The first eight months of the second Trump administration have seen a sea change in energy policy. Previously, under Biden, the federal government had undertaken a blowout of hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and incentives for so-called “renewable” energy sources, while simultaneously implementing dozens of regulations and restrictions to suppress the production and use of fossil fuels. President Trump has now reversed all of that.
However, please take note of an important distinction: although Trump and Congress have zeroed out nearly all subsidies and tax credits for wind and solar generation and for grid-scale batteries, they have not enacted comparable subsidies and incentives for fossil fuels. Instead, all sources of energy production now must stand or fall without subsidies, based on their ability to fulfill customer demand and to generate profit. All sources of energy are now on equal footing, and without subsidies.
Meanwhile, over in China, billions of dollars in subsidies have flowed for many years into developing the ability to produce the infrastructure for a wind/solar/storage energy system — things like polysilicon, solar panels, solar cells, wind turbine blades, wind turbine nacelles, and battery cells. As a result, China has become completely dominant in the world in manufacturing these and many related items.
So who is making the better energy bet?
For one possible answer to that question, here is a Wall Street Journal piece from September 21 (probably behind pay wall). You get a clear idea where they are going from the headline, “The U.S. Is Forfeiting the Clean-Energy Race to China.”
In the vision of the authors of the piece (David Uberti, Ed Ballard, and Brian Spengele), there is an international race under way for dominance in “clean energy,” and the United States is in the process of losing it. The problem is that the U.S. is failing to put up the necessary government subsidies for “clean energy” to vie for the lead. Excerpt:
U.S. and China are offering competing visions for the future of energy, representing the next dimension in the showdown between two superpowers vying for global influence and artificial intelligence supremacy. The U.S. renewables retreat goes far beyond the tax bill that is winding down more than $400 billion in estimated subsidies. Federal agencies have tightened rules for new development. The Trump administration recently terminated a multibillion-dollar loan guarantee for a Midwest transmission line, halted a near-complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and canceled $3.7 billion of funding for technologies that could reduce industrial emissions.
China, meanwhile, under the enlightened direction of President Xi, has opened the money spigot to subsidize “green energy” development:
In a meeting with his economic team in 2014, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for a “revolution” in the nation’s energy system. Renewables were earmarked for special state support as part of Xi’s “Made in China 2025” initiative. By owning the production chain for equipment such as photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, the government bet it could ease its energy-security challenge while creating jobs.
And the result of the massive subsidies? Innovation!
Even as Chinese companies continued to erect coal plants, billions of dollars of subsidies flowed to such companies as JinkoSolar and the battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, also known as CATL. Innovation followed.
So China is racing ahead to dominate the entire clean energy field:
By 2023, a solar module produced in China was 65% cheaper than one made in the U.S., according to the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. CATL said it spent more than $2.6 billion on research and development last year alone, with a staff of more than 20,000 people. Caroline Wang, an analyst with the Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the resulting renewables buildout has recently left China’s world-leading coal fleet running at less than half capacity. “They are just leading the world by an absolutely mind-boggling margin,” Wang said.
It’s mind-boggling! The Journal provides the following chart (sourced to Bloomberg/NEF) of market shares of various green energy components to illustrate how completely dominant China has become:
Wow! There’s not one of those critical components where China’s 2024 market share was less than about 65%. And for some of them, like solar wafers and battery anodes, the market share was more like 95%.
So how are you going to bet? Here’s my bet: The entire idea of an energy system based on wind, solar and batteries will not work and will fail, probably over the course of the next ten years or so, if not sooner. All of the investment will be lost. All of the employees will be laid off.
At least in the U.S. we allow companies to fail and go through prompt bankruptcies, where their assets get re-allocated to more productive uses. In China, where avoiding loss of face for the leaders is the highest value, failed businesses get propped up endlessly, dragging the economy down with them. I guess that we are just blessed with incompetent geopolitical adversaries.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I don’t think this one is a close call. Businesses that need government subsidies to survive are a negative for the economy. It’s as simple as that.
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My bet is on free markets. Central planning and industrial planning shoves innovation aside and forges ahead with past technologies, and wastes resources which free markets allocate better.
