Climate crisis could be destabilising mountain areas like Nepal, experts warn. Unusual heat "this year" may have melted ice and thawed bonds that hold glaciers in place – leading to catastrophe

 

Nuwakot in Nepal. The UN’s scientific advisory body warned in 2023 that ice-bound landmasses would become more unstable. Photograph: Sanjit Pariyar/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

by  Jonathan Watts

 

The devastating flash flood that has ripped through the border communities of Nepal and Tibet has heightened fears that the climate crisis is destabilising the geology of mountain and polar regions, threatening millions of people.

Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause of the deadly torrent of mud, water and ice that tore along the Bhotekoshi River on Wednesday. It swept away buildings and roads and left at least 360 dead and 1,400 missing.

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake was initially blamed for the collapse. However, it is now thought to have been caused by the huge wall of ice that crashed down on to the north slope of Langtang Lirung, a 7,000-metre (23,000ft) mountain, the impact of which registered a magnitude of 5.2.

“Additional analysis of long-period seismic waves indicates that the seismic energy was instead generated by a glacial collapse and debris flow,” the US Geological Survey said.

The ice-rock avalanche pushed boulders and other debris into the Lhende Khola River, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi River. Water levels in rivers downstream rose by between 7 and 9 metres within 30 minutes, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, an intergovernmental scientific institution.

Scientists are still examining the precise mechanics of the Himalayan disaster, but many observe that glaciers and permafrost around the world are being weakened by global heating, caused by the burning of gas, oil and coal.

Flooding in the Bhotekoshi River has affected low-lying areas along the riverbanks and nearby homes in Nuwakot, Nepal. Photograph: Ap Tolang/Nexpher/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

The detachment of a chunk of the glacier wall came amid unusual heat that was likely to have melted the ice that bound the splintered bedrock together.

Two days before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the last two years, according to Dr Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10km) away from the site.

“These high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, filled crevasses with water and thawed the bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place,” he told the Science Media Centre.

A series of intense heatwaves has hit the region since early this year and affected countries around the world. Another factor here was the monsoon season, which saturated the soil and swelled rivers.

Disasters like this were foretold. In 2023 the UN’s top scientific advisory body warned that previously ice-bound landmasses – from permafrost tundra to mountain glaciers – would become increasingly unstable as temperatures rose.

“Every increment of warming will multiply and intensify future hazards from cryosphere regions,” observed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its sixth synthesis report. “Floods, landslides and freshwater shortages from glacier retreat and snow loss pose a serious threat to mountain regions across the world.”

Average global temperatures are nudging closer to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Even faster warming is occurring in alpine and polar regions because the loss of snow and ice is removing the thermal insulation of the land.

Dr Richard Waller, a senior lecturer in physical geography at Keele University, said: “The progressive loss of snow and glacier ice results in the surface being less reflective, so it absorbs more solar energy and heats up. In combination with atmospheric warming, this is leading to the melting of mountain permafrost.

“Think of the high mountains like this as shattered bedrock glued together by ice-filled joints. As the permafrost and the ice-filled joints melt, then there’s the potential for these types of catastrophic failure.”

A destroyed building in Devighat, Nuwakot. Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

The thaw is altering the shape, colour and solidity of the landscape, creating or expanding glacial meltwater lakes and, in the long term, threatening the origin of many rivers and the drinking supplies of populations downstream. In many parts of Asia, hundreds of millions of people depend on the rivers such as the Ganges and the Brahmaputra that descend from the glaciers.

Scientists have high confidence that glacier retreat is caused by human-driven global heating. This has caused glacier collapses from the Alps to the Andes. In the Langtang catchment area in Nepal, glacier loss rates have increased more than fourfold since 1964, a study has shown.

TImeline of how deadly Nepal and Tibet flash flood unfolded – explainer

 

This has contributed to a loss of life on multiple occasions. A smaller flood hit the Bhotekoshi River in July 2025 and in 2015, the Langtang Lirung mountain was hit by an earthquake-induced avalanche that destroyed Langtang village.

As emergency services look for bodies and humanitarian relief groups mobilise for survivors, others are asking where next. Waller said any high mountain areas with glaciers and permafrost could be vulnerable, including the European Alps, Caucasus, Himalayas, Andes and beyond.

As glacier weakening accelerates, Pritchard called for greater disaster preparedness. “More avalanches and more floods are inevitable, particularly as lakes grow in front of the retreating glaciers,” he said. “Early warning systems are urgently needed to protect the people living in these valleys.”

