Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Trump’s attempt to derail the wind and solar industries in the United States in favor of dirty fossil fuels is a threat to the health of the planet, of course.
But it is also a threat to the US economy. Fossil fuels are sources of short term profits. As the horrific effects of carbon dioxide on human-driven climate change become ever more destructive, coal, fossil gas and petroleum will increasingly be banned or discouraged. Companies investing in two decades of drilling and development of these sources of energy now will likely never get their money back, and their investors will never get to retire. Plus, these sources of energy are expensive.
Solar and wind are less expensive and the energy they use to produce power is free. Not only does the domestic economy benefit from the switch but getting good at manufacturing and exporting solar panels and wind turbines can be very lucrative.
Some 64% of US manufacturing for offshore wind turbines is located in districts that typically vote Republican, so Trump’s cancellation of offshore bids hurts the MAGA voters most of all.
The danger to a US retrenchment from these industries is a less competitive America, with higher power costs at home, and the loss of high-value contracts at home and abroad.
And you know who will eat America’s lunch? China.
Isabella O’Malley at the Associated Press reports that China installed 357 gigawatts (1 gig = a billion watts) of solar and wind power in 2024, an unprecedented feat.
Solar capacity in the People’s Republic is nearly twice now what it was a year ago, and wind is up 18%.
China has 888 gigawatts of installed solar capacity and 520 gigawatts of wind. Mega-batteries are solving the old problems of intermittency in renewable power.
Because it makes so many solar panels for use at home, China is well positioned to export the panels abroad as well, a trade worth $13 billion in 2024. At 13.7 cents per megawatt, Chinese panels are the most competitive globally.
China exported $27 billion worth of wind turbines in 2024, par for the course.
The US only installed 30 new gigs of solar last year, and has 219 gigs total. We’re pygmies compared to China. And if Trump gets his way, the gap will quickly widen.
We have only 136 gigawatts of installed wind capacity, up by 5% last year (not 18% like China).
Turning from electricity to transportation, inside China, sales of all kinds of electric vehicles soared 40% in 2024. Sales of Chinese EVs abroad rose to 1.6 million units, a 6 percent increase year over year. All in all, the Chinese sold 11 million EVs last year, to America’s 1.3 million.
The only answer the US has to this incredible challenge is protectionism, as though we were a 1960s third world country standing guard over its infant industries.
Shangha, 2019. © Juan Cole.
When I was eight years old, China was desperately poor and the US gross domestic product made up 40% of the world GDP. We couldn’t have imagined a super-advanced China now on the cusp of being the first electrified society, while the backward US wallowed in dangerous and unhealthy fossil fuels, as it deteriorates into a society with a handful of piggy, fascist multi-billionaires and an army of impoverished Walmart greeters acting as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (60% to 70% of Walmart’s merchandise is from China).
It is a hell of a note, and Trump will only make it orders of magnitude worse.
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