ETA that anyone with any experience with government bureaucracies should know better than to be jealous of any central planning. The USSR fell apart for a reason.
Well, that’s certainly informative – not! Imperial China fell apart for a reason too, I guess. As did the Roman Empire, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Are you happy with the present outcomes? The US and the UK had civil wars. Some might believe the outcomes should have been different.
Russia seems to be doing OK, by some reports. Dim-witted “sanctions” can wind up backfiring – causing your adversary to become more self reliant and well sufficient, in the long run.
Maybe a case of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”?
Which makes you wonder why China is betting on nuclear generation.
“China is building half of the world’s new nuclear power despite inland plants pause”https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-is-building-half-of-the-worlds-new-nuclear-power-despite-inland-plants-pause/
Are you still bemoaning the death of the Soviet Union?
No. Should I be?
You sound like it.
Well, your comment was certainly informative — not! I guess you had a reason too.
What are you talking about?
One wonders, does one? Excellent!
What are you talking about?
By reports from Russia, sure.
🙂
“Russia seems to be doing OK, by some reports.” Nope, it’s not. Dozens of YouTube channels that do nothing but study Russia- and they all say Russia is in deep shit.
YouTube channels? Is that the best you can offer?
Do you really want to gloat as the populations of countries suffer because of politics? Obviously some “YouTubers” do!
I don’t take “sides” unless forced to. I just accept facts – for example, nobody has managed to make air hotter by adding CO2. According to some, that makes me a “denier” (whatever that means).
And so it is with armed conflict – both “sides” are convinced that they are in the right. One “side” eventually proclaims victory (whatever that means). As time goes by, the winner’s enemies may become its friends, and its allies become its enemies!
It’s a strange world, isn’t it?
If someone smashes in your front door and you fight back- are you both at fault?
By having what the robber wants, you are completely at fault. You should have just given away everything you had.
Let’s see, Russia’s population is collapsing as well as it’s economy, but the reports out of the Kremlin say everything is fine, so it must be.
Why do you read reports from the Kremlin if you think they are just lying propaganda? Do you get some perverse pleasure out of wasting your time?
Relocated
Sum Ting Wong
Just keep believing that, and hope it comes to pass.
it’s a little ironic that when I bought a kitchen utensil proclaiming “Proudly American since 1927”, closer examination showed it was Made in China!
The future is unknowable, but underestimating or denigrating your adversary is probably not a winning strategy.
Even more ironic is the fact that US military officers are required to read “The Art of War”, written by – Sun Tzu! A Chinaman? Must have stolen US intellectual property – it’s well known that the Chinese are incompetent geopolitical adversaries, isn’t it?
Only joking, I’m unaware of any serious research showing that the Chinese are congenitally more stupid than white Americans. This means that if China has, say, three times the population of the US, then it might well have three times as many smart people.
Reality overcomes wishful thinking. Fools and losers underestimate their opponents.
It’s not the Chinese who are stupid, it’s there political/economic system.
If you hadn’t been so eager to bash Americans, you might have realized what the author was talking about.
Yes, and Sun Tzu’s life predated communism by roughly 2500 years, different China, different politics.
I think you meant to write “their”. Notwithstanding typos, are you saying that the non-stupid Chinese are stupidly allowing Chinese who are stupid to run the political/economic system, or do you believe that the Chinese political/economic system is run by stupid people who are not Chinese?
You accuse me of being “eager to bash Americans”, without stating facts to support your opinion, which probably has the same value as mine. Zero.
As to what the author was talking about, you are right. He seems to be confused, and trying to reassure himself that China is an incompetent geopolitical adversary (whatever that means).
I don’t live in the US, and I have no intention of learning Mandarin or moving to China. That would make me an egalitarian basher, would it? <g>
You assume that most Chinese have a choice as to what political/economic system they live under. They do not.
Please dont encourage him…remember the old saying about being dragged down to a level.
I’m old enough to remember the Japanese economic miracle. There is a Wikipedia entry. Then stuff came from Japan. This month, I bought a KERYE Japanese pull saw. It was made in China. Now China has my money and they can subsidize whatever the want. I don’t know if I will last another 10 years to see if the shine comes off the Chinese economic miracle.