"Climate Change" - Nearly 1,400 missing, mostly tourists, after Nepal-Tibet flash flood kills at least 270

 

A drone view shows mud covering properties after the flash flood in Trishuli, Nepal. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

 Nepal’s disaster authority said satellite data indicated a “snow-rock landslide” on the Nepal-China border may have caused the flood. Scientists say climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the region.

For a prediction, read this 2016 article: 

 Entire villages swept away after glacial collapse triggers flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims

by  Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, Sam Jones, Kate Lamb and agencies

Rescuers are searching for nearly 1,400 people, most of them tourists, who are missing after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, thundering down valleys, obliterating entire villages and killing at least 270 people.

Efforts to locate those missing – including hundreds of people from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada – have been complicated by the destruction of dozens of bridges and almost 25 miles (40km) of roads in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims.

Videos from Wednesday’s disaster showed a massive wall of water crashing down on the border as people tried to flee. Trucks were upended and houses, roads ⁠and power projects swept away in Nepal, while ​officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties” after a mudslide hit a border crossing.

Deadly flash flood hit Nepal and China - cinemagraph

 

Rescue teams have found bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal, near the Tibetan border. Dozens of injured people have been transported to Kathmandu for advanced medical care. By Thursday morning, the Nepali army had rescued more than 100 people from flood-affected areas by helicopter.

David Fisher, the head of the Nepal delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said entire villages and market areas had been wiped out.

In the affected areas, houses, trees and vehicles were submerged or buried in mudslides. Helicopters hovered overhead all day, helping to rescue survivors.

The power, volume and speed of the surging waters gave little time for anyone to flee.

People from the hard-hit areas of Nuwakot and Dhading were seen gathering outside a Nepali army training centre – the base for helicopter rescue operations – seeking information about missing family members.

Police were recording the names of the missing just outside the barracks gate. Mobile phone torches were their only source of light as the area remained without electricity due to damaged hydroelectric infrastructure.

The village of Soley, in Nuwakot, which had about 25 homes, was virtually wiped out, according to Nirajan Paudyal, a Kathmandu-based journalist whose parents and other relatives live there. Desperate for information, he travelled to the area on Thursday for news of his family.

 

“There is no update till now,” he said. “I fear there won’t be any update.”

Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism ⁠officials said. Among those unaccounted were 177 from India, 63 from the US, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.

Chinese state media said at least 558 were missing on the Tibet side of the border, of whom at least 260 were foreign nationals.

Police in Nepal said 270 ⁠bodies had been recovered by Thursday afternoon local time, while Chinese state media reported three dead on the Tibet side of the border.

Many of the victims were on a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in ‌Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists among others.

Early reports from Nepali ​officials suggested an earthquake could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger ‌the floods. But the US Geological Survey later said what was initially reported ‌as a 4.4-magnitude earthquake was a seismic shock generated by glacial rock and ice collapsing and the flow of debris. “No earthquake had occurred,” it said.

amaged section of highway in Nepal after the flash flood. Photograph: Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
 

An initial study of Planet Labs satellite imagery indicated a landslide of ice and rock triggered the debris-laden flood in the Lhende River, about 12 miles (20km) north-east of the Nepal-China Rasuwagadhi border crossing, Nepal’s national disaster authority said. Experts say the risk of such events is compounded by the extreme topography of the Himalayas.

People shared harrowing stories of how they managed to survive. “I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,” said Bibek Kumal, a labourer who was working downstream from the worst-hit Rasuwa district, near Nepal’s Himalayan border with China’s Tibet.

From his hospital bed, Kumal said the torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris but he survived by clinging to a mango tree. “Had there been no mango tree, I would ‌have been washed away to death,” he said.

Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor who was being treated at a small hospital, said: “It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher.

“I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take ⁠her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud. Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.”

 

Nepali soldiers carrying a survivor of the flash flood. Photograph: Nepal Army/EPA

 

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said UN teams and partners were mobilising supplies and personnel to support communities affected by the disaster. The US government said it would provide $500,000 in emergency assistance.

Tibet government officials deployed nearly 800 emergency workers and 150 vehicles as well as sniffer dogs and speed boats to help the rescue efforts, China’s official Xinhua news agency said.

The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, travelled to the affected area on the China-Nepal border on Thursday to oversee search efforts there.

