[Episode #260] – China Energy Transition Review 2025

Over the past decade, China has transformed from a heavily coal-fired country to the undisputed global leader in the energy transition. The pace keeps accelerating: In April 2025 alone, China installed more solar than Australia has in its entire history. By 2030, as little as one-seventh of China’s projected spare solar manufacturing capacity could electrify everyone without power in 88 low-income countries.

Yet, this progress has not been recognized by much of the West, which still fixates on headlines about “building three coal plants a week” while missing that China is getting far ahead of US decarbonization efforts. China’s vast exports of energy transition solutions are rapidly decarbonizing other emerging economies, while the nation’s share of global clean energy patents jumped from 5% in 2000 to 75% today. Chinese companies now spend ten times more on electricity R&D than US companies and match the combined energy R&D spending of the US and EU together. The innovation advantage has flipped.

To understand China’s oversized role in the energy transition, Muyi Yang and Sam Butler-Sloss of Ember join us to break down their report China Energy Transition Review 2025. We’ll review how China is routinely beating its own transition targets by three to six years. We’ll hear how Chinese firms have announced over $200 billion in overseas clean tech manufacturing investments, surpassing the scale of US investment abroad under the Marshall Plan. Solar, batteries, and EVs are growing three times faster than China’s overall economy, hitting nearly 10% of GDP. Chinese solar exports to Namibia, Cambodia, and similar countries now exceed the entire centralized power generation capacity of those countries.

The result: what took decades with old energy is happening in years with solar. China’s enormous commitment to the energy transition is a strategic path to economic growth and economic and political power, and it heralds the end of fossil fuel’s dominance of the global energy system by 2030.