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CQ Researcher asked me to argue the Pro side of the question “Should the U.S. cooperate with China in the global transition to clean energy.” That Pro/Con feature was published last week as part of the in-depth Geopolitics of Green Energy volume. Followers of Assessing China know that I have published a Wilson Center book advocating for U.S.-China cooperation in clean energy, have led a U.S. Government-awarded sub-national non-profit to advance this cooperation, and taught for three years at the Masters level at UPenn about the importance of sub-national cooperation in clean energy. Oddly, this is the first time I have argued the Pro side in a strict Pro/Con format. (The only other time I have engaged in this format was at Princeton a number of years ago when I was asked, in the spirit of rhetorical debate, to take the Con side which I tried gamely to do). Anyway, the appearance in (digital) print of this piece last Friday is very timely, appearing four days after Presidents Biden and Xi agreed face-to-face in Bali to resume binational U.S.-China climate change cooperation. The following day, the U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, sat down with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, as they rolled up their sleeves to resume that cooperative work (which Xi Jinping had unilaterally terminated in the wake of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August of this year).
Geopolitics of Green Energy
Pro/Con
Should the U.S. cooperate with China in the global transition to green energy?
The United States should continue to seek cooperation with China in the global transition to green energy for four principal reasons.
Scientifically, the knowledge basis on which the transition depends has no political boundaries. Just as an accurate understanding of human evolution requires archaeological digs in every country, as well as international scientific exchange to synthesize those findings, the scientific foundation for a global low-carbon future is strengthened by U.S.-Chinese scientific cooperation. Of course, that exchange must be conducted on the basis of stringent academic standards and strict safeguards for intellectual property. But scientists recognize that a molecule of any greenhouse gas produced anywhere is bad for our future everywhere.
Commercially, the logic for continued engagement in developing green energy products and services — through trade and investment — outweighs any arguments for decoupling. The U.S. comparative advantage is in basic research and development, technology innovation and the efficiency of our capital markets to bring breakthrough products to scale. China’s comparative advantage is in the size of its market and the market certainty fostered by its top-down political model. It is far more advantageous for the United States to be smart and vigilant in protecting its core assets from unfair trade practices than to forgo access to the world’s largest and still dynamically growing green energy market.
Politically, it is a harder call to make, but there is no reason to turn our backs on political cooperation entirely. From 2009 through 2019, there was a formal program of U.S.-Chinese cooperation on energy and the environment (read “green energy”) signed at the presidential level (and, in its early days, supported on a bipartisan basis in Washington). That framework expired several years ago and, following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, China formally terminated all national programs of U.S.-Chinese cooperation. However, cooperation at the level of states, cities and businesses can and should proceed when it is in the interest of those entities to do so. The absence of a binational framework makes that subnational cooperation more difficult but is not a reason to forgo it.
Morally, the issue could not be clearer. Transition to a green energy future is not an option, it is a necessity. The current moment presents us — as a species — with an existential threat of our own making and forces us again to prove our species’ resilience and ability to adapt. Cooperation, not conflict, improves our odds for pulling that off.
The idea that cooperation is needed between the United States and China, the world’s largest energy consumers, to tackle global energy challenges sounds almost tautological.
The high point of such cooperation was 2014, when Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama jointly announced their new climate commitments, winning support for their proposals in both countries while adding crucial momentum to the process leading up to the 2015 Paris agreement. Since then, the political dynamics in both countries have changed in a way that would make such a joint announcement politically unattractive. This was clear when China announced in 2020 that it would reach carbon neutrality in 2060 and when it pledged last year to stop building coal power plants overseas. Both announcements were unilateral.
The two countries do not need technology or financing from one another. Rather, both are keen to ensure that they have decoupled their supply chains for key strategic technologies and resources.
Xi has set low-carbon development as a strategic priority for China, for obvious reasons: China’s food security, water resources and the regional security environment — all key strategic issues — would be jeopardized by runaway climate change. Clean energy technology is thus now firmly positioned as a strategic sector for national security.
Xi’s announcement of the carbon neutrality goal triggered a dramatic expansion in domestic deployment of clean energy and manufacturing of clean energy technology, particularly solar power equipment, batteries and electric vehicles. China is positioning itself to supply the vast majority of the equipment and technology for the global green energy transition.
The best thing the United States can do is to scale up clean energy deployment and manufacturing at home and increase financing and support for clean energy in developing countries.
China’s leaders have been skeptical of the ability of the often-unruly processes in democratic countries to deliver and implement, scorning their climate pledges as “vague promises.” If Chinese leaders were to see the United States and the European Union pulling ahead with 100 percent clean electricity, smart grids, electrified transport, zero-carbon manufacturing and major financing and technology partnerships with the developing world, China would accelerate its own transition.
The United States and China do still have a shared interest in the success of international climate talks. There are opportunities for coordination and dialogue, but they need to be based on a clear-eyed appreciation of shared and conflicting interests.
Hope you enjoyed the debate. I have allowed comments on this post so please feel free to weigh in with your perspective. Would love to hear from you.
Guest Article by Edward DeMarco, CQ Researcher
The following is the Introduction and Overview to an in-depth article by Edward DeMarco published today in CQ Researcher. CQ Researcher, a division of CQ Press, provides “in-depth reports on today’s issues.” The full article contains, in addition to the Introduction and Overview replicated here, the following setions: Background, Current Situation, Outlook, Pro/Con, Discussion Questions, Chronology and Short Features. I was invited to write the Pro perspective for the Pro/Con section and I will follow this post up with a separate post replicating that section. Please note that the full article (hyperlinked above) is freely accessible for one week from today but will go behind a paywall starting Friday, November 24th.
Introduction
The postwar, U.S.-dominated geopolitical order shaped by oil is yielding to a new system built on carbon-free renewable energy and electric vehicles. In the emerging international scramble for so-called green energy, China is leading, with its control over many supplies of minerals essential for batteries, wind turbines and other technologies. China is also key to addressing climate change because its coal-powered economy creates more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions than any other country. To counter China, the United States is rallying allies and friendly mineral-rich countries to forge alternative supply chains that can enable green energy industries to scale up. And, faced with Russian aggression in Ukraine, Europe is shedding energy ties to Moscow and expanding its domestic wind and solar power sources. Clean hydrogen may also create new energy powers — from Australia to Chile and Africa — as industrial demand for fossil-free energy surges. Competition extends into the Arctic, where retreating ice is spurring the hunt for green energy minerals. While the transition will take decades, the rules of the game are being set now — in Beijing and Washington.
Overview
In late September, as Russia was calling up 300,000 military recruits to overcome battlefield losses in Ukraine, and Europe coped with shrinking Russian natural gas supplies due to the war there, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken convened a little-noticed meeting in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Attending were ministers from mineral-rich U.S. allies Canada and Australia, along with Britain, France, Japan and South Korea — all among the world’s 10 largest economies.
Alongside them sat envoys from other mining nations, including Brazil, Argentina and five African countries — Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia — whose mineral exports are needed for the coming transition from globe-warming fossil fuels to green energy. Those minerals range from lithium and copper used in electric vehicles, to platinum needed for batteries and neodymium required for wind turbine magnets.1 (See Short Feature.)
The African and South American mining nations, along with Mongolia, joined members of the newly formed Minerals Security Partnership, which will offer financing, loan guarantees and technical assistance to accelerate the production of key minerals needed for electric vehicles and to boost solar and wind power. The initiative, said Blinken, is needed because “critical mineral supply chains are simply vital to our shared future.”2
In his opening remarks, Blinken did not mention the biggest economy absent from the table — China — whose sizeable control over the global supply of minerals needed for green energy technologies has many of the ministers worried about the international security implications.
As countries deal with increasingly intense storms, droughts, rising seas, human migration and conflict caused by a warming planet, the transition to green energy to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases is reshaping the U.S.-dominated, post-World War II geopolitical system. That system is rooted in the use of fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — the major sources of those emissions. The transition to a carbon-free economy has strengthened the power of China, which controls a large percentage of the world’s green energy minerals and has massive investments in carbon-free technologies and electric cars.3 Many governments worry that China could use its dominance in the green energy market for geopolitical leverage.
