A Flood of Green Tech From China Is Upending Global Climate Politics

 

A Flood of Green Tech From China Is Upending Global Climate Politics

 

At this year’s climate summit, the United States is out and Europe is struggling. But emerging countries are embracing renewable energy thanks to a glut of cheap equipment.

 

Somini Sengupta Brad Plumer

By Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer

Reporting from Belém, Brazil

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/climate/cop30-belem-climate-energy-technology-china.html

Nov. 10, 2025, 11:15 a.m. ET

 

As the United States torpedoes climate action and Europe struggles to realize its green ambitions, a surprising shift is taking hold in many large, fast-growing economies where a majority of the world’s people live.

 

Countries like Brazil, India, and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years.

 

Key to this shift is the world’s new renewable energy superpower: China.

 

Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world. What’s more, they’re investing billions of dollars in factories that make things like solar panels in Vietnam and electric cars in Brazil.

 

In effect, Chinese industrial policy is shaping the development trajectory of some of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

 

“From a climate point of view, the developing countries are showing solutions,” said André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat shepherding this year’s international climate talks, known as COP30, in the Brazilian city of Belém.

 

“I think that emerging countries are appearing in this COP with a different role,” he added.

 

Is that completely fixing the problem of climate change? No. Most countries, including these big, growing economies, still get the majority of their energy from fossil fuels. Indonesia is still mining vast amounts of coal, the dirtiest energy source. India and China continue their coal-plant building spree. Brazil plans to expand oil production.

 

But these countries are increasingly meeting large portions of their energy needs with renewable power, both for the cost savings and for energy security reasons. Many are trying to reduce the amount of fossil fuels they import, to relieve pressure on their foreign currency reserves.

 

Rapidly falling prices of Chinese technology are enabling them to do that. Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and advocacy group, said it shows how economic development can go hand in hand with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 

“Emerging economies are a very important part of the story,” he said. “The reason we should be paying attention is that they have the most people in the world, they have the largest number of poor people in the world, and their energy demands are growing. If these economies don’t change, there’s no chance for the world to get to a safer place.”

 

Ethiopia last year took the extraordinary step of banning the import of new gasoline-powered cars. Nepal reduced import duties on electric vehicles so much that they are now cheaper than cars with internal combustion engines. Brazil raised tariffs on all car imports to compel Chinese automakers like BYD and Great Wall Motors to set up plants inside Brazil.

 

Chinese manufacturing investments around the world have exceeded $225 billion in total since 2011, according to the Net Zero Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University, with three-fourths of that money going into what the report’s authors called countries in the global south, a collective term for low-income countries and emerging economies. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than the United States poured into the Marshall Plan after World War II.

 

Even India, wary of relying on imports from China, its neighbor and rival, has lifted a page from the Chinese industrial policy playbook. The government is using incentives to install huge amounts of solar power and make much more solar equipment at home.

 

India used the summit in Belém last week to remind the world that half of its electricity demand can now be met by wind, solar, and hydropower and that it reached its 2030 targets for pivoting to cleaner energy sources under the Paris Agreement five years early. It has yet to submit its 2035 climate targets.

 

In short, the center of gravity seems to be shifting.

 

Ten years ago, when the Paris Agreement was signed, it was the rich, industrialized countries like the United States and Europe that were leaning on developing countries to take faster action to reduce their planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries responded that they, too, had the right to industrialize and that rich countries should help them finance the transition to cleaner fuels.

 

That financial help has mostly not materialized. The ire of developing-country leaders remains.

 

But the economics have changed.

 

“Ten years ago, you had the political commitment, but you didn’t have the markets,” said Kaysie Brown, the associate director for climate diplomacy and geopolitics at E3G, a European research and advocacy group. “Now I think we’re in an inflection point where in some cases, like renewables, you do have the markets. So there’s a question about where in this changing landscape you start to see political leadership come from.”

 

 

 

China has sought to cast itself as a pillar of global stability, particularly after the Trump administration said it would withdraw the United States from the annual climate talks.

 

“Green and low-carbon transition is the trend of the time,” the Chinese vice premier, Ding Xuexiang, said last week at the summit. “We need to stay confident, balance such goals as environmental protection, economic development, job creation and poverty eradication.”

 

Mr. Ding also urged countries around the world to lower trade barriers for green technology.

 

With Chinese exports of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries hitting records this year, Beijing increasingly has a vested interest in making sure the rest of the world moves faster in adopting renewable energy. Many American and European leaders have expressed alarm at China’s growing dominance, which has undercut their own industries.

 

But at the summit, plenty of emerging countries seem fine with the arrangement.

 

“You can’t insist that China has to lower its emissions” and then, later, “complain that China is putting cheap E.V.s all over the world,” Mr. Corrêa do Lago said. “If you are worried about climate, this is good news.”

 

Somini Sengupta is the international climate reporter on the Times climate team.

 

Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.