The Iran war is turbocharging China's bid to become the world's first electrostate | DW News

0:00 Far, far away from the Strait of Hormuz,

0:02 something really interesting is happening.

0:04 [music] Countries are changing their energy strategy almost overnight.

0:09 Decisions that might have once taken years are being made in weeks.

0:13 So, we're seeing some really interesting dynamics playing out in Asia,

0:17 in Europe, North Africa, in number of places around the world.

0:20 Um, in Asia, some are calling it this Ukraine moment for Asia.

0:25 They um, the analogy being that in Europe after Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

0:31 we realized the extent to which um,

0:33 European countries were reliant on uh, Russian gas.

0:37 Um, and in a similar way,

0:39 Asian countries have suddenly been realizing the extent

0:42 to to [music] which they've been reliant on LNG,

0:45 on liquefied natural gas imports.

0:47 That's Sam Gill, associate [music] fellow at Chatham House and senior

0:50 visiting research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

0:53 [music] And he's an expert on the geopolitics of energy with a focus

0:58 on China and says that country after

1:00 country is not only pivoting to renewable energy, they are making a run for it.

1:06 The number of countries have been making plans to switch very quickly.

1:10 The Indonesian president called it a wake-up call for um, electrification, um,

1:16 announced that motorcycles need to switch over to become electric,

1:20 um, announced a major new solar pledge.

1:23 In Vietnam, the uh, largest conglomerate in the country, Vin Group,

1:28 um, announced that it is canceling the country's largest LNG-fired um, [music]

1:34 power plant project and replacing it with renewables projects.

1:38 Um, in Philippines, in South Korea, they've announced uh, big solar pledges.

1:43 In Egypt, there's a major new um, solar project planned.

1:48 And all of this really just in the past couple

1:50 of months in response to an obvious need to um,

1:55 uh, to make our economies resilient.

1:56 So, there's a clearly a kind of strong energy security argument,

2:00 which is about the volatility and variability

2:05 and entanglements associated with imported fossil fuels.

2:10 Um and for the first time really, it's it's the same argument as uh as the one

2:14 that has typically been associated with the climate change argument,

2:18 which is to say it's a renewable energy argument or at least

2:22 uh it's driving a case for non-fossil uh fuel sources of energy,

2:27 including of course nuclear as well.

2:29 Uh in Japan, there's a major conversation also about um the need potentially

2:33 to restart uh nuclear energy plants as a as a source of uh resilient energy.

2:39 Um the prime minister there has called for Japan to become 100% [music]

2:45 energy self-sufficient.

2:46 Um and for them, uh nuclear is a big part of that, too.

2:49 The notable thing is that this no longer seems to be a partisan matter.

2:54 Remember how political parties would battle

2:56 over the merits of switching to renewables,

2:58 the costs, the subsidies, and how fast?

3:00 Now, with this global energy shock,

3:03 those ideological battle lines have kind of been set aside

3:07 as countries around the world realize they don't have good energy security.

3:12 See, now we're we're arguably living through I guess the third sort of energy

3:16 shock in some four years after COVID and then uh Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

3:21 But, this one has hit much harder and faster and actually

3:24 it's uh reintroduced sort of an argument around the need

3:27 for uh renewables and non-fossil fuel sources as a way

3:30 to uh to reduce uh dependency on on imported fossil fuels.

3:35 So, it's sort of cut the other way and arguably

3:38 created a kind of new coalition of of actors where

3:41 people who might previously been skeptical about renewables are now

3:44 realizing that there's a very strong energy security argument for them,

3:47 which of course there's always been in some countries, particularly China,

3:51 uh which has really seen electrification and renewables as a major

3:55 part of their mission to mitigate um uh fossil fuel reliance.

4:06 Now, [music] China is very interesting.

4:09 Beijing absolutely needs the Strait of Hormuz to reopen.

4:12 And yet, as Sam pointed out there,

4:14 it has also planned for this moment for two decades.

4:19 China's sometimes been described as a green energy superpower.

4:22 Sometimes, there's a description which um I might prefer,

4:26 which is an electrostate.

4:27 You know, it's a country that is becoming increasingly um bound up

4:32 with the electrification of the economy um

4:34 as opposed to the import of molecular fuels.

4:37 You might call it green energy statecraft.

4:39 Beijing bet on renewables even as it burned through coal and oil.

4:44 Chinese policymakers decided renewable energy would be good

4:47 for the economy and good for national security.

4:51 China, you know, relies on fossil fuels

4:52 for its uh for its energy and its growth.

4:54 And yet, it's also probably the most resilient of the major economies.

4:59 It's highly diversified and highly electrified at this point.

5:02 They've really invested over the past uh

5:05 two decades in building out uh you know,

5:08 a highly [music] electric and diversified energy system.

5:11 And a large part of that has always been about mitigating

5:14 the uh volatility and the geopolitical

5:18 entanglements associated with uh imported fossil fuels.

5:22 Their concern, particularly,

5:23 has been the choke point around the Strait of Malacca as opposed to the Strait

5:26 of Hormuz and the fact that it's

5:28 [music] patrolled by the US Navy's Seventh Fleet.

5:30 But, it's led to very concerted um investment in clean energy in particular.