“We’ll stand together with others against economic coercion and intimidation,” Blinken said in May, explaining the new U.S. partnership during a China policy speech. “We’ll boost supply chain security and resilience by reshoring production or sourcing materials from other countries in sensitive sectors like pharmaceuticals and critical minerals, so that we’re not dependent on any one supplier.”4
As Washington and Beijing race to establish a framework for that emerging green energy system, other countries — such as Australia, Chile and several African nations — could become consequential energy players.
The joining of economic and mining powers under U.S. leadership highlights the geopolitical shift under way as the world aims to reduce human-caused carbon emissions to “net zero” in the second half of this century, a goal established by the 2015 Paris climate agreement. To achieve that goal, 195 countries pledged to limit the increase in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. But even that 2-degree rise, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned, would intensify heat, drought and rainfall, harm ocean life and double the share of plants, insects and vertebrates at risk of losing most of their habitat.5
In its 2022 update, the IPCC said achieving the net zero goal would require “a rapid acceleration of mitigation efforts after 2030,” but some models say the world may not reach the goal until the early 2070s. For example, China, the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, does not intend to reach its peak carbon emissions before 2030 and will not achieve net zero carbon emissions before 2060.6
Given this timeline, the uncoupling of international fossil fuel alliances will take longer than many green advocates and activist governments would like, experts say. As a result, the two geopolitical systems — one seven decades old and built on oil and an emerging one shaped by the sun, wind and key minerals — are likely to co-exist for some time.
The realization that oil and natural gas are likely to continue to play a major role in the energy economy is an unwelcome reality in many places, including Europe, says former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, chief executive of the Energy Futures Initiative, a clean energy advocacy group in Washington. It “has elevated the importance of more seriously defining the multi-decadal clean energy transition, rather than a simple-minded focus by many on the net-zero end state.”
For example, U.S. crude oil production is forecast to reach a record 12.3 million barrels a day in 2023, while the U.S. share of electrical power generated by renewable energy — solar, wind and hydropower — will increase from 20 percent in 2021 to 24 percent in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.7
And while renewable sources will generate more U.S. electricity than coal this year, China still depends on the fuel for more than 60 percent of its electricity and plans to increase that usage through 2030. Coal-generated electricity powers the growing number of electric vehicles on Chinese streets. This year, a quarter of all new cars bought in China will be electric or plug-in hybrids, served by about 4 million charging units, double the total a year ago. The United States is far behind, with about 140,000 charging units.8
Reaching net zero by 2050 “requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies,” said the International Energy Agency, a research and coordination organization whose 31 member countries include the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Germany.9
Japan, the world’s third largest economy, exemplifies the emerging choices at the intersection of energy and national security. Since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 caused Japan to reduce its reliance on nuclear power, the country has depended on gas and coal to generate electricity, according to IEA data. Yet Japan is pivoting toward green energy, notably hydrogen, and collaborating with developing nations in Asia to accelerate its transition toward carbon neutrality.10
Concern about energy security is also forcing countries to recalculate the geopolitical equation in favor of renewables. Russia’s war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s dependence on Russian gas supplies and prompted a rapid shift of strategy toward renewables. Germany is expanding its wind energy to further displace fossil fuels.11
The war itself may have broken out in part due to international competition for green energy minerals. Some analysts cite the European Union’s 2021 deal to access Ukrainian minerals used in electric vehicles — such as lithium, cobalt and so-called rare earth elements — as a possible factor in Russia’s decision to invade. Rare earths are 15 lesser-known metals such as neodymium and terbium valued for their magnetic and optical properties.12 (See Short Feature.)
As the effects of climate change intensify in developing countries, the United States by 2030 is likely to face a high risk of climate-related demands for financing and technology assistance, an influx of climate refugees and a greater need to supply aid and humanitarian relief, according to a U.S. national intelligence estimate.13
“Geopolitical tensions are likely to grow as countries increasingly argue about how to accelerate the reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions needed to meet Paris Agreement goals,” the National Intelligence Council said last year. “Debate will center on who bears more responsibility to act and to pay — and how quickly — and countries will compete to control resources and dominate new technologies needed for the clean energy transition.”14
At November’s 27th conference of parties to the U.N. climate convention (COP27) in Egypt, debate centered on how industrialized countries that generate the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions should compensate developing nations — which spew far less carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere — for climate-related damages. Seventeen of the world’s 20 most climate-vulnerable countries are in Africa.
“The most valuable contribution that developed countries can make is to reduce their emissions faster while investing in Africa to build sustainable, green power,” Rwanda President Paul Kagame said at the gathering. “Questioning whether Africa is ready to make use of climate finance should not be used as an excuse to justify inaction.”15
Meanwhile, among the new arenas for global competition are mineral- and sun-rich Africa, as well as the Arctic, where shrinking seasonal ice is opening new shipping channels and aiding the hunt for green energy minerals and untapped oil and gas. (See Short Feature.)
With the world’s largest solar energy potential, Africa could strengthen its geopolitical position as other countries jockey to access the continent’s green energy minerals and seek to convince Africans to protect their carbon-absorbing rainforests.16
One encouraging sign: Hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — can be extracted from water to produce a clean fuel. The investment bank Goldman Sachs said $5 trillion may be needed to develop “clean” hydrogen as a fuel source, which could help cut greenhouse gas emissions about 15 percent “while becoming a key pillar of the energy mix.”17 And hydrogen production is arriving at commercial scale in countries as far-flung as Australia and Namibia.
Dozens of countries, including Germany and Japan, have rolled out strategies to harness hydrogen for industrial use and transportation, while stepping up diplomatic outreach to future exporters. The idea is to use renewables such as solar energy to extract “green” hydrogen gas from fresh or salt water through electrolysis, then transport the gas through pipelines or, in liquified form, by ship to industrial markets. The Hydrogen Council, a Brussels-based industry group promoting hydrogen-based energy, said 680 large-scale projects are planned worldwide in this decade, up 50 percent from a year ago. Based on planned hydrogen projects, global capacity could reach 134 gigawatts in 2030, from around 1 gigawatt this year, according to the International Energy Agency.18
As energy strategists, investors and policymakers strive to understand the scale, sources and sequencing of this transition and the countries poised to benefit, these are some of the questions on their agendas:
Will China dictate the pace of the world’s transition to green energy?
In August, China suspended climate talks with U.S. presidential climate envoy John Kerry after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in self-governing Taiwan, a visit the Chinese government called an affront to its “one China” policy that claims Taiwan as part of China.19
An announcement that the talks would resume came on Nov. 14 after the first face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping in Indonesia, a hopeful signal for advocates of more aggressive action on climate change who were meeting at the same time in Egypt at COP27.20
China and the United States had issued a joint declaration in late 2021 on the “seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis” and committed to accelerated actions and cooperation in the 2020s on reducing greenhouse gases, especially methane, and speeding up the shift to renewable energy.21
“Methane is 80 times more potent than carbon, and it accounts for nearly half of the net warming we’re experiencing now,” Biden told the COP27 meeting on Nov. 11. “So, cutting methane by at least 30 percent by 2030 can be our best chance to keep within reach of 1.5 degrees Celsius target.”22
The world’s energy transition would be eased if the United States and China “cooperate substantially, including in technology transfers, both ways,” but rising tensions between the two countries made that unlikely, says Henry Lee, director of the environment and natural resources program at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Chinese control over key minerals used in electric vehicles and other green technologies sharpen the divide, as reflected in the aim of the U.S.-led Minerals Security Partnership to create alternative supplies. Currently, China refines 68 percent of the world’s nickel, 40 percent of copper, 59 percent of lithium and 73 percent of cobalt, according to the Brookings Institution in Washington. China also controlled 79 percent of lithium-ion battery manufacturing in 2021.23
The United States relies totally on imports for 14 “critical” minerals, including graphite, manganese, niobium and rare earths, and depends on imports for more than 75 percent of 10 others, according to congressional researchers.24
“This is China’s hegemonic weapon,” says James Kennedy, a consultant on rare earth elements, such as dysprosium, used to strengthen magnets for vehicles and wind turbines.25 “The U.S. uses oil and the dollar as hegemonic tools. China is using critical materials as a hegemonic tool.”
