Why should only China lead the transition to global decarbonization?

China, with 1.4 billion inhabitants, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 32% of global emissions.

But China is also by far the fastest deployer of renewables: in 2024 it added 356 GW of wind and solar capacity, the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant every day. Four and a half times more than the EU and almost the same as all the wind and solar installed so far in the United States.

With wind and solar installed by 2024, China has already met its 2030 target, six years ahead of schedule. And by 2025 the State Council, China's central government, has set “intensifying comprehensive green economic and social transformation” as its annual economic task.

China still builds coal plants, the fossil fuel with the greatest global warming effect. It balances the intermittency of solar and wind, as well as batteries and pumped hydro, and ensures a stable supply of electricity to meet the strong growth in demand from industries, households and transportation.

Wang Zhongying, director general of the Energy Research Institute of the NDRC, China's top economic planning agency, stresses that we need to “keep the power system running safely, accommodating more renewables, while steadily reducing the operating hours of coal-fired power.”

This explains why in 2024 China's CO₂ emissions stabilized at only 0.2% more compared to 2023. “For China, the most important thing is not to peak immediately, but to move to a transition pathway leading to carbon neutrality in 40 years,” says Wang Yi, vice president of the Institute of Science and Development, China's top advisory body on science and technology. China aims to peak emissions by 2030, drop them by 33% by 2035, and reach zero emissions by 2060. And to make this transition it considers economic planning to be key.

Economic planning involves various stakeholders, from the Chinese Communist Party and the central government to experts and representatives of civil society. Objectives and priorities are established for the country's economic, social and environmental development for the coming years. In the short term, five-year plans are drawn up and, once they are approved, legislation is adapted to achieve the objectives and the government allocates huge amounts of money to achieve them.

“In China, money is part of the power equation, but not the decisive one. Engineers rule, thinking about bridges, trains, roads, houses”, says David Runciman, Dir of the Center for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Saleem Ali, PhD in Environmental Planning and Distinguished Professor at the University of Delaware in the USA, stresses:

“Democratic systems are very short-term oriented, by election cycles and quarterly corporate earnings reports. In China there is a much more technical approach. We need more efficient democracies, which base decisions on technical expertise, with planning independent of the political apparatus.”

The cost of solar panels has fallen by 90% in the last decade because China has innovated the technology and increased the production of each component. We are now on the verge of a battery revolution. In December, China's Power Construction Corporation attracted 76 companies in a tender to build, by 2025-2026, large-scale battery systems (BESS) for 16 GWh, the equivalent of the power generated by 16 nuclear power plants in one hour.

The tender got a surprisingly low price: $66 kWh on average, well below Tesla's $100-120 and the Western industry's $135-160 kWh. The tender is for state-of-the-art, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that are safer, less polluting, have a longer life and use less lithium.

Current prices mean that Cina's power grid, industry and transportation will continue to electrify and decarbonize much faster than the rest of the world. Clean energy technologies contributed 10% of China's GDP in 2024, especially solar, electric vehicles and batteries, which contributed 26% of GDP growth.

China's total clean energy investment in 2024 reached the equivalent of US$0.94 trillion, close to the world's US$1.12 trillion investment in fossil fuels in the same year. China's clean energy strength is also seen with exports of solar, wind and electric vehicle equipment. Half go in the Global South and this explains why China is not afraid of US tariffs on its clean energy.

The January 13 editorial in the Financial Times notes that China “is far ahead in the race for green technology supremacy. Its price advantage will drive Western rivals out of business.” A few days later, on February 10, it was made public that China will issue overseas green sovereign bonds. They are due to be listed in London and analysts say they will test the appetite of international investors to shift the climate stakes, after Donald Trump's reversal of climate finance.

What was until now a scientific dream is now an ongoing Chinese project. In early January, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering unveiled an ambitious plan to build photovoltaic power plants in space. Power plants that would orbit the planet collecting energy from the Sun, with an energy density 10 times higher than that of the Earth's surface, and transmit it continuously, undisturbed by summer-winter or day-night cycles.

Nuclear fusion is the great energy hope: it does not need any critical elements, is less polluting and would generate large amounts of energy. For decades it has been a theoretically viable technology, but with development planned decades away. Now it is beginning to be perceived that it could be available by the end of the next decade.

“In the last three or four years there has been a big shift in nuclear fusion research and in a short period of time China has evolved to a leadership position in fusion science,” says Dennis Whyte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a member of China's nuclear fusion advisory committees, until the deterioration of the U.S.-China relationship prevented him from continuing.

“The Chinese government is making fusion a large-scale priority. It is assembling the supply chain base needed for a fusion power industry. Its stated goal is to be the first to achieve commercial fusion,” he says.

In 2022 China already succeeded in sustaining a high-performance plasma, an “artificial Sun,” for more than 17 minutes. Specialists have been defending it for years and now, when the United States is suspending its climate commitment and Europe is beginning to turn to skepticism, it is clear that only China is making plans and fulfilling them.