Despite the United States’ steep tariffs on Chinese imports, the country seems poised for continued growth in the clean energy sector, according to the Financial Times.
China is a huge manufacturer of things that lower our reliance on dirty fuel sources, such as solar panels and battery storage units. Data from BloombergNEF showed that in 2024, over 75% of the world’s new investments into making these technologies were in China, according to the Financial Times.
Yet with the U.S. currently waging a trade war with the country, some worried its valuable clean energy production would slow down.
In reality, the opposite is happening.
As the Financial Times reported, China had already expanded beyond the U.S. to emerging markets well before the tariffs hit. The share of clean technologies China sold to these growing markets jumped from 24% in 2022 to 43% in 2024, according to export data from BNEF.
This trend seems primed to continue, as the tariffs will accelerate the push of Chinese supply elsewhere. Plus, the nation’s clean energy prices are becoming more affordable for more parts of the world, the Financial Times explained.
In China, this expansion means more stable jobs and investment opportunities. Yet it’s also a welcome sign the world over.
Nations dealing with energy scarcity or overreliance on planet-heating fuel will benefit from the increased access to clean energy sources, which are cheaper and safer than burning oil, gas, or coal. These countries include Pakistan, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, and Brazil, according to the Financial Times.
Plus, the more people living life with clean energy, the fewer weather strains and resource losses humans and wildlife will face.
Granted, any kind of global trade war could be bad for developing and spreading clean technologies. Not to mention, China’s dominance in the space also limits the ability of other countries to build and sustain their own supply chain.
Yet at this crucial time in both global trade and the rise of clean energies, China’s contribution to the industry is not slowing down.
“We don’t think that we’ve reached anywhere the levels of penetration, the volumes of exports [to emerging markets] that we could be seeing,” Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at BNEF, told the Financial Times.