In September 2020, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13953, which declared that U.S. dependence on “foreign adversaries” for critical minerals was a national emergency. Trump said China had used “aggressive economic practices to strategically flood the global market for rare earth elements and displace its competitors,” while coercing industries that rely on these elements to locate in China.26
Countries key to the minerals-security initiative buttressed the U.S. stance. In June, Canada called for advanced economies to prioritize creation of critical mineral supply chain resilience for lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earths. Britain published a similar strategy document in July.27
In August, the European Union said China’s control of critical minerals posed a risk of supplies being “used as a geopolitical leverage, for instance through export restrictions.”28
“We are much more dependent on those critical minerals in comparison to oil and gas,” raising concerns if relations with China deteriorate, says Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
As the green energy transition accelerates, Chinese companies are securing their international positions. CATL, the world’s biggest electric-vehicle battery maker, last year bought a minority stake in a copper and cobalt mine in Congo. It is setting up factories in Germany and Hungary and reducing carbon emissions in its batteries to meet U.S. and European standards.29
However, says the Belfer Center’s Lee, while China will have a major influence on the green transition, “I don’t think any one country will dictate the pace” of it. “You’re looking at a machine with many moving parts.”
As China flexes its muscles in renewable energy and electric vehicles, it also depends on coal to provide electricity for those cars as it ramps up the use of wind and solar. During his Oct. 16 speech to the Chinese Communist Party congress, Xi pledged to “push forward the clean and low-carbon transition” in industry, transportation and construction, but admitted China would also need to step up its use of fossil fuels. “Coal will be used in a cleaner and more efficient way, and greater efforts will be made to explore and develop petroleum and natural gas, discover more untapped reserves, and increase production,” Xi said.30
That tighter embrace of fossil fuels, however, could diminish China’s influence over the transition from carbon-based fuels.
Stabilizing carbon emissions in 2030, says Neil Hirst, a senior policy fellow for energy and mitigation at Imperial College London, is “a tough call for the Chinese,” because of economic growth and social progress considerations.
The boost in coal use will raise China’s carbon emissions by 1.5 to 2.5 percent by 2025 — above prior estimates — although long-term, carbon-reduction targets should still be viable, says Yang Fuqiang, a senior adviser on climate change and energy transition at Beijing University’s Institute of Energy. “Coal will not go away very soon,” he says. “It will last several decades.” In his projections, coal will still account for 7 to 10 percent of total Chinese energy production in 2050.
China’s renewed commitment to coal contrasts with Xi’s 2021 announcement at the United Nations that China would no longer build coal projects abroad.31
The Climate Action Tracker, produced by German researchers, rates China’s target for reduced greenhouse gas emissions as “highly insufficient” and said that “if all countries followed the level of ambition implicit in this development, it would lead to a warming of 3°C degrees globally,” or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit.32 That is double the optimal Paris Agreement limit and would threaten a range of natural systems.
A study by the Australian Academy of Science found that just 3 degrees of warming would exacerbate heat waves and drought, diminish water supplies and have ecosystem-changing effects on forests, fisheries and ocean reefs.33
As climate worries escalate and energy goes green, China’s neighbor and rival, India, may be the geopolitical wild card. Access to fossil fuels is crucial for India, the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter. As international pressure mounts to squeeze carbon out of the energy system, India will face challenges in energy-intensive industries such as iron and steel production, cement and chemicals, according to an MIT study.34
Still, India is accelerating its conversion to renewable energy, pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions and tens of billions of dollars of planned investment from Indian billionaires. Solar and wind energy will become India’s dominant power sources by 2050, while hydrogen use for transport will increase in this decade, according to The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.35
The United States should “privately work behind the scenes to assist India with the larger policy dilemma about how to begin a transition into a cleaner, green economy and achieve it with American technology and private sector trade,” said Tim Roemer, the former U.S. ambassador to India. “America needs to play this strategically for the long term — and not push India into the powerful gravitation of the China-Russia orbit.”36
Can hydrogen diminish energy competition among nations?
At the World Hydrogen Summit, held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in May, a futuristic city named Neom claimed a top prize for its plans to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel.37
The accolade was less surprising than the place where Neom is being built: Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest producers of crude oil and natural gas. For decades, the Saudi kingdom has played a central role in the supply and pricing of the world’s oil, making it a crucial geopolitical player.
During a July visit to Jeddah to confer with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Biden and the Saudis signed a partnership to develop and finance clean energy sources, such as green hydrogen, nuclear and solar.38
Creating green hydrogen from water by using solar and wind energy to power electrolysis produces carbon-free energy that can be traded internationally. “By opening up the long-distance transport of sunlight and wind, hydrogen will become the new oil,” energy executive Marco Alverá wrote in his 2021 book, The Hydrogen Revolution. 39
“Green hydrogen is a huge growth area for us, and we believe it’s going to be a contributor in the future economy and the future energy as we transition to a decarbonized world,” Saudi Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih told Bloomberg in July.40
Saudi Arabia will be competing with a range of green energy newcomers. The United Arab Emirates, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, is forging a hydrogen partnership with the United Kingdom. Hydrogen could enable the U.A.E. “to maintain or grow its geostrategic energy position despite global decarbonisation policies,” said a study by the Dubai-based World Green Economy Organization.41
As an energy source that is created rather than extracted, hydrogen has raised hopes that it can dissipate global tensions spawned during the oil era. Italian energy researcher Marco Giuli said hydrogen is likely to “reduce the geopolitical sensitivity of energy trade” by focusing more on domestic needs than on “grabbing resources.”42
Others are more cautious, however.
“Hydrogen will certainly play a significant role in decarbonizing multiple sectors of the energy economy,” says Moniz, the former U.S. energy secretary. “However, arguing that it would eliminate geopolitical considerations is a step too far. Hydrogen should abate, but not eliminate, geopolitical competition.”
Countries increasingly are focusing on building a global market for hydrogen and negotiating future trade deals. Germany has opened hydrogen offices in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, with the goal, in part, of helping oil exporters adapt to the transition and reducing economic disruptions and security risks.43
Chile, which seeks to become a green hydrogen power in South America, is discussing with the Netherlands how to create “export-import corridors” between Chile and Europe. The European Union’s energy strategy is to support three renewable hydrogen import corridors via the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea and, “as soon as conditions allow, with Ukraine.”44
Some say that hydrogen could “completely democratize global energy markets and let most countries self-produce,” says Jeffrey Beyer, managing director of Zest Associates in Dubai, a clean-energy consultancy, and author of the U.A.E. study. “The reality is that some countries have lots of indigenous energy sources and others don’t.”
Japan, whose reliance on Middle East oil makes it susceptible to geopolitical jolts, is pursuing a regional hydrogen strategy that would support Asian markets. In September, Japan hosted a green energy meeting of 20 nations, including Southeast Asia’s rising economies of Indonesia and Vietnam.45
“Currently, the international finance industry is rapidly withdrawing investments from fossil fuel projects,” Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Nishimura Yasutoshi told the Asia Green Growth Partnership on Sept. 26. “However, Asia is highly dependent on fossil fuels amid growing energy demand and its potential for renewable energy is not necessarily as high as it is in Europe.”46
In February, the specially built ship Suiso Frontier arrived in Kobe, Japan, from Australia with the first cargo of liquified hydrogen in a pilot project, viewed as a milestone in the transition to green energy.47
Australia is also developing hydrogen ties with Germany. “If our current pipeline of clean hydrogen projects is completed on time, Australia could be one of the world’s largest hydrogen suppliers by 2030,” a 2021 Australian government report said.48
An analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency, an Abu Dhabi-based intergovernmental organization, suggests that about one-third of hydrogen would be traded across borders by 2050, about half of that probably in pipelines, including those now used to transport natural gas. Exporting countries will gain in strategic importance and new shipping routes will shape security and defense plans, the agency said.49
Coastal countries might hold an advantage over dry, inland areas, because desalination of seawater adds only one U.S. cent per kilogram to the cost of hydrogen, energy executive Alverá wrote.50
Hydrogen “will change the dynamics of geopolitics in energy,” says Jamie Speirs, a fellow in energy analysis and policy at the Sustainable Gas Institute at the Imperial College London. “Some countries will do this better than others, and those are the places where green hydrogen will be done at scale.”
