery maker and a leading EV maker, had just entered the auto industry after earning its first barrel of capital by supplying batteries to phone giants. 

Twenty years later, China is the king of the industry indispensable to the world's 2050 net-zero goal. It produces more than three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries worldwide and is home to six out of the 10 largest battery makers on the planet.

 

What led to its meteoric rise? The answer lies in a combination of factors.

Two of them are a huge domestic market "walled off and preserved" for local firms and coordinated government support across the supply chain, says Xie Yanmei, an independent analyst of Chinese political economy and industrial policy. Consumer subsidies, state-sponsored rollout of charging networks and a policy mandating automakers to make EVs also helped, she notes.

But policy is only part of the story. Chinese companies also proved adept at large-scale production and controlling cost – both key to EV battery manufacturing.

"They have strong survival instinct and will proactively explore new ideas to help them stay competitive," says Song Xin, who advises Chinese companies ranging from car to robot makers aiming to go global. "This is the foundation of the industry's continuous growth."

International roots

The story of lithium batteries began beyond China's shores about 50 years ago with three chemists: British-American Stanley Whittingham, American John Goodenough and Japanese Akira Yoshino.

 

Their separate research – which earned them a joint Nobel Prize in 2019 – rode on each other's strength and led to the invention of the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985, built by Yoshino for Tokyo-based chemical company Asahi Kasei.

In 1991, Japanese electronics company Sony worked with Asahi Kasei to bring the world's first lithium-ion batteries to the market. Five years later, Nissan teamed up with Sony to launch the world's first car powered by a lithium-battery.

In the following decade, Japan was the global number one lithium-ion battery producer, with South Korea keenly vying for supremacy. At the turn of the century, Japanese firms accounted for a staggering 93% of the global market share, with electronics company Sanyo leading the charge. It wasn't until 2011 that South-Korean Samsung SDI overtook Japanese Panasonic to top the chart.

" Chinese policy makers decided that EVs could be an opportunity for the Chinese auto industry to leapfrog the west – Xie Yanmei "

When Mo was researching China's lithium battery industry in the early 2000s, Mengguli and Wanxiang were the only two companies making EV batteries in the country.

 

"They supplied most of the batteries for the e-buses that served the Beijing Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010," says Mo, now the founder and chief analyst of Chinese battery-research firm, RealLi Research.

But before the Olympics, China had already planned a long game. In 2006, its cabinet launched a science and technology scheme that would cover the next 15 years. It included "low-emission and new-energy vehicles [NEVs]" as one of the 62 priority areas the country should pursue, and listed "rechargeable power battery" as a key technology for this area. NEVs, a term frequently used by the Chinese government, refers to pure electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methanol.

China's goal was clear: to upgrade its vast manufacturing industry by 2020 so that it would stop relying on cheap labour and start winning with technological advantages.

Chinese companies proved adept at large-scale production and controlling cost – both key to manufacturing EV batteries (Credit: Alamy)

In 2009, with a smooth run of the Olympics e-buses in the bag, China made a major move to "adjust and revitalise" its auto industry.

For years, Beijing had tried but failed to be a global contender in the conventional auto industry that featured internal combustion engines. But it believed it was time for a reboot.

"Chinese policy makers decided that EVs could be an opportunity for the Chinese auto industry to leapfrog the west, because it was like a blank field where everybody was starting from scratch," says Xie.

A national plan guided regional governments to build supply chains and charging networks for NEVs. It also supported domestic companies to spearhead the research and development of technologies related to EVs, including batteries.

In the same year, the country began its large-scale rollout of new-energy buses, with the "10 Cities and Thousand Vehicles" programme.

Sluggish American competition

In Mo's view, China's determination to promote EVs was vital for its battery ascension, and that vision was partly inspired by the US.

 

The US saw a wave of interest in developing and making battery-powered vehicles first during the 1970s after the breakout of the oil crisis, and then again in the 1990s after the federal government published a regulation to tackle air pollution.

As early as 1990, California launched a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) programme to improve air quality by encouraging the adoption of EVs. The programme led to the introduction of ZEV mandate, which essentially forced car companies like General Motors to invest in EVs, says Anders Hove, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the UK.

Actions on the other side of the ocean led the Chinese government to realise that EVs were "a stepping stone" to what was later described as the "fourth industrial revolution" – an era characterised and driven by digital technologies – and China wanted a place in it, according to Mo.

But the EV push by California did not lead to the establishment of a US lithium-ion battery industry, partly because car and oil companies lobbied California to "water down" the ZEV mandate to give more support for fuel cells powered by hydrogen and hybrid cars, whose batteries used non-lithium chemistries, Hove says.

China produces more than three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries worldwide (Credit: Getty Images)

In the 2000s, the George W Bush administration introduced measures to fund the research and development of EVs. US startups made major progress on both batteries and cars, Hove says, but then came the financial crisis in 2008.

