A Tale of Two Countries

Two superpowers, one behaving pathetically

I confess I’m a little weary—I’ve been in six cities this week, with lots and lots of Amtrak in between. And it’s been a heavy week to be up on a stage speaking—in Houston Thursday night there were a full squad of police around me, even when I went to the men’s room, which I was grateful for and sad about; a country where we need to fear a rifle shot during a speech is not one I hope we live in forever. Still, it’s been a pleasure to spread the news from my new book, which seems to me the one big, good thing happening on planet earth, the rapid surge in clean energy which might take a bite out of both the climate and the authoritarianism crisis.

But it’s clearer ever this week that one superpower is going to be helping and the other…isn’t.

China first. Remarkable new details emerged yesterday of a trend we’ve been talking about for years in this newsletter: the rapid spread of clean energy and its associated appliances not only in China but in all the countries increasingly in their sphere. The folks at the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins published a huge new study detailing the “rapid scale- up of overseas Chinese clean-tech manufacturing investments.”

Investment volume: Chinese firms have pledged at least USD 227 billion across green manufacturing projects. A high-end estimate approaches USD 250 billion. This surge of overseas green manufacturing investment is unprecedented; it now surpasses the USD 200 billion (in current 2024 dollars) invested by the US over four years of the Marshall Plan, at a time of similar American dominance of manufacturing in key industries.

I want you to go back and reread the last sentence of that paragraph—bigger, in real dollar terms, than the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan, of course, was what America spent to rebuilt the world in the wake of World War II, and it was a key driver of what became the most prosperous economy the world has ever seen. The American century was built in no small part on making sure that our allies (and enemies) in the Second World War recovered and were fitted into our trading system. Now the Chinese are doing the same thing, except somewhat bigger and faster. Bloomberg’s Sheryl Tian Tong Lee gives some sense of where the money is going:

Firms channeled the most capital to Indonesia, focusing on nickel-rich battery materials and solar projects, the researchers found. Morocco was also a draw for battery materials and green hydrogen investments, thanks to natural phosphate resources and its proximity to Europe. Middle East nations have been attracting investments in solar module and electrolyzer plants, supported by sovereign offtake agreements.

As David Fickling—a truly superb chronicler of the moment—writes:

This can be seen as the second stage of the China-led global energy transition. The first, which is still only a few years old, came from exports of finished products — solar panels, EVs, and batteries.

Thanks to that trade, about two-thirds of emerging markets now have a larger share of solar power in their grids than the roughly 9% in the US, according to a separate study this week from pro-transition think tank Ember. One in four are electrifying their entire economies more rapidly. EVs are being adopted in Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates at a pace to match or even exceed developed markets.

As the Times explained,

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.

And it comes with very good news for the planet:

This commerce is already affecting demand for fossil fuels. China’s solar exports last year alone were sufficient to cut long-run global carbon emissions by 4 billion metric tons, equivalent to about 40 days of emissions. Pakistan, which has for years treated gas generation as the backbone of its power network, has been asking suppliers to defer shipments of liquefied natural gas after a surge of solar imports suppressed grid demand. Saudi Arabia is facing one of the fastest declines in petroleum usage anywhere as photovoltaic farms replace fuel oil generators.

These exports have raised hackles and trade restrictions, however, due to their sheer scale. What’s different about the second stage of this transition is that foreign direct investment is building physical factories, ports and facilities that will generate jobs and investments for decades to come, cementing host countries’ commitment to clean technology.

So, you might wonder—what is the U.S. doing to match this remarkable challenge by the Chinese. In the past, if we feared a missile gap we built missiles. If Russia launched satellites, we built more and better. Faced with clear evidence of China’s green intentions, Joe Biden launched the IRA and we started to claw our way back into the race.

Now we’re the throw-in-the-towel nation, and this week it was cabinet secretaries Christopher Wright and Doug Burgum doing the tossing. They traveled to Europe to try and convince those nations that the Paris accords were “silly,” that despite the worst fire season in the continent’s history global warming was only worried people because they read about it in the papers, and that therefore they should relax EU rules on heat-trapping methane and buy a ton of American LNG. Sharply expanding American fossil fuel exports to Europe, they insisted, was crucial to “peace and prosperity.”