5:36 Um and that's really underpinned sort of 20 years now of build-out of a really

5:41 impressive um solar wind um and other renewables

5:46 non-fossil energy sources system leading now to um,

5:51 sort of total dominance really of the clean energy supply chain.

5:55 Some 90% of solar panels are manufactured in China.

5:58 Similar commanding share of uh, of wind power uh,

6:02 turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, um, critical mineral uh,

6:08 processing, many of the components and and elements

6:11 of the supply chain that are um,

6:13 important for the renewable energy transition [music]

6:15 are based really in long-term quite patient

6:18 innovation and industrial policy in China which

6:20 has really been about unleashing those technological forces,

6:23 becoming the leading supplier of the um, uh,

6:27 new technologies needed for a carbon constrained world and have

6:29 been really tied up with energy security arguments rather than uh,

6:34 just being about environmental concern which has sort of been where I

6:37 guess the association in in Europe in the West uh, has been.

6:40 There's always been a very tight understanding that um,

6:43 or tight relationship between energy security and climate action in China.

6:48 And I think that argument is now starting to resonate uh,

6:51 in other other economies.

6:52 Remember those countries mentioned earlier?

6:54 Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan.

6:58 Okay, so they've recognized that it's not great

7:01 to be overly reliant on oil and gas,

7:03 [music] but switching to renewables will require

7:06 buying a lot of renewable energy infrastructure.

7:09 You know, the actual solar panels,

7:12 the massive blades for wind farms from one major source, China.

7:17 Yeah, I think the bind is particularly difficult for um,

7:21 so-called middle powers, countries in Europe,

7:24 countries in Southeast Asia who are um,

7:27 looking you know, quite seriously to decarbonize their economies

7:31 and they're facing at least three challenges at once.

7:33 One is how to decarbonize rapidly, uh, something their publics want to see,

7:37 something that they need to see for um, you know, what to mitigate the sort

7:41 of vulnerabilities and dangers associated with climate change,

7:44 but they also want to keep costs down

7:46 in a and in environment where inflation has also spiked,

7:50 particularly as a result of the war.

7:52 And they're concerned about security, they're concerned about dependencies.

7:56 So, how can you balance that so-called trilemma?

8:00 It's a really difficult ask.

8:03 And in Europe, for example,

8:05 people worry about are we moving from one dependency to another?

8:09 Are we Are we moving away from, you know,

8:12 dependency on Middle Eastern oil, much as, you know,

8:15 we also had one on, at least in parts of Europe, on Russian gas,

8:19 towards a dependency on Chinese supplied

8:22 [music] components for a renewable energy system.

8:26 And at the same time, of course, the US is a wild card.

8:29 It also, um, you know, to greater or lesser extent is sort of forcing the hand

8:35 of of of countries that are sort of caught in the middle [music]

8:39 on in supply chains.

8:40 So, it's a really difficult bind for countries,

8:43 and it and it means that geopolitics is

8:46 completely bound up with those clean energy choices.

8:49 Countries face few good options,

8:51 but Sam makes the point that at least with renewables,

8:54 once you build out the infrastructure,

8:56 which again will depend on buying from China, but once you do,

9:01 in the medium and long term, you will be in better shape.

9:04 But I will say that there is a difference

9:06 between fossil fuel energy imports and renewable energy systems,

9:12 insofar as you can't actually blockade the sun, you can't blockade the wind.

9:16 There is a There's a difference in once you build out these systems,

9:20 they do provide greater resilience at from the kind

9:25 of entanglements and volatility associated with imported fossil fuels.

9:30 What's special about this moment is that we may be at an inflection point.

9:35 Adapting renewables has been a constant policy fight, but this time,

9:39 because of this war, the pivot away from oil and gas might be real.

9:45 And if that's the case, there's no going back.

9:47 I think any energy shock actually helps

9:51 to create the argument for the alternatives,

9:53 and previous energy shocks have done the same.

9:56 What's different about this one is not only that it's happened

9:59 so fast and in such a sort of hard and unpredictable fashion,

10:04 um but also actually renewable energy systems are coming

10:08 in at at a cost that means they can be installed

10:13 at scale and the the technology exists and and there's

10:17 of course willing suppliers and mature industries that can do so.

10:21 So it kind of feels different as a result, and I think as a result,

10:24 yes, there might be some immediate snapback

10:26 as fossil fuel prices fall again as they will.

10:30 Um but then I think the cost of renewables will continue

10:34 to fall as they have consistently over the past um decade or so,

10:39 and we'll see the increasing adoption of electric vehicles again because

10:44 the argument is sort of being won on its own terms.

10:46 The um you know, the technologies are coming

10:49 in at a price point that works for consumers, um that work for governments,

10:53 and they also have the added um security benefits

10:57 of of increasing the resilience of our economies in in a context

11:01 of greater tensions and uh and a need to extricate

11:05 ourselves from some of the dependencies associated with um imported oil.

11:10 So, what do you think?

11:11 Are we seeing a real moment when the world finally fully goes for renewables?

11:16 And how do you feel about China [music] as the world electrostate superpower?

11:21 Let us know in the comments.

11:22 [music] That's all for now.

11:23 DW News is giving you the latest and also sharing

11:26 deep dives on here and across the rest of social media.

11:32 [music] I'm Melissa Chan.

11:31 Until next time.