China is already the world’s largest producer and consumer of hydrogen, but it is made using coal. China’s new strategy calls for creating 50,000 hydrogen-fueled vehicles by 2025, using more hydrogen in industry and increasing the manufacture of electrolyzers for hydrogen production.51
While hydrogen is riding a wave of optimism, Speirs says it’s “easy to get carried away by the hype” surrounding it. “We might find out that hydrogen isn’t as low-carbon as we hope, or need it to be, to meet our targets,” undercutting the confidence of governments and investors, he says.
Can Africa parlay its green assets into geopolitical influence?
On Africa’s arid southwestern coast, Namibia boasts a population of only 2.7 million people in an area almost twice the size of California, which has nearly 40 million people. Namibia currently depends on electricity from South Africa. Yet, it has two assets of increasing international interest: high solar energy potential and metals coveted for electric vehicles.52
Germany, which is seeking hydrogen to decarbonize its industries, formed a partnership with Namibia last year, linked to a Namibian government initiative that has awarded 1,544 square miles of land to investors for a $9.4 billion green hydrogen project. The enterprise will convert Atlantic Ocean water into hydrogen, fueled by the country’s abundant solar and wind power.53
“The global race for the best hydrogen technologies and the best sites for hydrogen production is already on,” Germany’s federal research minister at the time, Anja Karliczek, said during the signing of the partnership. Namibia could produce hydrogen “at the most competitive price in the world.”54
A recent U.S. assessment described Namibia, which also has new lithium and cobalt mines, as “an up-and-coming source country for critical minerals” used in electric vehicles and battery storage. In October, Namibia Critical Metals said its Lofdal mine could produce significant amounts of dysprosium and terbium — rare earth metals used in the permanent magnets of electric vehicles — to supply Japan long term. China currently controls the world’s supply of dysprosium and terbium.55
Besides Namibia, other African regions are well-positioned to capitalize on the green energy transition — from the continent’s vast, sun-washed deserts and savannas to its carbon-capturing Congo Basin rainforest and the vast supply of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Clean energy investments on the continent are projected to rise sixfold from 2026 to 2030, with total annual energy investment averaging about $190 billion, according to the International Energy Agency.56
Whether Africa can translate those assets into geopolitical clout hinges on tackling entrenched economic barriers.
“Much more needs to happen from African governments to be able to change the game completely” regarding critical minerals, says Alfonso Medinilla, head of climate and green transition geopolitics at ECDPM, a think tank on Africa-Europe relations. African countries need to get away from the current model of merely extracting raw materials and exporting them to be processed elsewhere, he says. Instead, he says, they should process the minerals domestically and export the higher value finished products.
James Mwangi, founder of the Kenya-based Climate Action Network Africa, agrees. Antiquated supply chains that export raw African materials without adding value incur a large carbon cost and concentrate poverty and instability in Africa, he says.
African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina told Norwegian investors in September that Africa’s lithium deposits could “make Africa competitive with China and Chile in the race for supplying global value chains for electric cars.” He also touted Africa’s green hydrogen potential, along with a $20 billion “Desert to Power” plan to turn 11 countries in the Sahel — a transition belt between the Sahara Desert and tropical regions to the south — into the world’s largest solar zone.57
Some hydrogen projects already emerging in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and South Africa are using renewable energy to make ammonia for fertilizer, which would strengthen Africa’s food security, the International Energy Agency said. African farmers face a shortage of imported fertilizer due to the war in Ukraine.58
Experts say African countries must balance domestic needs and international interests as they strive to amass green geopolitical influence. The DRC illustrates the challenge, as Secretary of State Blinken highlighted during an August visit to its capital, Kinshasa. “On climate, the Democratic Republic of Congo is vital to the future of the planet,” Blinken said. “It’s as simple as that. The Congo Basin rainforest absorbs more carbon than is emitted by the entire continent of Africa.”59
A large swath of flooded rainforest — a region the size of England — runs through the DRC and neighboring Republic of Congo. The peat under the water contains about 30 billion metric tons of carbon — as much as the world emits in about three years.
A moratorium on logging concessions in the DRC rainforest took effect in 2002. Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom have been funding a forest preservation and management initiative that could lead to the lifting of that moratorium in 2023. Western countries would like for the DRC and other Congo Basin nations to leave their rainforests undisturbed or for them to be sustainably developed.
But the African governments also are eyeing the sizeable oil deposits underneath the peat.
“The challenge is to find an equilibrium, a balance between the well-being of the Congolese people” and an ecological framework, said Congolese Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula.60
A national audit of rainforest logging published this year found that six DRC government ministers in a row had violated forest-protection laws and illegally allocated at least 18 concessions to themselves. The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace Africa, which said the logging moratorium is routinely violated, found that a DRC environment minister had awarded a logging permit to Chinese and other companies covering an area equal to four times the size of Kinshasa.61
Another Central African country, Gabon, has been trying to balance its domestic needs while helping in the global effort to slow climate change. The tiny nation aims to sustainably manage its abundant, carbon-absorbing rainforest by banning exports of logs, controlling and tracking tree harvesting and developing domestic manufacturing of wood products.62
Expanding renewable energy and helping to create an industrial base in Africa could position the United States more strongly against China, says Mwangi. Africa’s projected population surge — estimated to represent 52 percent of world growth by 2050 — makes it an enticing alternative market to China’s for U.S. companies, given current trade tensions between China and the United States, he says.63
“Don’t think about Africa purely as a climate victim,” Mwangi says. Instead, focus on the potential of the African economy to help lower the cost of meeting global net zero emissions targets, he says.
At COP27, Biden announced investments in climate adaptation and green energy in Africa, including early warning systems and disaster-risk protection. He said the United States is joining the EU and Germany in a $500-million effort to help Egypt add 10 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 while reducing 5 gigawatts of “inefficient” gas-powered facilities and capturing natural gas that flares or leaks from oil and gas operations.64
During the conference, countries such as Kenya and Nigeria announced the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative, designed to generate $6 billion by 2030 for African communities to invest in renewable energy and other efforts to curb climate change. It would set up a system for trading carbon credits, each representing one ton of carbon dioxide emissions that a polluter can purchase, with the funds being invested in carbon-reduction systems, such as a forest.65
Achieving a so-called African Green Deal would require bold, government-directed efforts to boost energy availability and reduce carbon emissions while expanding economic growth and ensuring social equity, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. “African leaders must clearly articulate, map and assert their own climate transition and development agendas” with regional coordination, the agency said.66
Ethiopia also aims to become a major player in Africa’s efforts to become a world leader in renewable energy. It seeks to boost its power output ninefold by 2037 by expanding its hydropower, wind, solar and geothermal resources.67
Africa’s largest hydropower dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile River, has begun to generate electricity amid tensions with downstream Egypt.68
But Ethiopia’s potential is limited by investment risks and the need for “prohibitively costly” energy-delivery infrastructure, says Mikael Alemu, an Ethiopian-Israeli entrepreneur and co-founder of 10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia, a solar energy development company.
“My partners and myself believe in [the] enormous potential of solar energy in Ethiopia, and we know hundreds of investors who share this belief,” he says. “But very few investors today can accept the country and currency risks of Ethiopia, and therefore there is just a handful of private energy developers.”
Some activists say that as the green energy transition gathers momentum, some African countries, such as Mozambique, continue to bet too much on new oil and gas production, where European and Japanese investors are tapping major gas discoveries for export.69
The answer is that many things were lost. China’s move to terminate all official bi-national cooperation with the U.S. to mitigate the effects of climate change was not only short-sighted. It was, for China, a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. The action was purely political — to protest a visit to Taiwan by Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a visit that had ampled precedent going back to 1977 when Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan. The consequences of China’s unprecedented and over-reactive action — eliminating countless programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote improve water quality, conserve natural habitats and bio-diversity — will have as much of a detrimental effect, if not more, on developing China as it will on the United States’ developed economy.
