China is both the world’s biggest environmental villain and – paradoxically– the greatest hero when it comes to the development and export of green renewable energy.

The Middle Kingdom is the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 gases—more than the US, India and EU combined. It burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and it continues to build coal-powered plants.

But at the same time it produces 80 percent of the world’s solar panels; 70 percent of lithium-ion batteries, 65  percent of the world’s wind turbines and the world’s most affordable electric vehicles.

China has vast resources of dirty coal and very little oil or gas. So when the Chinese Communist Party decided to go all out for industrial growth it made economic sense to exploit the energy on its doorstep. So it turned first to coal and then to imported oil and gas.

But by the early 2000s the Party leadership came to the realisation that the growing dependence on imported oil meant energy insecurity. Also the burning of coal and growing number of cars was creating dangerous pollution levels. Finally, they saw that the next big industrial revolution would be “Green.”

About the same time Europeans and large slice of Americans were also investing in renewable energy. Western governments were starting to provide tax breaks and other subsidies. China, however, has a command economy. So, it didn’t just subsidise green tech companies. The Chinese leadership made the decision to rebuild the country’s entire industrial base around renewable energy.

There were massive subsidies for solar, wind, electric vehicles, and batteries. Free or cheap land was provided for green industries. The state banks offered low-interest and local governments provided tax breaks and cash incentives.

Heavy emphasis was given to national dominance of the supply chain. So development went from mining of rare earths to development of batteries to production of electric cars. No country had ever industrialized a clean-energy sector at that speed.

The fastest way to make something cheap is to build so many factories that costs collapse. This is how solar panels went from $4 per watt to $0.20 per watt. China’s logic was: “If we scale faster than everyone else, our competitors will die before they reach economies of scale.”

It worked. European solar manufacturing collapsed. U.S. solar manufacturing collapsed. Many Japanese/Korean firms exited solar. China’s firms became the only ones profitable at extremely low margins

An essential part of the development plan was a rapid build of domestic demand which could then become a springboard for exports. So, the government forced its own electricity grid to buy renewables even when they were expensive or inefficient. While Europe and the U.S. debated, China built.

Once the domestic market was established, Beijing pushed exports. And because they had achieved economies of scale with their large domestic market they could underbid global competitors. They were also able to provide bundled renewable packages of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines as well as low-interest loans from Chinese banks.

China has enjoyed tremendous economic benefits as a result of its investment in green technology and it will continue to reap those benefits for generations. But at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, its diplomats were working overtime explaining how China’s Green Revolution is benefitting the world.

According to Western economists, because of China’s mass production of solar panels and their lock on the market the prices of solar panels have dropped 90 percent between 2010 and 2023. Most of the developing countries are in the hotter, sunnier parts of the world. Because they can afford to buy Chinese solar panels it means that they don’t have to buy coal, oil or gas. Solar panels have enabled poor countries to electrify rural areas, build micro grids and power hospitals and schools.

Wind turbines now produce a quarter of Britain’s energy needs and are being installed across Europe as a means of reducing the continent’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. The price of wind turbines are estimated to cost 20-40 percent less than they would otherwise because of Chinese production.

According to a study by the London School of Economics, if China had decided against becoming a green tech giant then the world would be burning a million more barrels of oil a day and global warming would 0.1 to 0.2 percent higher by 2050.

But back to China’s villain status as the world’s biggest polluter. Beijing reckons that the country’s carbon emissions have peaked this year—five years earlier than planned. But its target of net-zero is ten years later (2060) than the EU, Japan and South Korea. Also, it concentrates on CO2 emissions rather than all greenhouse gases.

The Climate Action Tracker set up by the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement rates Beijing’s policies as “insufficient” and the EU reckons that China will “fall well short” of its 2060 target. Because China is a massive industrialised country with a large population, failure to reach its target could cancel any global benefit from the export of its renewable energy.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”