Green Energy118 In the race to harness green energy, the U.S. has been the primary inventor of new technologies over the past two decades, but China has taken the lead in manufacturing and deploying those technologies, allowing it to dominate multiple links of the green energy supply chain. Indeed, as energy geopolitics expert Daniel Yergin stated, “In green energy, China has already reached the ‘Made in China 2025’ goal of a dominant role in this century’s new industries.”119 The expansion of green energy in the global energy mix promises to be as disruptive in the 21st century as oil was in the 20th century. Financial markets already reflect these realities: clean energy investments reached $500 billion for the first time last year and, according to Goldman Sachs, will total $16 trillion over the next decade (more than three times the projected investments in new oil and gas by 2030).120 BlackRock’s Larry Fink in his 2020 CEO letter stated that “climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects and in the near future,” while the E.U. Commission for Climate Action has warned that “those who don’t embrace the clean-energy transition will be losers in the future.”121 China has sprinted ahead of the U.S. and other countries to dominate the key links of the green tech supply chain, including equipment manufacturing, raw materials, and energy storage. Exploiting its status as the 118
Key sources consulted in the development of this section include: (i) Dr. Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Director of the MIT Energy Initiative. (ii) Meghan O’Sullivan, North American Chair of the Trilateral Commission, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project. (iii) Daniel Yergin, a leading energy geopolitics expert, Vice Chairman of IHS Markit, and author of several books including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Prize (1991), The Quest (2011), and The New Map (2020). (iv) The Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, an independent initiative launched during the 2018 International Renewable Energy Agency Assembly that examines how the large-scale shift to renewable energy is disrupting the global energy system. (v) Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy.
119
See Daniel Yergin, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2020).
120 Nathaniel Bullard, “Energy Transition’s Half-Trillion-Dollar Year Is Even Better Than It Looks,” Bloomberg, January 21, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/what-does-500-billion-for-clean-energymean-for-climate-change; Dan Murtaugh, “Goldman Sees $16 Trillion Opening as Renewables Pass Oil and Gas,” Bloomberg, June 17, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/goldman-sees-16-trillionopening-as-renewables-pass-oil-and-gas; “Entire $4.9 Trillion Investment in New Oil and Gas Is Incompatible with Global Climate Goals,” Global Witness, April 23, 2019, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/entire-49trillion-investment-new-oil-and-gas-incompatible-global-climate-goals/. 121
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Larry Fink, “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance,” BlackRock, January 2020, https://www.blackrock.com/uk/ individual/larry-fink-ceo-letter; “Clean power is shaking up the global geopolitics of energy,” Economist, March 17, 2018, https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/03/15/clean-power-is-shaking-up-the-global-geopoliticsof-energy.
The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the U.S.
