Opinion | How China’s green energy edge puts it in position to shape the future

The energy transition today is a technological and geopolitical contest between entrenched fossil powers and rising renewable challengers. As the transition accelerates, we are witnessing a widening divergence in how superpowers approach the challenge. The complexity of modern renewable systems, combined with the systemic risks of climate change, demands a departure from traditional cost-benefit analysis. Instead of clinging to static risk models, policymakers must learn to harness opportunity and feedback and the compounding benefits of early action.

To understand the transition, we need to shift our thinking from the physics of extraction to the dynamics of electronics, where progress follows patterns more like Moore’s Law than geology. Modern renewables such as solar, batteries and wind operate on “experience curves”, where costs fall predictably as scale increases and learning accumulates.

This stands in stark contrast to fossil fuels. The price of a unit of fossil energy today is roughly what it was in 1900. Despite dramatic advances in extraction technology, we are running out of easy-to-access reserves. The more efficiently we drill and dig, the harder and costlier it becomes to continue.

Solar, by contrast, has become 10,000 times cheaper since the 1950s, and its cost has halved in just the past decade. Batteries are following a similar path, with wind close behind. The scale effects of technologies such as these tend to produce a “winner-takes-all effect”. The country that produces the most will also be the country that produces the cheapest and best quality, as well as the one that advances the most knowledge.

Superpower status has long been intertwined with energy dominance. Once it was clear that energy equalled power, states rewired alliances, capital flows and military logistics to lock in supply and deny it to rivals. They also wielded energy access as diplomatic currency to reward allies and win new ones. Energy transitions, therefore, mark historical inflection points in both hard and soft power.