Wind facilities began in 2005/2006 in China. The early units likely have reached their use-by-date. How will we know?
After the Japanese economic miracle it was the Korean economic miracle, followed by the Taiwanese economic miracle, followed by …
Bangladesh was making t-shirts for a while there.
“So who is making the better energy bet?” Of course only time or lies will tell but I see the world going nuclear with legacy fossil fuel slowly fading out for grid electricity generation.
I tend to agree. HIstorically, nuclear has been developed for those areas losing or never having access to cheap coal. I would expect this trend stretching back across half a century to continue. But it’s not clear that the three dimwits of this Wall Street article know anything about the physics and engineering of power production.
You may well be right, but one thing to keep in mind. A large part of energy usage is transportation. Nuclear power generates electricity, not gasoline. Chemical fuels have far higher energy density than batteries — both in theory and in practice. Unless and until we can make decent fuels at economic prices from electricity and common raw materials, “legacy fossil fuels” are probably going to be needed for rocketry, long distance air travel and some other applications.
With inexpensive electricity the manufacturing of liquid fuels is viable.
I always thought that Alberta should build a few nuclear power plants adjacent to the oil sands and use the waste heat in the leftover steam to separate the oil from the sand. Think of it as innovative plant cooling, could possibly reduce cooling water use in the plant. 🤔 😊
Rocketry is not part of an economic model. Aside from that nit, spot on.
“The U.S. Is Forfeiting the Clean-Energy Race to China.”
A race worth forfeiting.
Renewable generation is heading for a proverbial cliff and China is the head lemming marching their followers to their inevitable end
Just imagine if in the near future the US ceases buying wind turbines and solar panels made in the PRC (or anywhere else) owing to the renewables subsidies spigot being shutoff. Will that impact the PRC economy?
I always have a bit of a smile at Clean-Energy (presumably as opposed to Dirty-Energy). Why? Here’s a caption to an old US advertisement –
“Says Phoebe Snow
about to go
upon a trip to Buffalo
“My gown stays white
from morn till night
Upon the Road of Anthracite.””
Clean-Energy or Dirty-Energy?
Jet is a form of coal once popular for jewellery, quite “clean”, but would be considered “dirty”, no doubt, if burned to produce energy. It all depends on your point of view, I suppose.
Your point of view like viewing out through your bunghole?
If you don’t like facts, don’t blame me.
I’m pretty sure that you guys, just like the greens, misunderstand what the Chinese are doing. I’ve never seen any sign that the Chinese much give a damn about where energy comes from. Their problem, from their point of view is that they are trying to provide a decent standard of living for 15% of humanity from a standing start about half a century ago. They’re generating electricity any way they can — hydro, fossil fuel, solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear. They have 60 nuclear reactors online, 30 more under construction. More being planned. I’m not really an expert on Chinese energy generation, but my impression is that they’ve never exactly promised to phase out fossil fuels. Rather, they’ve said that fossil fuel usage will peak about a decade from now — which is, I suspect, when they believe that they will start to run out of coal.
Nor do I, and I’m not even Chinese!
China already has a working commercial peddle-bed SMR and is building a second, larger one.
Their fuel processing plant was built to provide fuel for several such units.
America has some catching up to do.
There is nothing “clean” about the manufacture of solar and wind equipment.. !!!
There is nothing “clean” about their installation. Very destructive of the environments and habitats.
They are massive disruptors of land, sea and avian life while in use, as well as being parasitic to grid supply systems
And they create a huge amount of unrecyclable waste at the end of their short life. !
Sshhh!
A telling piece that reveals the mind set of very many journalists.
They still believe in the effectiveness of renewables without understanding the fundamentals.
To me this is the reason that the average man still supports U.K. government policy to expand renewable generation despite it’s cost and expansion of power lines over beautiful landscapes.
If journalists did their job and dug out the facts and published them support would collapse and there would be widespread dissatisfaction with our government on this matter. (To add to the other sources of dissatisfaction.)
Yes, sadly the vast majority of the UK population does not understand science or engineering. Unfortunately those people are the ones making the most noise about wanting renewables.
