China is helping reshape climate leadership with green energy, finance: Analyst
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
China produces about 80 per cent of all solar panels made globally, 70 per cent of wind turbines and more than 60 per cent of electric vehicles sold.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
SINGAPORE – In a world that seems more divided than ever in tackling global warming, climate leadership will increasingly be defined not by national climate change targets, but by what countries are doing to transform their economies to be clean and green, said a leading climate policy analyst.
And China could be seen as stepping up to the role, especially as climate issues move down the agenda of many Western countries.
Many nations, especially the US and in Europe, are suffering either a domestic political backlash against ambitious climate action or concerns over costs of living, said Mr Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington.
What matters is real action on the ground to cut planet warming emissions as soon as possible, rather than just pledges, he told The Straits Times’ Green Pulse podcast.
“I think that will be an increasingly important aspect to define international climate leadership. And, in this regard, I think we need to recognise that China is actually doing quite a lot. It is really the powerhouse of the global clean technology transformation,” he said.
A fractured geopolitical landscape is drawing away the political leadership needed to accelerate global efforts to hasten cuts to greenhouse gases heating up the planet.
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US, for a second time, from the United Nations’ Paris climate agreement
Yet China’s great green march can help accelerate global climate action, Mr Li Shuo said.
China produces about 80 per cent of all solar panels made globally,
“Competitive low-carbon products are good for climate action,” Mr Li Shuo said. Cheaper green goods can help South-east Asia cut emissions, for example.
Another key determinant for China’s influence on the region’s energy transition will be the extent to which Chinese firms go to disseminate green technology know-how and green capital to South-east Asia.
“Hopefully, in the next few years, we will see a transition from South-east Asian countries buying Chinese products to receiving more investment so that they can actually produce those low-carbon technologies themselves,” Mr Li Shuo said.
Climate finance is another key benchmark of leadership.
At the COP29 UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024, wealthy nations came under fire for agreeing on a new climate finance target for poorer nations of US$300 billion (S$407 billion) by 2035.
The amount was deemed insultingly low by developing nations battling worsening climate impacts and the costs of shifting away from polluting fossil fuels.
Developing countries had been asking for a climate finance target in the trillions.
As the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter – responsible for about a third of humanity’s carbon emissions – China has come under pressure to step up climate finance, even though under the Paris Agreement it is not obliged to because it is still a developing nation.
But at COP29, China revealed for the first time that it had provided nearly US$25 billion in climate finance to other countries since 2016.
That puts it within the top five or six global contributors, including Germany, France and Britain.
Mr Li Shuo acknowledged that China is also under pressure to cut emissions.
To that end, China has been investing heavily in renewable energy and battery storage to meet strong electricity demand growth, he said.
In a note on Jan 21, Greenpeace East Asia, citing data from China’s National Energy Administration, said the country added an estimated 355GW of renewable energy capacity in 2024. That exceeded the previous annual record in 2023 of nearly 300GW.
To put this into context, almost two-thirds of big wind and solar plants under construction globally were in China, a report from US-based think-tank Global Energy Monitor said in July 2024.
The furious pace of investment meant that, in 2024, China achieved 1,200GW of installed capacity of wind and solar power – a target that had been set to be realised by 2030.
China has by far the largest electricity generation from wind and solar of any nation, roughly double the amount of the US in second place, according to 2022 figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency. Germany, India and Brazil round off the top five spots.
Ms Gao Yuhe, Greenpeace East Asia’s Beijing-based project lead, said in the Jan 21 note: “China has a unique opportunity to become a global climate leader.”
She added: “By continuing to accelerate the expansion of renewable energy, China can drive the power sector – the largest contributor to carbon emissions – to peak before 2025 and encourage other countries to accelerate their climate actions.”
Still, there are challenges.
Big political decisions lie ahead for China on how fast it can reduce its dependence on polluting coal, Mr Li Shuo said.
Burning of coal is the single largest source of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
China’s position as top coal consumer and its operation of the biggest fleet of coal-fired power plants mean it is the world’s leading source of coal-based CO2.
This means China’s policies on power generation will affect the pace of climate change globally.
“One country can be the biggest solution provider and also be the biggest troublemaker at the same time. And that’s certainly the case for China,” Mr Li Shuo said.
“China is still hesitant in terms of embracing more responsibility, for example, when it comes to cutting its emissions,” he added. “There is no transformation of China’s global climate image without getting rid of its addiction to coal.”
The good news is that China has reached, or is close to, the point where its energy consumption and its emissions are going to peak, so the country will not need as much power or energy as before.
“So we’re hitting the tipping point now,” said Mr Li Shuo.
And that will be key in achieving the government’s goal of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
For now, the green energy sector has become a major growth engine of the Chinese economy and that is a lesson for the world, Mr Li Shuo said.
“Taking climate action is good for your economic growth. China has proved that point much more strongly than any other country.”
David Fogarty is deputy foreign editor at The Straits Times and senior climate writer. He also covers the environment, in areas ranging from biodiversity to plastic pollution.
Audrey Tan is an assistant news editor overseeing sustainability coverage. She has reported on the environment for more than a decade and hosts the Green Pulse podcast series.