Here’s a case study of one opportunity — built for scale and speed — that has been lost …
(click for original, free to read version of this article from Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy)
by Doug Barry, Senior Director of Communications, U.S.-China Business Council
(view original article in USCBC’s Fifty States, Fifty Stories series)
Policy entrepreneurs are plentiful in America. You can find them everywhere, devoting ideas and energy to getting things done. Terry Cooke founded the non-profit China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia with a focus on getting the United States and China to cooperate on climate change. Getting what he wants done has become more challenging as the two countries ping pong between cooperation, competition, and conflict.
How did he get here and how is he managing multiple challenges simultaneously? He’s been interested in global affairs for a long time, starting in 1988 when he joined the US Commerce Department as a foreign commercial service officer in Shanghai. His two-year posting there bracketed the Tiananmen Square convulsion. Years flew by with postings in Tokyo, Berlin, and Taiwan. In 2002 he took leave from the foreign service and started a consulting business focusing on Taiwan and high tech.
In 2006, Cooke joined the World Economic Forum (WEF) as Director of Asian CEO Partnership with a focus more on Japan than China. He left in 2008. “It was too much travel,” he recalled. “I worked in New York, had my family in Philadelphia, commuted to Geneva, and had responsibility for multiple events in Asia.”
One of the best parts of the WEF job was sitting in on multiple sectoral meetings with CEOs. His main takeaway was that many of these corporate leaders were talking about the challenges of climate change, not as PR or greenwashing, but about the need to transform their companies into low-carbon leaders. “I decided that was the hook that I wanted to hang the second half of my career on when I came back to Philadelphia.”
Cooke recalled his time in Berlin and the impression made by comparing what was then called West Germany with the East, which at the time was terribly polluted. When the Berlin Wall fell, the country united and the cleanup of the Eastern part of the country began. The lesson was that great progress to improve the environment is possible if the political will exists and if clear policy creates predictability for businesses and investors.
The good old days
In 2010, Cooke joined the Wilson Center, a Washington, DC think tank, as senior fellow for US-China climate cooperation. His research there led to publication of his book Sustaining US-China Cooperation in Clean Energy. Coincident with this research, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu introduced a “national labs program for the 21st century” for clean energy technologies as an outgrowth of the 10-year framework for US-China cooperation on energy and the environment pioneered by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in the waning years of the George W. Bush administration.
President Barack Obama and Secretary Chu worked to expand Paulson’s program, adding three US-China clean energy research centers in different industrial areas: electric vehicles initially at the University of Michigan, clean coal at the University of West Virginia, and energy efficient buildings through a Penn State-led program at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
“Disappointing as these decisions were, there was still potential in the climate change mitigation space, even as other areas like micro-electronics drifted further off-limits.”
To support and expand the energy-efficient buildings program, Cooke founded in 2011 the China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia whose mission was raising awareness and facilitating collaboration to create and bring to market low-carbon solutions for the built environment. For the first years, things went great with lots of local and Chinese partners, mayoral visits, and stakeholders to plan low-carbon futures for urban centers in the United States and China. In 2014, China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia and its partner organization in China, the TEDA EcoCenter, were competitively selected for and awarded a prestigious U.S.-China EcoPartnership Award, administered jointly by the U.S. and PRC Governments.
“We had some fits and starts, including an unfortunate near-death experience involving IP piracy.” Isn’t this ironic given the long-standing concerns the US government and private sector have about “collaborations” that lead to forced technology transfers and outright pilfering? “It would be if that’s what happened. Instead, the main culprit was an American in an American company.” The company did not want to make a public fuss because of reputational concerns. “We had to shift focus and change our business model to make sure that would never happen again, but it was a one-off, not something endemic with the work we were doing.”
Pulling the plug on energy cooperation
If not as immediately dire, there were other experiences that could have been crippling to his non-profit. Two of them involved former president Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords and in 2020 terminated the US-China EcoPartnership program just seven days before leaving office. “Disappointing as these decisions were, there was still potential in the climate change mitigation space, even as other areas like micro-electronics drifted further off-limits.”
The shifting binaries involved with competition and cooperation were making the scope for business cooperation more limited and the non-profit’s work more problematic. Competition is now spilling into the space previously marked by cooperation. The shriveling of discourse between government leaders has only made things more difficult.
“What used to be very effective work through industrial cooperation in lowering emissions is now off the table, though some academic and some intergovernmental climate cooperation continues.”
Early in the Biden administration, excitement was generated by the appointment of John Kerry as climate envoy. Kerry and his PRC counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, had worked closely and cooperatively under Biden’s vice presidency during the Obama administration but Biden administration policy would not be a simple reset to that period. While cooperation continues in areas such as scientific exchange and standards setting, industrial cooperation toward low-carbon goals now enjoys little federal-level support. This even as the planet continues to warm and nations like China and India continue to struggle reducing their addiction to coal.
Kerry recently pointed out in a Foreign Affairs article that there’s still time to avoid disaster but that in the coming years many trillions of dollars will be needed to fund and field clean energy technology. The money, he said, must largely come from the private sector which stands to gain from what could amount to a new industrial revolution.
Cooke worries that the emphasis on zero-sum competition with China over recent years will make broad cooperation in climate change extremely difficult. “The competition drive is spilling into areas that used to be defined by cooperation,” he said. One example is the network of 11 national-level eco parks organized through the Greater Philadelphia-Tianjin EcoPartnership. Germany invested in one such park in 2020, focused on green maritime technology, to the tune of more than $3 billion. The PHL-TJ EcoPartnership had defined a focus on energy-efficient, securely smart and healthy buildings at sustainable-city scale for this network of 11 eco-parks. The emphasis was on large-scale opportunities supported by very large companies and leavened by the innovation of smaller, entrepreneurial companies. “Given the problems in the bilateral relationship, that large scale opportunity has receded for the foreseeable future at least.”
Enter the contradiction
Cooke is highly attuned to the potential for contradiction between commercial competition and climate cooperation, worrying that when Kerry steps down, the space for commercially led environmental solutions to be applied at scale and speed in the two largest global economies will shrink even more.
“What used to be very effective work through industrial cooperation in lowering emissions is now off the table, though some academic and some intergovernmental climate cooperation continues.” He concedes that the continuation of even these relationships is not assured given the political environment in both countries.
“My organization was about creating a platform for a US-Sino Eco-Park in China bringing advanced energy efficiency services and technologies to the park. That is viewed negatively now in Washington. What’s disappointing is that other countries friendly to us are now established in China in commercial areas that we’re better at but won’t be able to contribute to because official reluctance for cooperation.”
Cooke says: “The United States needs to be smart about its clean energy approach to China. Yes, China wants to dominate an emerging 21st century industry. But if we out-innovate and out-compete China technologically, we can access their market profitably and also collaborate commercially to forestall the worst effects of climate change. Is it really in the US interest not to have active engagement with China, aside from discrete small companies that are more easily taken advantage of? I’d prefer to see us going in with a convoy approach of large companies and smaller innovators protected by US government policies and focused on delivering measurable, low-carbon solutions at a globally impactful scale. To my mind, this is a huge missed opportunity.”
Cooke’s non-profit, which he recently rebranded as ReGen250 to accommodate additional, non-China-focused environmental programs, continues to assess options for low-carbon partnerships with China. What elements would a US private sector partner want to support that his organization could strongly endorse? “Alternatively, we can just decide we’re only going to focus on local programs in the Mid-Atlantic to increase access to a greener built environment.”
What about the Department of Energy’s prior interest in cooperation? “I have had some high-level discussions within the Department. The entire group that previously supported the commercial exchange at this high level between the national government and subnational actors, including Eco-Partners and city level groups, is not active right now. It was disappointing to learn that.”
“Despite the challenges in the US-China relationship, subnational initiatives, especially in energy and climate change mitigation solutions, should be encouraged and supported.”
