What the West can learn from China's climate paradox
It has always been energy security, not climate change, that drives the green transition
There’s a particular type of popular retort anytime China announces new climate targets, or boasts about its progress in renewables: ‘you, the PRC, are the biggest polluter in the world, who is still opening coal plants like there’s no tomorrow. Why should we believe you on climate change?’
Fair though the objection is, I think it misses a crucial point: it’s true that concerns about climate change don’t drive China’s energy agenda (I can’t imagine General Sec Xi watching Planet Earth late at night and handwringing about the loss of habitats), but that doesn’t mean China’s green transition is fake. Both things can be true.
The crux is that it is energy security that drives Beijing’s agenda on energy. Understand that and you will understand how the country can, with a straight face, keep opening coal plants while installing more wind turbines, solar panels, dams and nuclear plants than the rest of the world combined.
This is the topic of my latest column in The Times, inspired by some of the reactions in the comments section of my colleague Richard Spencer’s reporting of China’s new climate targets at the UN last week (unfortunately I do read the comments). In the column I explain why the CCP has a pathological fear of fuel shortage and break down why coal and renewables are therefore both important parts of the drive for energy security.
As Xi put it in 2021: ‘the rice bowl of energy must be firmly held in our own hands’. Unlike oil and gas, China has plenty of coal and, at an increasingly breakneck pace, renewables.
Being close to the UK policymaking space for so many years, I couldn’t help but think about how the Chinese case study can offer teachings for Britain, and the West. The question of security is perhaps less urgent here – the UK is hardly going to be embargoed on its gas imports from Norway or Qatar as a result of hostile geopolitics, but the experience of the gas price spikes after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a recent reminder that energy resilience is nevertheless important for British households and the economy – and perhaps even in a national security sense.
I pitch something of a China-style self-interest-first approach to British energy in the column: more gas storage, more small modular reactors, more North Sea oil, more renewables – but choose them wisely.
A fair counter to this argument is: but what about the climate? To this I have two thoughts. First, at least in the UK, the green narrative has been unserious and unpersuasive. I doubt any politician really believes that our ‘net zero by 2050’ goal is achievable, and even less know how to achieve it. Voters aren’t stupid, and now even science-minded moderates are pushing back against these empty soundbites. Without recognising these concerns, we risk undermining all climate action and pushing those in the middle towards views like that of President Trump’s – that climate change is a ‘con’.
Second, China has shown how renewable energy can and has aligned with a more resilient system. Yet if the country had cut out coal, could it have made the economic and manufacturing achievements it has done in renewable tech? I’m sceptical. It’s possible to recognise that renewables are the fuel of the future while also acknowledging that there are bridge-gaps in the meantime. And if we want to transition, the way to do it isn’t to force a detox, because we just end up importing the same fossil fuels, but to set a road-map for the transition that recognises where we are headed. Again, I don’t think successive British governments have done this.
What I’ve been reading
China Convicts Chess Champions in Match-Fixing Scandal That Toppled an Entire Generation (Caixin)
I know very little about chess, let alone the world of professional chess. But it sounds almost as murky as elite Chinese politics: ‘The fallout has ensnared every single national men’s champion from 2012 to 2023, leading to prison sentences and lifetime bans that have shattered the sport’s reputation.’
Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest (Washington Post)
More details on the military co-operation between Russia and China, in particular the latter seems to be learning from the former’s airborne units on how to deliver troops and resources by air.
The mafia hitman who dreamt of being a pop star (The Financial Times)
Not China but an amazing story of an Israeli assassin/popstar, who found fame in later life making TikToks (from prison). Apparently Israel is rife with organised crime, because ‘It was hard to tell whether bombings and missile attacks were the work of mobsters or terrorists, and overworked security forces left gangsters largely untroubled.’
I wouldn't believe a word the Chinese say about wind and solar power