For the past 25 years, China has gone all in on building and manufacturing, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The Chinese produced so much excess housing they had to implode huge high rise developments because the excess inventory was a drag on the real estate market.
China has also made a huge bet on being the low cost manufacturing center of the world. Cheap energy, cheap labor, few environmental restrictions have allowed them to dominate. For all its green energy industrial prowess, it’s using low cost energy by whatever means to supply products for export at prices no other country can compete with. In fact China just signed a sweetheart deal with Russia to double its import of Russian natural gas at a 30% discount to what Europe used to pay.
I predict that Russian NG will finally allow China to reduce or at least level off its annual CO2 emissions.
China’s green energy manufacturing has been scaled to build for export into a developed world with big ambitions for low CO2 power generation. If the developed world changes course and chooses not to buy near as much of these products, we might see a repeat of the consequences of the real estate bubble reverberate through the Chinese green energy economy as excess production capacity is eliminated.
The entire idea of an energy system based on wind, solar and batteries will not work and will fail, probably over the course of the next ten years or so, if not sooner. All of the investment will be lost. All of the employees will be laid off.
Yes.
Whatever you think about China or Climate or a bunch of other things, this is surely the point, the only thing that really matters.
The attempt to solve an imaginary climate problem by to moving power generation to wind and solar while at the same time moving transport to EVs and heating to heat pumps is not doable. You can’t generate the power, if you could even do it you can’t afford it, if you could do it and afford it, it would have no effect on climate.
In the end what cannot happen will not happen. And the collapse of the supposed solution of renewables will take the climate hysteria with it.
Yes, but climate reporting will remain to be whatever suits the narrative, regardless of any actual improvement / deterioration / stability.
And therein lies the rub.
I wonder if China can say “stranded assets”.
China has more manufacturing than the USA. Thus China has more knowledge generation than the USA (repetition shows up nuances that lab knowledge misses).
Thus China has more patents each year than the USA.
And China has dominance in the raw materials that a modern economy needs.
China has huge capital for investment due to a culture of personal savings. And a larger population.
And the largest source of green energy that China actually uses is Hydro – which is reliable.
The wind turbines and solar panels are for export.
Think the author of this piece is very complacent.
They graduate more engineers than the USA too
China is “dominating” in the manufacture of crap they thought they would have suckers to sell it to. Problem is, the suckers are waking up.
Change “Must have been made in Japan” (from the 50s and 60s) to “Must have been made in China.”
The items that I have purchased that were made in the PRC are of equal quality to items made in the US, if such items are made here. Quality has not been a problem.
For those things.
I have gotten products from China that just did not stand up to close inspection and/or did not last long enough for me to have gotten my money’s worth.
Other products from China were fine. Point is I am not claiming everything from China is junk.
There are serious questions about EVs, batteries, SV panels, etc. regarding quality and durability. The jury is still out.
All that aside, I was making a joke and should have identified it as such.
Sparta, I bought a couple of Chinese dial indicators a while ago. One was ridiculously cheap compared to the other (which was ridiculously cheap compared to a US component of the same specs. I was happy to spend a couple of dollars just for the fun of it.
The ridiculously ridiculously inexpensive Chinese indicator actually operated, but bound up during its travel, making it practically useless for my purposes. Hence the low price, I guess. The more expensive still operates beautifully, and has stood up to pretty severe unintentional abuse.
It’s as good as the US Starrett indicator it replaced, just far less expensive.
On the electronic side, the Chinese provide some test equipment which doesn’t seem to be manufactured anywhere else in the world – I don’t know why.
Funny, isn’t it?
Good points!
“The entire idea of an energy system based on wind, solar and batteries will not work and will fail, probably over the course of the next ten years or so, if not sooner.”
Exactly! The dreamers kept pushing these land-hungry, short-life, intermittent-output harvesters of “free” wind and solar energy without ever having a realistic and affordable way to convert it all into a reliable supply. Batteries are hardly any help at all.
What happens at end-of-life?
https://youtu.be/KvUEqJGCh5o
“they have not enacted comparable subsidies and incentives for fossil fuels.”
Not completely accurate. A major flow of financing has been authorized to help reboot the coal mining industry.