On paper, this should be a hard mission—as the Times pointed out, “the European Union has a law that mandates a 55 percent reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and zeroing them out by 2050.” But Burgum (former governor of a state that draws more than a third of its power from wind turbines) called this “climate ideology.” And then he said something that I think illustrates our position beautifully: “We need to worry about the humans that are on the planet today. The real existential threat right now is not one degree of climate change.”

I think that explains the problem with America in a single sentence. We only care about now—the president has an attention span of three minutes, and corporate executives can’t see past the next quarter. Whereas the Chinese are clearly thinking many decades into the future, which they plan to own.

In the very short run Burgum and Wright will succeed. They’ve made it clear that European nations will have to take a bunch of gas or they will face ruinous tariffs—it’s a shakedown, not an argument, and it couldn’t be more thuggish. (They also demanded that Hungary stop buying Russian gas and get it from “friends” instead. They pitched it as a way to “strangle Russia’s ability to fund this murderous war,” but given Trump’s red-carpet treatment of Putin in Alaska last month no one will take that seriously; it’s just one more sales pitch). Meanwhile, here in America by raiding an EV battery plant and putting its Korean engineers in shackles we’ve delayed by months this project (largest manufacturing complex in Georgia) and managed to make enemies, or at least wary observers, of one of the few industrial powerhouses that’s been our friend

In the slightly longer run, though, what nation in its right mind would sign up to pin its energy future on the United States, suddenly the ultimate unreliable nation? Instead, with a one-time buy of a bunch of Chinese tech, you control your own energy future: China, after all, doesn’t actually own the sun. If you have any doubt which way nations want to go, consider the declarations coming out of Africa ahead of the global climate talks in November (talks, of course, that America will boycott). Disappointed by years of, essentially, American lies about aid, they’re demanding climate investment.

Countries need to “enable mobilization of African private capital for green industrialization, energy transitions and climate finance for adaptation, resilience and sustainable development,” the leaders said.

That’s more or less what China is offering, and it will transform Africa at speed. And the world as well—a new report puts the annual savings for a renewable energy planet at a cool trillion dollars a year, just by saving on the cost of buying fuel when the sun will deliver it for free. That’s good news for almost everyone—except for those people who own oil wells and coal mines. Sadly, for the moment they also own our government.

I’ve been saying, as I wander the country, that the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is seemingly to turn us into the colonial Williamsburg of internal combustion; Fickling had another good turn of phrase, writing “the US is increasingly resembling a steampunk relic still dependent on 19th century furnace-and-turbine technology.” Indeed, he concluded,

right now, Beijing is offering cheap, clean power, employment, trade and a route to prosperity. Washington is offering tariffs, policy chaos, White nationalist memes and South Korean workers in shackles after a raid on an EV battery factory. This is no way to win the grand strategic contest of the 21st century.

I think he’s very right. I hold no special regard for China—as I’ve said before, clearly if I’d spent my life doing there what I’ve done here, I’d be rotting in a jail. But the atmosphere cares only about the concentration of carbon dioxide, and by that metric the Chinese equivalent of Sputnik and the Marshall Plan combined is clearly good news.

In other energy and climate news:

+Not just China: New numbers show India installed more solar generating capacity in the first six months of this year than all the gas-fired capacity it has installed ever

+Wave power is always a tantalizing challenge—the movement of the oceans is enormous, but saltwater is a corrosive environment to work in. Julian Spector says the newest attempt may succeed.

Eco Wave Power has installed a 100-kilowatt system on a concrete wharf in the Port of Los Angeles, which it officially unveiled Tuesday. Seven steel ​“floaters” affixed to the structure bob with the waves, building up hydraulic pressure that gets converted to electric power by machinery in shipping containers onshore.

The project isn’t sending that power to the grid just yet, CEO Inna Braverman noted in an interview. The goal of this installation is to demonstrate the technology to stakeholders and potential customers, so it’s located in an easily accessible area in the harbor where the waves aren’t that powerful.

