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Opinion
How strategic planning is powering China’s green energy transition
China’s energy strategy reflects a long-term vision made possible by political stability and a governance model ensuring policy continuity
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Ren Yan is a Beijing-based current affairs commentator.
Recently, some major Western media outlets have focused on China’s embrace of clean energy technologies. Between the lines of the rhetoric on China becoming an “electrostate”, there is palpable anxiety about US President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach and the partisan political landscape.
The New York Times highlighted one of China’s longest ultra-high-voltage power lines, stretching from the far northwest remote desert to the populous southeast, noting that these power lines are each “capable of carrying more electricity than any utility transmission line in the United States”. The Financial Times described China’s rising dominance as the world’s first significant “electrostate”, citing Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley, who observed that the Trump administration has “embraced fossil fuel industries” and “gutted” the previous government’s support for renewable energy.
One example of the US pivot to fossil fuels is the cancellation of Esmeralda 7, a collection of seven solar projects in the Nevada desert which would have been one of the largest in the world. It had been steadily advancing through regulatory review by the Biden administration.
Why is China so persistent in moving towards a low-carbon future? More than 90 per cent of the country’s population is located in the east, yet much of China’s clean energy is generated in the north and west. Transferring this electricity to where it is most needed is an urgent necessity, one that spurred the west-to-east power transmission programme.
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