"[The first wave of US startups] all ran into a lot of financial difficulty and the window kind of closed on investing in clean energy," Hove says. "All the people who had invested in that, they were burned."

In the following year, the Obama administration launched a new round of funding, but it was too late to save that first wave of  renewable companies from collapsing or selling their technologies, Hove says. Many of them were bought by Chinese firms, according to him, including battery company A123, a rising-star that boasted advanced lithium-ion battery technology developed at MIT. A123 was acquired by China's Wanxiang in 2013.

At the same time, China launched an enormous four-trillion-yuan (roughly £394bn or $649bn then) stimulus plan to counter the impact of the global financial crisis and part of it was directed towards "energy-saving and emissions-reduction" projects. The move ignited the country's interest in renewable technologies, including NEVs, according to a 2010 report published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and China's Research Institute of Resources and Environment Policies.

China's industry snowballs

The years between 2012 and 2020 proved to be critical for China's battery makers as the government doubled down its effort in putting EVs on the road.

 

An industrial roadmap for new-energy vehicles set targets on the number of EVs the country should deploy over the period. More importantly, it also set technical requirements for EV and battery manufacturers to apply for state support – a push for them to grow. In 2013, China made EV purchase subsidies available to individual consumers, not just the public sector, opening the floodgate to private car ownership.

The scale of the state backing was enormous. In 2014, China's central and regional governments spent nearly 10bn yuan (roughly £986m or $1.6bn then) on subsidies, according to a report at the time. Over the next eight years, the country would go on to hand out 200bn yuan (£21bn or $28bn) in tax rebates in total for new-energy vehicles.

The investment yielded almost instant result. Both the number of NEVs produced and sold in the country grew more than threefold in 2014 and 2015, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade body. Their market share would snowball from 1.3% in 2015 to 41% in 2024.

 But a bigger boost for the battery industry was yet to arrive. In 2015, China introduced a key rule that – in Xie's words – "walled off" its huge domestic market for Chinese battery firms. EV makers were mandated to use batteries produced by one of the selected suppliers if their cars were to qualify for consumer subsidies. All of the 57 companies that appeared on a government "white list" turned out to be Chinese.

 

"It was very cleverly designed technical specifications that narrowly defined that only Chinese battery companies would be eligible," Xie says. At that time, some South Korean companies had already started building factories in China, "only to find out that they were completely shut out the market", she adds.

Those Chinese EV makers that had been using foreign suppliers had to make a last-minute switch to battery manufacturer CATL and few other domestic firms complied with the policy, The Economic Observer reported. That rule ended up lasting four years.

In the fast lane

A sudden influx of new customers propelled CATL – which split from ATL in 2011 – to become the world's largest EV battery producer in 2017, based in Ningde, China, beating Panasonic and its compatriot BYD, Chinese news site Caixin reported. CATL has held the title since.

The policy drive continued with the "Made in China 2025" strategy, which aimed at helping the country "grab the global vantage point for manufacturing" by the mid-2020s through technological innovation. NEVs were listed as a "key area" the country should "vigorously promote".

Riding on the momentum, China introduced a "dual-credit" system for automakers in 2017. Partly based on California's ZEV programme, the policy essentially demanded that all automakers in China produce EVs to "balance off" the conventional cars they made through a complex formula. A "one-way street" design pushed automakers to make more EVs in order to avoid unnecessary cash spending.

 

Chinese manufacturer CATL became the world's largest EV battery producer in 2017 (Credit: Getty Images)

 

"As an automaker, on the one hand, you had to produce EVs in China or face a [financial] penalty. On the other, the EVs you were forced to produce would not sell without Chinese batteries," Xie explains. "So, every automaker, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Americans, Germans, had to use Chinese batteries."

The ballooning and protected market allowed CATL to work with advanced Western car makers on joint innovation. The process "quickly brought up its skill and capability", Xie adds.

The way China's EV and battery industries grew was also fundamentally different from the West. The key was the close partnership between the government and the industry, says Song, founder of Sinnvoll Global Strategy, a think tank with offices in Beijing and Berlin.

The government's massive investment had come with a clear goal: to build a strong EV manufacturing industry. And that goal was delivered via fierce competition within the industry to decide which companies or technologies would survive and thrive, according to Song.

 

This method – like running rounds and rounds of industrial-wide "horse races" to pick the fastest – is much more effective than the conventional model in Europe, North America and Japan, where industrial growth is often driven by few major companies or consortiums, she explains. "This also means that China can bring a technology from the lab to mass production very quickly."

Secrets to success

There are other important elements that set China's battery industry apart. "It's the supply chain, know-how and manufacturing," says Taylor Ogan, chief executive of Shenzhen-based Snow Bull Capital, which invests in China's clean-tech sector.

For one, top Chinese battery makers, such as CATL and BYD, run on a "vertically integrated" business model, which means that they often own their suppliers fully or partly.