The bigger prize would be to install far more floaters along the 8-mile breakwater that protects the Port of LA, Braverman said, adding that this length could generate 60 megawatts with her company’s proprietary technology. The benefits are alluring: Systems in wave-battered locations can produce energy about 90% of the time, Braverman said, making for a nearly round-the-clock clean power supply close to densely populated coastal cities, without taking up valuable real estate. And the floaters actually protect the coastal barriers by absorbing the force of oncoming waves.

+Here come the supercables. As some regions get great at generating clean electricity, engineers are starting to plan how to connect them to the rest of the world.

Developers are eyeing giant cable projects around the world as the growth of renewable energy creates huge value in trading electricity across different time zones and weather patterns, in order to match supply and demand. Developers are making plans to connect Canada to the UK, Morocco to Europe, and Australia to Singapore, with cables stretching across land and the seabed over distances of 4,000km in some cases.

The projects are expensive, difficult to build and come with added complications such as stretched supply chains, risks of sabotage and requirements for both government and private backing.

But if they succeed, developers say they could help spur the move away from fossil fuels by making the most of renewable supplies, and mark a significant new era of energy ties between leading economies.

“These are the hero projects,” says Fiachra Ó Cléirigh, executive vice-president at the engineering consultancy Jacobs, which is working on projects such as the planned 345km Marinus Link between Tasmania and mainland Australia

+My favorite news of the week—a new study finds global e-bike sales will grow at a ten percent compounded annual rate through at least the middle of the next century.

The Middle East & Africa market in e-bike industry is still at its early adoption phase and reported the fastest growth during the forthcoming years. The prime factor contributing to the significant growth of the region is rapid development in infrastructure for micromobility in the region.

Further, in the recent past the region seeks attractive demand for the bike sharing platforms. For instance, in December 2019, PBSC Urban Solutions, a Canada based smart bike-share solution provider announced to enter into a partnership agreement with Careeem, a leading ride-hailing company based in the Middle East, to launch e-bike sharing service in UAE. As per the agreement, the company will provide 3,500 e-bikes and 350 smart stations in the country. Hence, these initiatives in the region expected to bolster the demand for e-bikes in the region.

+Brian Deese, expediter of the IRA under Biden, writes with Lisa Hansmann in Foreign Affairs about the urgent need for more electricity, and recommends a series of short-term technical fixes to make the current grid work harder.

“Although the United States must build new power plants, these alone cannot produce enough electricity fast enough to meet skyrocketing demand,” they write “Another solution, however, is readily available: squeezing more out of the existing electric system.”

+In California, celebration over the first solar-covered irrigation canal

+Perhaps you know someone who will be persuaded by this: a ChineseEV supercar just set a new speed record, topping 293 miles per hou

r

"Last year, I thought I'd peaked. I never expected to break my own record so soon" Marc Basseng, the German professional racing driver who set the record, said in the statement. "But here we are, at the same track, with new technologies that have made it possible."

This new record places EV supercars within touching distance of their gasoline counterparts. Currently, the fastest road legal cars are the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, which is estimated to reach a top speed of 310 mph (500 km/h) — though this hasn't been proven in the real world yet — and the SSC Tuatara, which has reached a speed of 295mph (475 km/h).

+Despite the best efforts of some of its leaders, Florida continues to emerge as a solar superstar. Alexander Kaufman reports that

In a first, Florida vaulted past California last year in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid. It built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024, making it second only to Texas. And in the residential solar sector, Florida continued its longtime leadership streak. The state has ranked number two behind California for the most rooftop panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie shared with Canary Media.

“Obviously in Florida, sunshine is extremely abundant,” said Zachary Colletti, the executive director of the Florida chapter of Conservatives for Clean Energy. ​“We’ve got plenty of it.”

+Attempts to engineer the earth’s ice-caps to withstand global warming are going to be too hard and too expensive, a new report predicts. Writing in the Guardian, Damian Carrington has the details

Proposals to fight the impact of the climate crisis at the poles, from giant underwater curtains to scattering glass beads across the ice, have been dismissed by a group of scientists as an “unimaginably expensive” and “dangerous” distraction.

Geoengineering, which includes blocking sunlight with airborne particles and thickening ice with pumped seawater, has become highly divisive among scientists. Its proponents argue that, with cuts in carbon emissions going far too slowly, exploring options for “emergency brakes” would be valuable.