 

The tour company Himalayan Glacier said 47 people, including two children, were missing from one of its groups in Nepal. Among them were 15 Australians, 10 Canadians, nine Nepalis, eight Americans, two Britons, two Singaporeans and one Russian-American dual citizen, its managing director, Sanket Pandey, said.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with those concerned about their loved ones, and that getting information about the status of missing people remained difficult.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

'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."

‘China Is the Engine’ Driving Nations Away From Fossil Fuels, Report Says. Its vast investment in solar, wind and batteries is on track to end an era of global growth in the use of coal, oil and gas, the researchers said.

 

Solar panels and wind turbines in Shandong Province, China, in June.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

 

 

 By Max Bearak

 

 Since the beginning of the industrial age, the global economy has required more and more fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — to power growth.

It is increasingly clear, however, that China’s aggressive efforts to sell batteries, solar panels and wind turbines to the world is on course to bring that era to an end, a new report says. The Chinese dominance of clean-energy industries is “creating the conditions for a decline in fossil fuel use,” according to a report by Ember, a research group focused on the prospects for clean-energy technologies.

The report includes a sprawling set of data to support its claim.

 The scale of Chinese production since 2010 has driven the price of these technologies down by 60 to 90 percent, the researchers found. And last year, more than 90 percent of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produced power more cheaply than the cheapest available fossil-fuel alternative, they said. That cost advantage might have seemed laughable before China began pumping billions of dollars of subsidies into the sector.

 

“China is the engine,” said Richard Black, the report’s editor. “And it is changing the energy landscape not just domestically but in countries across the world.”

If Beijing is trying to wrest the future of energy from anyone, it would be the United States, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer and exporter. The Trump administration has eliminated almost all federal support for renewable energies and has pressured countries to purchase American fossil fuels as part of trade deals.

 

The falling cost of renewable energy, though, means that many countries, particularly poorer ones, have a strong incentive to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

According to Ember’s report, the falling costs of energy produced by Chinese-made wind and solar installations have allowed countries like Mexico, Bangladesh and Malaysia to race past the United States in recent years in terms of using renewably produced electricity (rather than fossil fuels) in everyday activities like heating and cooling buildings or powering vehicles.

Across Africa, solar panel imports from China rose 60 percent in the last 12 months, and 20 African countries imported a record amount over that period, Ember said in a separate study recently.

 American companies, who do not make solar panels or wind turbines at anywhere near the scale of Chinese ones, are at a major disadvantage. Chinese companies now supply 80 percent of solar panels and 60 percent of wind turbines worldwide, Ember said.

 

China has pushed for dominance in renewable energy partly for economic reasons and also to protect its national security by limiting its reliance on oil imports. But the implications for the planet’s health could scarcely be greater. Scientific consensus has long been that a sharp decline in fossil fuel use is the surest way to lessen the pace of climate change.

“For too long, emerging economies have faced what seemed like a stark trade-off between growth and sustainability,” said Suwit Khunkitti, Thailand’s former deputy prime minister. The Ember report “challenges that assumption,” he said.

To be sure, some countries would not be keen to rely so heavily on Chinese technology for geopolitical reasons. And few developing countries have the spending capacity to install the kinds of energy transmission and storage capacity that has allowed China to transform its own domestic energy grid so quickly.

 

When the world’s fossil fuel use will peak also comes down to the pace of that change in China itself.

China still burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and emits more climate pollution than the United States and Europe together. The country has not yet seen a decline in coal usage overall, though its total greenhouse gas emissions have reached what looks like a plateau.

But last year, China met 84 percent of its electricity demand growth with solar and wind power, according to the report. That meant it was able to cut fossil fuel use by 2 percent, despite a growing demand for power.

 Mr. Black said that decline in fossil fuel use was largely due to burning less coal to produce electricity. He pointed to a number of recent policy directives that have reallocated subsidies and production incentives away from coal and toward solar and wind.

 

China is still building dozens of new coal-burning power plants, he said, but instead of running constantly like many existing ones, they might be at full capacity only during peaks in energy demand. Meanwhile, the contribution of wind and solar to the grid was quickly growing, he said.

“Coal is increasingly acting like training wheels,” said Yuan Jiahai, a professor at North China Electric Power University. “It provides balance and backup while the clean electricity system gains strength and confidence.”

China’s economy as a whole is increasingly reliant on the clean energy sector.