"This helps control cost and ensure the security and reliability of their supply chains," says Chen Shan, a Shanghai-based analyst on battery markets at Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy.

Their capability at managing large-scale manufacturing matters enormously, too.

 

"Modern EV battery packs string hundreds of small cells side by side or end by end. One weak cell would drag down the whole chain, cut range and raise safety risks," explains Liu Chengguang, who researches battery materials in Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China. "Every cell must be almost identical."

Achieving the feat "demands massive, highly automated plants with strict process control and real-time testing and smart sorting," he notes.

Constant innovation and targeted education has helped Chinese battery makers stay ahead of the game (Credit: Getty Images)

This is precisely the strength of CATL, which grabbed nearly 40% of the global EV battery market in 2024, more than double second-place BYD.

"The secret to CATL's success is that it can use less money to make better batteries while maintaining a huge manufacturing capacity," according to Cheng Manqi, a journalist with Chinese business outlet Late Post, who has investigated the firm.

 

Constant innovation is another factor helping Chinese battery makers stay ahead of the game. For example, BYD's signature "blade battery", a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery, was launched in 2020 partly because it was cheaper to make: the battery did not use cobalt, a mineral for which China had to rely on imports. But BYD significantly improved the performance of previous LFPs, making them more powerful, safer and smaller. It became so popular that it altered the prevailing type of lithium-ion battery in China.

" Chinese batteries are cheaper, they are high-performing, they are available – Francesca Ghiretti "

Behind such a rapid tech revolution is a large pool of Chinese battery engineers, who came through a targeted education and vocational training system offered by colleges, universities and battery companies. 

"Chinese companies have a generation of incredibly skilled technical researchers," says Cory Combs, head of critical mineral and supply chain research at consultancy Trivium China.

"They are not just PhDs who work upstream in the lab. They're not just floor workers in the factories," says Combs. They are "practicing engineers", who know the production processes thoroughly, understand what the market wants and can use their knowledge to improve existing technology quicky to win consumers. "That's what you need to make batteries cost effective to produce," he says.

 

CATL employs more than 20,000 technical engineers while BYD's battery arm, FinDreams Battery, has more than 10,000 of them.

Can China maintain its dominance?

Today, China dominates the production at every stage of the battery supply chain, apart from the mining and processing of some raw minerals, according to the International Energy Agency. It is home to nearly 85% of the battery production capacity globally, compared to North America's 5% and Europe's 7%, according to research by consultancy Wood Mackenzie, seen by the BBC.

A consensus among researchers is that it will be extremely difficult for other countries to challenge China's dominance over the current generation of battery technologies.

"Some aspects that led to China's leadership, such as the existence of industrial clusters and vertical integration of supply chains, will be difficult to replicate," says Kate Logan, a director at Asia Society Policy Institute who focuses on China's climate and clean energy policies.

The fact that Chinese companies have already achieved scale manufacturing batteries and are expanding its production overseas is another huge hurdle for perspective competitors.

 "Chinese batteries are cheaper, they are high-performing, they are available," says Francesca Ghiretti, a researcher on China and economic security at RAND Europe, a non-profit research organisation. China's production scale "makes it really difficult for others to catch up – not to catch up with the technology, but the commercial success of that technology," she says.

It will be difficult for other countries to challenge China's dominance over EV battery technologies, experts say (Credit: Getty Images)

But in Mo's view, the door isn't completely shut for other countries. What China is really good at is taking existing technologies and making them better and cheaper, but the country's weakness is in cutting-edge research, he says.

If other countries can get ahead with next-generation battery technologies, such as solid-state batteries, "there may still be chances" for them to compete, Mo says. Traditional lithium-ion batteries use a liquid electrolyte to transfer ions between the electrodes, but solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte. What is unique about them is that it may not need the existing supply chain meant for liquid-based cells, potentially opening space for non-Chinese contenders, Mo says.

Companies such as China's CATL and BYD, South Korea's Samsung SDI and the US's QuantumScape are developing solid-state batteries. But for the US – which heavily relies on China for lithium-ion batteries at present – scaling up manufacturing to a competitive level is expected to challenging, according to an analysis published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Obstacles include lagging know-how, uncertain demand and high energy costs, the analysis said.

 

"It is only possible in the near term by working with Chinese companies because they are at the forefront of the technology," says Hove of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. "If you don't have that manufacturing expertise, you won't be able to scale up any breakthrough technology." Instead, it is the expansion of the know-how that will enable the catch up, he says.

But this is no easy feat, given China's 20-year lead in building a battery-manufacturing ecosystem. For some, such as Ogan of Snow Bull Capital, the past two decades may have sealed China's long-lasting lead in the global battery supply chain.

"There will not be a time that I can ever envision another country catching up with the Chinese in terms of battery manufacturing," he says. "They're just so much further ahead."