COP30 Won't Save Us, But China Might

The world is benefitting from the world's first electrostate - and Earth will benefit because national (and personal) self-interest are finally aligning with climate action.

China is no longer the climate bogeyman

China has been the world’s collective climate bogeyman for a long time: it's the largest emitter, it still pumps out coal, and it stays steadfastly independent of the commitments that almost everyone else has agreed to. But, as negotiations are underway at COP30 in Belém, Brazil - the real story is somewhat different. China’s emissions are plateauing and, more critically, they’re now supplying (cheaply) the technology for Earth's energy transition to everyone else.

The Economist says China is “a new type of superpower: one which deploys clean electricity on a planetary scale.” It's already home to a terawatt of installed solar capacity, more than double what the United States and Europe have combined. Regular readers of OGN will already be aware of China's awesome progress on renewables, but that's still a monumental stat. While that sinks in, consider also: China makes more money from exporting green technology than America (the world’s biggest petrostate) makes from exporting fossil fuels.

Reuters notes that China now dominates clean energy supply chains and that “China is now the main engine of the global clean energy transition” and is filling the vacuum in climate leadership. As China's envoy at COP26 put it: “The most important thing is not setting targets, but taking actions. Shouting slogans alone is not enough.” To put a figure on that, China's domestic investment in clean energy reached a record high of nearly one trillion dollars ($940 billion) in 2024, alone.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that China’s overseas investments in clean energy have exceeded $225 billion since 2011. In Pakistan, a standalone solar panel now costs farmers $125, and they never have to worry about buying diesel again - therefore an easy, logical decision to make. Nepal has become a global leader in EV adoption as electric vehicles now make up 76 percent of new car sales. Why? Because Chinese EVs are so cheap. These aren’t moral purchasing decisions. They are simple economic ones.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph propounds the idea of a “second derivative” - borrowing the term used by hedge funds to spot early signs of a trend change. In this case, it relates to the early signs of an energy shift most people are missing. Global fossil use in industry peaked in 2014. Sales of petrol and diesel cars peaked in 2017. Transport emissions are finally rolling over. China’s coal use appears to have peaked. Its emissions have fallen by 1 percent this year. His conclusion about whether we succeed in tackling climate change "will have nothing to do with anything said or agreed to by the 50,000 people descending on Belém. It will be decided by geopolitics, market prices and the tidal force of technological change.”

Essentially, this argument means that we shouldn't get too worked up by the success or failure of climate summits. What matters far more is that China is now playing midwife to a clean energy transition that makes economic sense for the 80 percent of humanity that lives in countries that import fossil fuels. Those 6.4 billion people have no reason to stay dependent on shipments from petrostates anymore, when they can import solar panels made by the world’s first electrostate.

Sadly, this doesn’t mean the problem is entirely solved. Energy is too big and complicated for that. China and India are still building coal plants, and Trump is trying to reboot them. Almost every country is building fossil gas. Despite this, the big point is that the fundamental global trajectory has changed. And it’s changed not because of international agreements or appeals to our better nature, but because national (and personal) self-interest is finally aligning with climate action.