However, a new analysis argues that schemes proposed for polar regions are so flawed that no amount of research could resolve them and that they treat only the symptoms and not the causes of the climate emergency.

I wouldn’t take this as the final word, but as a serious indication of how hard this is, and how much easier it is to deal with climate change before it’s escaped from a smokestack or an exhaust pipe

+I’m told that the Georgia fight for representation on the state’s public service utility commission continues to heat up. The Times wrote about it early in the summer. As one observer wrote me: “If Democrats win both seats up for election this year and the one next year, then it would shift from an all-Republican board to a Democratically-controlled one. And with climate-friendly, Democratic control, the PSC could regulate Georgia Power to increase its reliance on renewable energy (its energy mix is currently more than 50% fossil fuel), make data centers pay their fair share, and stop raising rates on customers.”

If you feel like helping, and you have a phone:

gcvoters

A post shared by @gcvoters

+A crucial new study finds that subsidies for fossil fuels are now surging. The work by Oil Change International finds that

The US currently subsidizes the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of nearly $31bn per year, according to a new analysis.

That figure, calculated by the environmental campaign group Oil Change International, has more than doubled since 2017. And it is likely a vast understatement, due to the difficulty of quantifying the financial gains from some government supports, and to a lack of transparency and reliable data from government sources, the group says.

On similar lines, the Wall Street Journal has some numbers on the return that Big Oil is getting for its huge campaign contributions last year

ConocoPhillips, EOG Resources, Occidental Petroleum and Devon Energy recently told investors that because of new tax provisions in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, they collectively expect to save more than $1.2 billion in tax payments in 2025—and likely billions more in the coming years. British giant BP, which operates in the U.S., said the tax savings would likely offset any pressure from tariffs.

Meanwhile, a new study in Nature attributes the rise in severe killer heatwaves over recent years to particular carbon majors

Heatwaves recorded over 2000-23 were, on average, 1.7C hotter due to climate change, according to the study. The authors find that emissions originating from carbon majors and their products contributed about half of the increase in intensity of heatwaves seen since pre-industrial times.

The authors then break down the contribution of emissions from each carbon major on each heatwave in their analysis.

For example, they find that the emissions linked to Saudi Aramco made 51 heatwaves at least 10,000 times more likely. They add that on average, emissions tied to the company made the 213 heatwaves 0.04C hotter.

+Get your EV before tax credits expire at month’s end. But not a Tesla—not only does Elon Musk do far more damage than good for the earth, the doors of his cars are hard to open in a fire.

In China, a top regulator is reportedly considering a ban on fully concealed door handles. Europe has taken incremental measures to improve post-crash rescue and extrication protocols. In the US, there’s been little action, although the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Bloomberg News it’s aware of the incidents in this article, as well as complaints about Tesla’s doors that have piled up in the federal agency’s database. Part of the problem: Crash tests are designed to measure impact survivability, not whether occupants can quickly get out of the vehicle afterward.

“Tesla engineers went wildly in the direction of automation and overlooked what happens to the human body after a crash,” says Charles Mauro, founder of Mauro Usability Science, a New York consulting firm that specializes in human factors engineering. “Musk’s idea is a computer on wheels, but the design of the door locks was overlooked.”

+Wen Stephenson and the great poet Jane Hirshfield in conversation this week about Wen’s new book—and I bet it will be an interesting one!

+One week out from Sun Day, check out my Third Act colleague Deborah Moore’s great interview with Teo Grossman of Bioneers. No one has been organizing any harder than Deborah!

Check out sunday.earth/events and see the map of all the events! As of September 8, there are 325 events in 44 states, and there are still more getting added every day. It’s not too late to join an event or host one of your own, even a small one. There are all kinds of events, big and small: from larger Sun Day festivals and educational fairs to smaller individual solar home tours. You could invite some neighbors over to check out your solar panels or electric vehicle, heat pump, or induction stove. Or host a book group reading of a book about solar, or watch a movie. You could host a rally at your town’s city hall, calling on local decision-makers to streamline solar permitting and make it easier to get small-scale plug-in solar.