Despite the setbacks, Cooke believes there are still areas for engagement with China regardless of the government in power. One involves people-to-people exchanges, albeit challenging at the present moment given China’s zero-COVID policies. Examples of programs that deserve to survive are the adoption of Chinese children, music (he helped the Philadelphia Orchestra create an artist residency program in China) and artistic exchange, student exchange, and most importantly, business. He believes that the once promising universe of business cooperation has constricted but there still remain spaces outside of sensitive technologies where businesses can and must connect.
As a member of the local ecosystem that support US-China commercial relations, he’s not giving up. Rather, he envisions the different China business-related ecosystems across the United States networking and sharing best practices. He said that one such effort was made recently at a Midwest university, but he expressed some disappointment at the fact that the focus turned out to be on a recently discovered vulnerability involving WeChat. It was a security-led briefing, not the commercially minded dialogue that is needed.
Cooke isn’t ready to walk away from his gift of multi-stakeholder cooperation on climate change or the imperative for non-profits like his to act locally and globally. “Efforts at the subnational level have an important place in helping American companies navigate a complex environment in China. They have a great potential impact because they can organize a well-protected convoy in the place of one isolated boat, big or small.”
“Despite the challenges in the US-China relationship, subnational initiatives, especially in energy and climate change mitigation solutions, should be encouraged and supported.”
(view original article in USCBC’s Fifty States, Fifty Stories series)
On January 13th of this year, President Trump abruptly ordered the termination of the U.S.-China EcoPartnership Program. Seven days before leaving office and without notice, Trump turned the lights off on this 10-year old program, pulling the rug out from under 36 committed and on-going bi-national projects to lower carbon-emissions at global scale.
The Biden Administration is assessing its options for re-vitalizing, in some shape or form, this model of innovative and impactful public-private collaboration to put a dent in global greenhouse gas emissions. This might involve replication of the program to India. ReGen250 is already in the starting gate with a U.S. Mid-Atlantic/State of Maharashtra candidate program should that take shape, as is described on pages 8-9 of our article published last month in the peer-reviewed science journal Environmental Progress and Sustainable Energy.
In the meanwhile, we are pressing forward with unofficial support from the two U.S. Government agencies which ran the EcoPartnership program for ten years — the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Energy — on a purely private and sub-national basis. Our goal in China looking forward is to explore the possibility of expanding from a regional effort (low-carbon collaboration between the U.S.-Mid-Atlantic and the Jing-Jin-Ji (京津冀) region of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province to national scale.
How will we accomplish this without the direct support of the U.S. Government? The first step was to confirm the Biden Administration’s encouragement of trade with China in support of Paris Accord goals and then to renew our region-to-region BE Better program partnership with our primary partner in China, the TEDA EcoCenter. These steps were taken last quarter.
The next steps involve exploring prospects for the resumption of the Sino-U.S. Eco Park national-level opportunity with the Green Development League as outlined at the 2020 U.S.-China EcoPartnership Summit. (As described in detail in a prior post, the Green Development League comprises the 36 top-ranked NETDZs throughout China and the GDL Secretary-General is our original EcoPartnership partner (the TEDA EcoCenter and its Director Madame Yuyan Song).
As the exclusive U.S.-based working group member for the proposed Sino-U.S. Eco Park, China Partnership would leverage expertise and input from (1) our region-to-region BE Better program partners (experts in “energy-efficient, smart and healthy built environments” for industrial park users) as well as (2) our U.S.-China BEST Cities partners (with additional constituencies of support to include the U.S.-China Business Council, the U.S. Industry Advisory Board of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center for Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE), the National Governors Association, and the National League of Cities) in order to identify a comprehensive range of U.S. clean energy technologies and infrastructures from across eastern, central and western regions of the United States to be incorporated into the Sino-U.S. BE Better Eco Park model.
The primary impact of this milestone — CPGP’s formally joining the Green Development League’s working group for design of a Sino-U.S. Eco Park with scalability and replicability to multiple locations throughout China — is literally “to put the U.S. on the map” alongside eight other similar International Eco Parks already functioning in China under PRC Ministry of Commerce auspices. These eight other Eco Park projects represent mostly Sino-European collaborations (e.g., Sino-German Eco Park, Sino-Swiss Zhenjiang Eco Park, Sino-Austrian Eco Park, Sino-Finland Beijing Eco Park) and, to date, none represents a Sino-U.S. collaboration. The CPGP/U.S.-China BEST Cities model was selected, following the March 27, 2018 deadline for application, due to its unique structure of open collaboration designed to introduce U.S. urban clean energy infrastructures and technologies to TEDA and the 35 other top National Economic-technological Development Zones (NETDZ) in the Green Development League.
Using comparables drawn from the realized, real-world experience of the Sino-German Eco Park in Dalian but adjusted to account for the relatively greater GDP of the U.S., a Sino-U.S. BE Better Eco Park leveraging our EcoPartnership’s platform of energy-efficient, smart, healthy built environment and clean manufacturing for industrial park application should reasonably be expected to realize within its initial 5 years:
• As many as 300 signed project agreements (with nearly 60% of those either in production or under construction during that timeframe) representing total investment of 100 billion RMB (approx. USD 15 billion at today’s exchange rate)
• As many as 90 of these projects would be expected to fall in the high-end manufacturing and new energy field with total investment of 67.5 billion RMB (approx. USD 10 billion at today’s exchange rate)
• As many as 80 of these projects would be expected to fall in the advanced services sector with total investment of 35 billion RMB (approx. USD 5 billion at today’s exchange rate)
We are now actively exploring the most practical route for realizing this goal which would involve resumption, post-Trump Administration, of our primary partnership model with (a) TEDA, (b) the 36 GDLs and (c) the 219 NETDZs. Additionally, we have recourse to a secondary partnership model focused on the Jing-Jin-Ji/Xiongan New Area mega-development project.
With respect to the 35-year macroeconomic development effort ushered in by Deng Xiaoping and the Shenzhen and Pudong macro-development projects, Xiongan has both continuities and distinctive differences. One similarity is the size envisioned for the Xiongan New Area -– roughly 50% bigger than Pudong (east of Shanghai) and slightly larger than Shenzhen (to the north of Hong Kong). While Xiongan can be thought of as culminating the coastal progression of these macro-projects–- starting in the south with Shenzhen in the 1980s and moving to the central coast with Pudong in the 1990s -– the final, northern leg of this triad was wobbly at first. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao initially envisioned the third macro-project leg as being Binhai to the northeast of Tianjin. Post-2012, however, plans for Binhai lost most of their momentum and it was only with President Xi Jinping’s emergence in power that priority was shifted from Binhai to Xiongan. It is more in the discontinuities between Xiongan and the earlier Shenzhen and Pudong macro-projects that Xiongan’s significance can best be understood. The first 30 years of the PRC’s post-Cultural Revolution industrial development was based on a high-carbon model. (This is frequently referred to in China by the phrase 先污染后治理 meaning “pollute first, clean up (or remediate) later”). In contrast, the Xiongan industrial model championed by Xi Jinping focuses on a different set of values for the next 30-year-or-so phase of China’s development in the 21st century: the goals of (1) promoting and putting into practice low-carbon industrialization and sustainability innovations and (2) lessening social inequality and narrowing the gap between rich and poor in shared benefits of industrialization and economic development.
Among the few dozen officially-awarded U.S.-China EcoPartnerships, the PHL-TEDA EcoPartnership is unique in its design as an open platform to facilitate collaboration among businesses, local governments, universities and non-governmental organizations (NGO). On the U.S. side, the platform is anchored by China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia (CPGP, a 501c3 non- profit) and its public sector partner, the Commerce Department of the City of Philadelphia. The first stage of this collaboration has involved bringing sustainable-city-type BE Better technologies (built environment technologies that are more energy-effiient, smarter and healthier) to our EcoPartnership partner in Tianjin (TEDA). Our longer-term objective is to scale these BE Better technologies throughout China through the network of its national-level industrial parks. The initial stage of this scaling effort focuses on China’s northeastern Jing-Jin-Ji region (comprising Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province) through collaborations with Green Development League-member National Economic-Technological Development Zones (NETDZ) in Beijing, Tianjin and Langfang. The longer-term goal is to position for second-stage, nation-wide expansion of the BE Better model through the Green Development League’s 36 member- NETDZs nationwide and through the Ministry of Commerce’s national Eco Park program.