Investment and production in clean energy last year contributed nearly $2 trillion to China’s economy, a figure which the report said was around one-tenth of the country’s economy as a whole, or comparable to Australia’s entire economy. The clean energy sector grew at a rate three times that of China’s economy overall, according to the report.

Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

America was already losing to China on clean energy. Trump just sealed its fate

 by Ella Nilsen

The new clean energy regime can be summarized in one incredible statistic: China installed more wind and solar power in a single year than the total amount of renewable energy currently operating in the United States.

America was already laps behind China in the race to dominate the industry, new data from Global Energy Monitor shows. President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful,” spending bill will secure its position as a clean-energy loser, experts told CNN.

The spending law Trump signed earlier this month knee-caps clean energy tax credits for wind and solar. Business leaders say it will raise electricity prices for businesses and consumers alike here, as the cheapest electrons on the grid (generated by wind and solar) become more costly to build and are replaced with more expensive gas.

At the same time, pulling funds from the clean energy industry puts it on its heels just as it was looking to make gains toward more efficient technologies and better battery storage.

Meanwhile, China is currently building 510 gigawatts of utility-scale solar and wind capacity, according to Global Energy Monitor. It will be added to the eye-popping 1,400 gigawatts already online — five times what is operating in the US.

In short, “the game has already been called,” said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. 

Wind and solar, bolstered by giant batteries that can store their energy, are also becoming an increasingly dominant force in the US, but on a much smaller scale. Renewables generate the vast majority of new electricity that’s come online in the past few years in the US and make up about 85% of what is currently waiting to be approved in the nation’s permitting queue. 

The US had roughly 275 gigawatts of wind and solar operating at the end of last year. There are another 150 gigawatts of wind and solar planned for construction through 2031, according to the US Energy Information Administration — projects at risk with Trump and Republicans’ bill that quickly phases out subsidies for renewables.

In the US, wind and solar developers are running into the buzzsaw that is President Donald Trump. Trump pushed forcefully to kill tax credits for wind and solar development in his signature law, succeeding in curtailing the credits and vowing to hinder the industry in other ways. 

 The law effectively cuts planned renewables additions to the grid in half over the next decade compared to projections without it, according to modeling done by the non-partisan think tank Rhodium Group. That will mean rising electricity prices in every continental US state, due to the price of renewables increasing and more expensive gas filling the gap, as CNN has reported. 

 

Even with China’s blistering pace of installations so far, 510 gigawatts of wind and solar currently being built is astonishing. Shuo said the number seemed a little higher than what Chinese analysts have projected.

Mengqi Zhang and Yujia Han, the two Global Energy Monitor analysts who authored the report, told CNN that part of the reason the number is so high is that Chinese renewables developers were racing to build out quickly in order to claim government subsidies that expired in June.

“This is why the surge is coming before May,” Han said.

Most of China’s wind and solar farms are far away from its largest cities. But in China’s capital of Beijing, the country’s energy transition is apparent in another way – it is difficult to find a gas-powered car driving on the roads, Shuo said. Shuo recently visited Beijing and said nearly all Uber drivers there are driving EVs. 

A worker controls a robotic arm on the production line at an electric vehicle factory in Ningbo, China, on May 29.

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

 

 

“All the drivers will tell you it just doesn’t make any economic sense for them to purchase another (gas) vehicle,” Shuo said. “Some of them told me that the fuel cost of driving an EV is about one sixth of an (gas)-powered vehicle.”

Climate analysts in China feel confident the nation has reached its peak oil use, given the dramatic uptick in EV use, Shuo said. But the outstanding question is China’s power sector, and whether all the wind and solar the country has installed over the last several years can displace coal-fired power. Over the few months, China’s increased demand for power has been met entirely by renewables, meaning the country hasn’t increased its planet-warming pollution even as it’s using more power. 

 

“There’s still a lot of entrenched interest to support coal, but overall what we’re looking at is renewable energy eating into the share of fossil fuel power generation,” Shuo said.

Meanwhile, in the US, more expensive electricity could significantly hamper economic development and discourage companies from building here, undermining one of Trump’s own priorities. With less wind and solar coming online due to the GOP law, plus long wait times to get new natural gas plants up and running, Rhodium analyst Ben King said some data centers and large manufacturing facilities may struggle to get enough power.

“Data centers, semiconductor manufacturing and other sources of new industrial load, that just might not be able to come online, because we may not have the generators to meet that demand,” King said.