A report from the United Nations recently noted 74 per cent of growth in electricity worldwide was from wind, solar and other renewables.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
U.S. President Donald Trump spent part of his recent time in Scotland lecturing Europeans on wind turbines.
He would like to see them eradicated from the planet. To him, they are a blight on the landscape and a far-fetched method for generating energy – in short, a total scam. To Mr. Trump, nothing will ever replace good old oil and gas.
And the Chinese couldn’t be happier.
Of all the differences between the world’s two great superpowers, few are starker than the direction they are taking on energy. Mr. Trump is pushing all his chips behind oil and gas, while the Chinese are placing a massive bet on renewables. There is little doubt which strategy will prove to be the winning one over time – and it’s not fossil fuels.
As a report from the United Nations recently noted, 74 per cent of growth in electricity worldwide was from wind, solar and other renewables. And 92.5 per cent of new electricity capacity added to the grid around the planet came from green sources. Last year, renewable energy received more than double the investment fossil fuels did. And China is leading the way.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, the country has installed more wind turbines and solar panels than the rest of the world combined. A story in The Financial Times, meantime, put it this way: “China is on its way to becoming the world’s first ‘electrostate,’ with a growing share of its energy coming from electricity and an economy increasingly driven by clean technologies. It offers China a strategic buffer from trade decoupling and rising geopolitical tensions with the U.S.”
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China has spent years quietly putting into place the infrastructure necessary to capitalize on its renewable ambitions. Even if the U.S. were to decide tomorrow to go all-in on green technology, it would take years for them to get where China is. And by then, who knows how much further ahead the Chinese will be. They’ve already developed technology that will fully recharge electric cars in about five minutes.
The Chinese also spent years, at great social and environmental cost, harvesting much of the world’s rare earth minerals. Today, the country’s mines and refineries produce all but a few kinds of the precious metals essential for consumer electronics, not to mention clean energy systems. In 2023, the most recent year data is available, China exported US$65-billion worth of lithium-ion batteries, US$40-billion worth of solar panels and modules, and US$38-billion in electric cars, compared to just US$3-billion, US$69-million and US$12-billion, respectively, for the United States.
China has also begun to rule in nuclear energy, which was once the domain of the U.S. It now has 31 reactors under construction – almost as many as the rest of the world combined.
Yet, as China pushes more aggressively to power its future with renewables – increasingly at a fraction of the cost of oil and gas – the U.S. seems intent on going back in time. Mr. Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” marked a dramatic pivot away from green technology in support of his “drill, baby, drill” agenda.
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The President and his Republican acolytes believe renewable energy equals Democrat, which equals woke ideology. That’s actually how they think; they are that stupid. The bill phases out tax credits that were helping the country’s nascent solar and wind industry, and ended tax credits for electric vehicles. Even Elon Musk couldn’t stomach it, calling the legislation “utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
The research firm Energy Innovation did some modelling and predicts Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the renewable energy industry in the U.S. will cause wholesale electric power prices to increase by about 50 per cent within a decade. That means cumulative annual consumer energy costs will increase more than US$16-billion by 2030. There will be enormous job loss in the renewable energy industry, too.
Which brings us to Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney isn’t dumb. He knows what’s going on in the world, especially as it pertains to clean energy. He understands what is taking place in terms of the strategic bets the U.S. and China are making, and which strategy is wisest. This is why any decision to make Canada an energy superpower that doesn’t include, or even emphasize, renewable energy would be terribly misguided.
Take advantage of our oil and gas reserves, absolutely – in the short term. But Canada’s energy future must be one that focuses on renewable sources of power, rather than those that are quickly becoming part of the past.