On January 13, 2021 — a scant week short of President-elect Biden’s inauguration — President Trump turned off the lights on this decade-old government-to-government program between the U.S. and China to advance climate change mitigation efforts in both countries. Nonetheless, the PHL-TEDA effort was always conceived as a private-sector driven effort and — with continuing legacy support from the U.S. Departments of Energy and State — we are advancing our BE Better program with our TEDA partner in China and exploring possible broadening of the program to the state of Maharashtra in India.
The complete story of where we have been and where we are going is presented in the attached peer-reviewed article published online earlier this month by the Wiley-owned journal Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy. The print version of the article will be published in the next few weeks.
The full article can be read by clicking here or on the image below:
We encountered headwinds along the way — a fraudulent bid procurement, Trump’s announced intent to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accord, the Tariff War — but, by tacking and keeping our eye fixed on our destination, we have gotten to calmer waters and now have a following wind. Stay tuned for the next leg of the journey.
The COVID-19 pandemic holds lots of lessons for addressing the climate change challenge. I’ll tackle the knottiest set of lessons — those concerning differing global responses, U.S. partisan cleavages, the psychology of risk and individual choice, and the ethics — in an upcoming post.
For now, I will simply set out a list of ten major impacts which the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the climate change mitigation effort. Four negative, four positive, and two ‘the jury is out.’
FOUR NEGATIVE IMPACTS
POACHING, LOGGING & PROTECTED AREAS LOSS
The impacts of COVID-19 — reducing mobility, leading to job cuts, and diverting world attention — have made the work of guarding against poaching, illegal logging and other threats to protected areas much more difficult to accomplish. Endangered specie and protected areas are suffering as a direct consequence. Possibly, enhanced satellite surveillance and monitoring may be put to greater use in the future to help deal with this problem.
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
The Travel & Leisure Industry has been perhaps the single most hard-hit industry sector as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a new start-up, the Sustainable Tourism sub-sector has felt this impact particularly hard. Many Sustainable Tourism operations are in underdeveloped or developing countries and run by local cooperatives which don’t have access to capital resources to sustain them.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY & WASTE MANAGEMENT
Circular economy refers to design solutions that repurpose waste from every point in a system so that is can be reused, optimizing the system from an efficiency and sustainability standpoint. Factories and entire cities are working to implement circular economies. The logistics of waste management is a key link. As you’ll know post-COVID if you’ve tried to recycle plastic bags at your market, that link in the cycle is currently broken.
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION MOBILIZATION
Humans are hard-wired for connectivity and, while online methods of mobilization allow for greater efficiency and scale, they lack the impact of people gathering together … both from the standpoint of the participants and the observers of the activity. Countless environmental action events have now been cancelled due to COVID-19. Even the COP26 meeting to review progress on the Paris Accord has been postponed a year.
FOUR POSITIVE IMPACTS
REGENERATIVE URBAN GARDENS
Along with baking and at-home yoga, urban gardening is one of the activities which has seen a huge spike since COVID-19 forced us to stay closer to home. This is a hugely positive development since urban gardens have shown — through programs such as the Philadelphia Horticultural Societies Growers Alliance — that they transform neighborhoods. Food deserts become locales with healthy food while improving the quality of the air.
15 MINUTE CITY CONCEPT
As Financial Times and Treehugger have described, the 15-Minute City concept is “having a moment” thanks to COVID-19. Developed by Professor Carlos Moreno at the Sorbonne in Paris and based on the Lazaretto model developed in Milan during a 16th c. plague, the 15 Minute City plan is to “offer services and quality of life within the space of 15 minutes on foot from home,” the same time a commuter might have waited on the platform for a train.
MORE INCLUSIVE LOCAL CLIMATE ACTION PLANS
Among the many things which the COVID-19 pandemic has made painfully obvious is that fact that certain disadvantaged and at-risk communities take a disproportionately heavy hit. One bright side from this realization is that Sustainability Offices throughout the country are dusting off their city’s Climate Action Plan and reimagining them with a more inclusive vision. I don’t know if this effort is yet underway in Philadelphia but it should be.
IMPACT ON SOCIAL IMPACT INVESTING
COVID-19 initially had a disruptive effect on social impact investing, but that disruption has been overcome. Perhaps because the pandemic has highlighted vulnerabilities in our maximally-efficient economy (and maximally-stressed work-lives) ideas and innovations for more balance and resiliency in work- and life-styles are popping up. Social impact investing is watering the growth of those new ideas.
TWO ‘THE JURY IS STILL OUT’ IMPACTS
AIR QUALITY
The shutdown of economic activity and drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels has of course led to a short-term amelioration in air quality, as the twin maps of China clearly shows. But the jury is out on the critical question of what will happen as activity resumes. Will economic pressure cause backsliding to abundant and cheap carbon fuels or will the Resiliency Lesson from our experience from the pandemic be learned? We know that areas with worse air quality suffered more from the virus.
INFLECTION POINT – YES OR NO?
We can enlarge the air quality question to the environment as a whole. Our efforts now to revive economic activity can either be rote or be reimagined. There are lessons which the pandemic has taught us about our interdependence and about what is most important in our lives. Will we apply what we have learned to recharging our economy in ways that are more resilient and regenerative or will be fall back on old habits? The answer will reverberate across coming generations.
These last two impacts are complex, still-evolving and extremely important. I will return to each in a future post.
For now, stay safe, healthy and involved.
The global scientific consensus, most prominently supported by the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assesses with high confidence a global warming increase of 1 °C as measured against preindustrial levels. Currently experienced effects from the 1 °C global warming which has already occurred include: loss of sea ice and glacial shrinking, accelerated sea level rises, shifting atmospheric and oceanic currents, longer and more intense heat waves and hurricane seasons. Impacts on the biosphere include the shifting of plant and animal ranges, earlier plant and tree flowering, and rapid declines in bio- diversity. All of these changes threaten the equilibrium of the planet and, more fundamentally, the continued viability of human adaptation to the planet.
The most recent comprehensive report issued by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018 compares the difference in impacts on human societies (the ‘delta’) if global warming is allowed to reach 2 °C as opposed to being stabilized at 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels. These delta effects2 include: an additional 10 million people endangered by sea level rise; several hundred million more people made susceptible to poverty; 50% more people exposed to water stress; loss of 1.5 million additional tons of global annual catch for marine fisheries; the number of plant and animal species on which human life depends losing half their habitat.
Clearly, the challenge is epochal. Even assuming that all countries in the world fulfill their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) pledged in the Paris Agreement, the world is currently on track to exceed 1.5° C by 2050 and to remain well above that threshold into the next century.