I do not personally view this as subsidizing the industry rather than paying reparations due from the prior administrations malfeasance.
“Here’s my bet: The entire idea of an energy system based on wind, solar and batteries will not work and will fail, probably over the course of the next ten years or so, if not sooner. All of the investment will be lost. All of the employees will be laid off.”
And then what? If “CATL said it spent more than $2.6 billion on research and development last year alone, with a staff of more than 20,000 people” then that’s 20,000 people who now have to do something to live. Some of them will be smart.
In the 1980’s Cold war, movies like Rocky 4 had no trouble casting an Ivan Drago as a propagandist bad guy. I really doubt Apollo Creed will appear on the big screen reenactment fighting a steroid-fueled Qang Li. Maybe that’s progress.
Seems to me that China is betting that Western countries continue to buy and install “green tech”. If it fails, they will lose that investment. And, the US quitting is already going to be a problem unless the rest of us take up the slack.
Much like the dot-bomb that ruined a lot of mutual funds in 1999, the green mal-investments will eject laid off engineering talent to seed the Earth with entrepreneurs selling solar powered coffee makers and wind powered stadium lights. Those inventions sound dumb, but only because I’m not desperate enough to think of better inventions. Some of those laid off green engineers will be much more desperate and some of those will be much smarter and some of those will find a way to make me a f—- flying car. Come on China, where’s my flying car!
If, as the WSJ article states, more than 1/2 the coal-fired electricity generation plsnts are idle, why is the PRC still commisionig coal plants? What do they know that we don’t ?
Game, set, and match.
Let’s not forget that despite China’s being the global leader in wind and solar deployment, it’s still the world’s largest coal consumer. Meanwhile India has seen its carbon emissions rise fivefold since 1990, and there has been similar rises in southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. So renewables may be making gains, but these aren’t without generous or even massive subsidies, and thus far they’re only supplementing, not supplanting, traditional energy sources like fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear.
China has massive state intervention in all industries which the state considers “strategic”. China’s beggar-thy-neighbor mercantilistic economic policies and government controlled command economy has:
-massively over invested in artificially lowering its currency’s exchange rate.
-massively over invested in real estate.
-massively over invested in high speed rail.
-massively over invested in highway infrastructure.
-massively over invested in steel production.
-massively over invested in aluminum production.
-massively over invested in rare earth mineral production.
-massively over invested in ship building capacity.
-massively over invested in wind turbine production.
-massively over invested in domestic wind turbine installations.
-massively over invested in Belt and Road investments.
-massively over invested in automobile production.
-massively over invested in EV battery production.
-massively over invested in EV production.
-massively over invested in solar panel production.
-massively over invested in domestic solar panel installations.
China’s solar panel production capacity is currently 3X total world demand… that isn’t a “transition”, that is government idiocy.
All of China’s “strategic” industries are wholly dependent upon government subsidies, and just as the real estate sector cratered, the EV, the solar panel, and the battery sectors will do the same. Even better…if you think China is going to lose its energy bet…when China is unable to sell all of their junk green energy products to western countries like Britain and Germany, they will dump these junk green impoverishment contraptions on their own domestic economy. A little taste of British energy impoverishment….but the Chinese will not try to use them, they will simply let them rot in place just like their ghost cities.
A decent video on China’s lithium battery manufacturing capacity, (3x world demand) but the video doesn’t call out the massive impoverishment coming to China’s economy from same.
China has subsidized the EV and battery industries to the tune of some $230 billion.
https://itif.org/publications/2024/07/29/how-innovative-is-china-in-the-electric-vehicle-and-battery-industries/
Untrue. Trump is boosting coal to the tune of $625 million.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-admin-puts-625m-toward-keeping-coal-plants-open-lower-energy-costs.amp
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/climate/coal-power-trump-public-lands
Overall, he’s spending billions on fossil fuels via tax breaks and other incentives. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/climate/trump-campaign-funding-oil-industry-tax-breaks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU8.5CLC.piOBeTl3mSbw&smid=url-share
China can use all their wind and solar energy to power the empty apartment buildings and the vehicles driving on the 12 lane highways connecting two lane highways on each end. They are masters of efficiency.