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Nora Mankel

As US-China tensions continue, one contrast stands out sharply between the big power rivals – their approach to energy and climate issues.
Even as the Trump administration cripples green energy endeavours with executive orders and the “Big Beautiful Bill”, China is building on its title as the world’s largest renewable energy investor. According to the State Grid Energy Research Institute, China is expected to bolster its national power grid by a record 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity this year.
The energy debate unfolds with the rapidly warming world needing more clean energy than ever, especially as advancing technology drives up demand.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and other innovative technologies need substantial amounts of electricity to operate, as they rely heavily on data centres and powerful computing infrastructure. Countries worldwide are trying to increase energy production as they invest in new data centres that must be kept running round the clock, with the US and China leading the field.
With technology rivalry a central driver of the broader US-China tensions, Beijing has forged ahead with renewable energy goals and boosted related investment in its pursuit of a global tech lead.


In contrast, the Trump administration is cancelling tax credits for what it calls “unreliable ‘green’ energy sources like wind and solar” that “compromise America’s electric grid”.
US President Donald Trump has referred to wind farms as a “blight on our country” and large solar projects as “very, very inefficient and very ugly too”.
It is a sharp policy U-turn by the White House, considering solar power used to enjoy bipartisan support and was the fastest growing energy source in the United States last year, US Energy Information Administration data shows.
According to Zhang Shuwei and Huang Nanya, researchers at Draworld Environment Research Centre in Beijing, rejecting renewable power solely on the “unreliable power supply” premise is shortsighted. It is often electric grids that are not adequately equipped for intermittent power supply.
“Statistical fluctuations in renewable energy are not a problem; they require management, not a solution,” they wrote in an article last week on the social media account of the Chinese science website Zhishi Fenzi, or The Intellectual. The article analysed the widespread power outages in Spain and Portugal in April.
The discussion should not be about whether renewable energy could take over 100 per cent of the power system in a country, but about how to deal with expected and unexpected risks when building a balanced system, the researchers said.
They explained that China had taken a macro-level approach, which depended on a balanced power system able to handle momentary shortages of micro-level components such as renewable energy as just one part of the energy mix. “China places greater emphasis on durability in extreme situations,” they said, adding that this could bring more costs in non-extreme times but was an economic and political decision made at the government level.
In contrast, America’s more component-focused strategy towards clean energy growth faced challenges in grid integration and balancing variability.


To feed AI demand, Washington plans to invest in coal – known to be the dirtiest fossil fuel and a major contributor to air pollution – alongside natural gas, nuclear and hydropower plants. Just last Tuesday, private firms pledged tens of billions of dollars for energy and technology investments in Pennsylvania, but that did not include renewable energy. How the new policies will impact the sector in the long run remains to be seen.
China, meanwhile, is investing heavily in its energy infrastructure and new transmission lines to integrate clean energy projects into the existing grid, as laid out in its new renewable energy plan.
Although China still relies heavily on coal and crude oil, which provide roughly 80 per cent of its electricity as per data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewables contributed 35 per cent of the country’s total power generation in 2024, according to official data.
Tencent, one of China’s biggest internet and tech companies, launched a microgrid project last year at their Tencent Tianjin High-Tech Cloud Data Centre. According to the company website, it is a “distributed new energy microgrid project that connects to the main public grid and generates green electricity”.
As part of the project, Tencent has installed solar panels on top of their data centre, which now doubles as a power plant. This does not account for all of the needed energy, but “the project is a critical step in Tencent’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030,” the website says.
Challenges like different electrical currents and the inconsistency of renewable power were solved by introducing conversion and storage equipment, as well as an AI- and machine-learning-enabled control system to coordinate the now much more complex, but cleaner, energy management.
Other Chinese tech giants are also seeking ways to align their companies with President Xi Jinping’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 for China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.


Alibaba Group’s 2025 environmental, social and governance report says that the company’s self-built data centres are 64 per cent powered by clean electricity. That includes all renewable energy sources as well as non-renewables that do not release harmful pollutants, like nuclear energy.
Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.
But the shift to green energy is not all smooth sailing, according to an article by Caixin Global in May. Lagging infrastructure in western regions rich in solar and wind resources and some unfavourable government policies tended to curtail corporate efforts, experts told the noted business and finance news outlet.
Even so, clean energy made up around 10 per cent of China’s gross domestic product in 2024, with solar as one of the top contributors, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.


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Science

Trump cuts are crippling US clean energy endeavours, while Beijing is building on its title as the world’s largest investor in the sector


Trump cuts are crippling US clean energy endeavours, while Beijing is building on its title as the world’s largest investor in the sector.


Renewable energy

United States

Tencent Holdings

Why China is surging ahead of Trump’s America in green energy race

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Trump cuts are crippling US clean energy endeavours, while Beijing is building on its title as the world’s largest investor in the sector

Trump cuts are crippling US clean energy endeavours, while Beijing is building on its title as the world’s largest investor in the sector