At a national level, the challenge is no less urgent or less central to societal well-being. Even for an administration notably skeptical of climate change science and aggressively committed to deregulating and redefining environmental standards so as to lessen the severity of threat assessments, the outlook remains dire. According to the Trump Administration’s most recent Climate Assessment3, which synthesizes the data and projections from thirteen federal agencies, key risks facing the nation as a direct result of climate change include risks to communities, the economy, water quality, citizen health, ecosystems, agricultural and food supply; the nation’s infrastructure; and the nation’s defense. To quote directly several specific examples:
- “Climate change creates new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States, presenting growing challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth;”
- “Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century;”
- “The quality and quantity of water available for use by people and ecosystems across the country are being affected by climate change, increasing risks and costs to agriculture, energy production, industry, recreation and the environment;”
- “Impacts from climate change on extreme weather and climate-related events, air quality, and the transmission of disease through insects and pests, food and water increasingly threaten the health and well-being of the American people, particularly populations that are already vulnerable;”
- “Ecosystems and the benefits they provide to society are being altered by climate change and these impacts are projected to continue. Without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, transformative impacts on some ecosystems will occur; some coral reef and sea ice ecosystems are already experiencing such transformational changes;”
- “Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands, and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the United States. Expected increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality, and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad threaten rural livelihoods, sustainable food security, and price stability;”
- “Our Nation’s aging and deteriorating infrastructure is further stressed by increases in heavy precipitation events, coastal flooding, heat, wildfire, and other extreme events, as well as changes to average precipitation and temperature. Without adaptation, climate change will continue to degrade infrastructure performance over the rest of the century, with the potential for cascading impacts that threaten our economy, national security, essential services and health and well-being.”These effects are felt most directly at the local level. This is because the costs which climate change inflicts globally and nationally – costs of community disruption, slowing economic growth, deteriorating water quality, ecosystem disequilibrium, and infrastructural decay – are mostly borne at the local level. To address this challenge, the City of Philadelphia, like most major cities in the country and many counties and townships as well, has its own Climate Action Plan. Generally, these local plans have three major components: (1) at the grassroots level, the plan serves to connect with various stakeholder groups such as businesses, educational institutions, residential associations, and engaged constituencies to raise awareness and help coordinate common effort; (2) at the local governmental level, the plan articulates the limited number of focal areas where local government has determined its scarce dollars canhave greatest, proactive impact; and (3) at the supra-local governmental level, these plans serve as the blueprints for collaboration with other cities and regions, as the justification for federal budget requests, and as the channel for consolidating and reporting local ‘carbon emissions savings’ into the Paris Agreement NDC process.
As we have learned with the COVID-19 pandemic, a straightforward scientific fact can be politically complicated. Acknowledging and addressing human-caused climate change is politically complex in the U.S. at this moment. So is cooperating with China on anything. Recognizing those complexities does not, however, absolve us of the responsibility to find a way forward on both the science and the international relations.
1.5° is where the U.S. and China must meet.
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government should act more aggressively to combat climate change, and almost as many say the problem is already affecting their community in some way” according to a Pew Research Center survey released on June 23rd this year.
While Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply over the question of whether human activity is contributing “a great deal” (72% Democrats vs 22% Republicans) or only “some” (22% Democrat vs 43% Republicans) to climate change, strong majorities of both parties recognize the human contribution and want the government to do more about it.
The story of this post goes back some twelve years. It’s a story of how bipartisanship and cooperative outreach can lead change. It shows what can be achieved when we focus, with a grounding in science, on the common good. We’re not doing that successfully now with COVID-19. We’re not doing it successfully now with climate change either But it’s within reach to do better.
As the second term of the George W. Bush Administration was winding down, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson sensed drift in the U.S.-China relationship. An avid birder and a passionate outdoorsman, Paulson found himself drawn to the environment as a possible new basis for cooperative engagement with China. If sufficient trust could be generated between the U.S. and China – especially among the career administrators responsible for climate policy in both countries – the quarter-century logjam that had impeded global action on climate change might free up.
What was that logjam? Ever since the mid-1970s, when the United Nations had first identified climate change as a long-term economic and political threat to the community of nations, the United States and China had never seen the issue eye-to-eye. The U.S., acting as the de facto leader of the developed nations, wanted joint action with the developing nations but didn’t want the developed nations to be forced to shoulder most costs. China, as de facto leader of the developing nations, wanted joint action but insisted the developing nations should foot most of the bill. Their argument, somewhat disingenuous but appealing in its simplicity, used a restaurant tab as an analogy. Why should developing nations, who had come late to the industrial revolution party, be splitting the bill for all the courses when they had only participated in the post-WWII dessert course? (The ploy buried in this argument is, of course, that the rates of consumption and carbon output of the post-WWII phase of industrial development outstripped significantly the previous century on a cumulative basis and the developing nations were on course to grow their consumption and carbon output in coming decades while developing nations were moderating theirs). In any case, this divergence of approach led directly to the breakdown of the Kyoto Protocol in 1999 (and also to the less consequential but unseemly debacle between President Obama and the Chinese delegation at the COP20 (20th UN Conference of Parties) meeting in Copenhagen in 2009).
So against this background, Secretary Paulson traveled to Beijing for discussions with his Chinese government counterparts about a new framework for coordination on global economic issues, resolution of trade disputes and strategic cooperation to mitigate climate change. While on that trip, Paulson traveled with his China-hand Deputy Chief of Staff, Taiya Smith, to Lake Qinghai to see first-hand the condition of that world-heritage lake and its wetland bird habitat. At the water’s edge, Paulson picked up some beverage cans and plastic bottles discarded there by fishermen and tourists. The Chinese officials traveling with him were surprised and impressed to see a Cabinet-level U.S. official stoop, literally, to help clear a Chinese lake of trash. In that moment, a ten-year run of strategic cooperation on clean energy and the environment between the U.S. and China was launched.
Over the past two academic years, I taught a masters level course for the University of Pennsylvania’s International Masters of Public Administration with the official Ten Year Framework (TYF) for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Environment as the focal case-study. I could say a lot about it but, for the purpose of this post, I have only a single point to make.
The TYF is a case-study in the hard work of cooperation. Launched in late 2008 by a Republican administration, handed off post-inauguration to the Obama Administration in early 2009, and then officially signed by President Obama and President Hu Jintao in November 2019, the first four years of the TYF created a “safe place” – beyond the prying eyes of the press and partisan grandstanders — where officials from the U.S. and China could educate each other about what might be possible and what would be perilous to undertake in their respective administrative and political systems. In short, they learned to trust one another to move in a common direction. The result of this four years of hard work was another official public act by President Obama and the new Chinese President, Xi Jinping, in November 11, 2014. The two presidents announced with fanfare that, for the first time in over forty years, the U.S. and China were ready to work together to lead the world towards a climate change agreement. Once that announcement was made between the U.S. and China, all it took was thirteen more months for over 190 other nations to join with the U.S. and China in agreeing to the Paris Accord at the COP21 meeting.
The TYF is a lesson in leadership or, more precisely, co-leadership. But it’s over. What relevance does it have in August 2020? Less than six months into his Presidency, President Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Accord. Now, in the lead-up to the November elections, each day brings a new low in U.S.-China relations. As someone who was serving at the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai before, during and after Tiananmen, I feel able to make the assessment that we are now at a lower point in the U.S.-China relationship than we were even then. The question is where to do we go from here?
That question is valid and complicated where our relationship is deeply fraught – advanced technology and global supply chains, minority rights in Xinjiang, political space for Hong Kong and Taiwan, military build-ups in the East and South China Seas – but the question is much simpler where our national interests are clearly aligned – in leading the world’s transition to lower-carbon energy in order to build resilience and mitigate climate change for the planet. Either the U.S. cedes a mega-industry of the future to China along with leadership of the Paris Accord community of nations or the U.S. steps forward again on the global stage with its unparalleled technology leadership and with renewed political vision. What will this look like? It will look like working with allies and not against them. It will involve not just supporting the planting of a billion trees globally and helping Big Coal capture and sequester carbon emissions underground but marshaling across-the-board governmental support to spur innovation across the entire spectrum of low-carbon solutions. It will require us to re-enter the Paris Accord and re-learn how to work productively with China in that particular arena while holding China to account in the many other arenas where our interests are at loggerheads.
Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord was on June 1, 2017. The framers of the Paris Accord, mindful of political cross-winds that can blow in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, included an Article 28 requirement that a four-year waiting period pass before any country’s withdrawal could be formalized. The date kicking off that waiting period for the U.S. is November 4, 2016, the day on which the Obama Administration secured ratification by Congress of U.S. entry into the Paris Accord. So, U.S. withdrawal cannot under any circumstance become official until the day after the upcoming November 3rd election in the U.S.
So there’s the Sixty-Seven Percent solution. With nearly two-thirds of Americans believing the federal government should act more aggressively to combat climate change and with the Paris Accord signatories able to be flexible and eager to welcome a Biden-led America back into the Accord, it’s time for a majority to stand up again in unison. For each of our poor souls, for our country, for the community of nations and for the planet.
E pluribus (67%) unum.
______Assessing China / The TEA Collaborative______ 