China boosts profitable renewables as Trump clings to coal

DW News · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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During a speech to global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, US President Donald Trump announced that while China sold windmills to "stupid people that buy them", it did not use wind power itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. China actually added record amounts of both wind and solar power capacity in 2025. And according to some calculations, it may even have reached peak CO2 emissions — way ahead of its planned trajectory. The vast Asian country also provides the lion's share of the world's clean tech required for the global energy transition — manufacturing over 80% of solar panels, 60% of wind turbines and 75% of electrical vehicles (EVs) and batteries. "On the economic and industrial front, the US has been left behind, and as a result of the very hostile approach of the current administration to decarbonization, the US will be further left behind," Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the US-based Asia Society Policy Institute, told DW. By "recklessly leaving many international climate and energy related fora," the US is giving up its political influence, he added. In 2025 alone, China has installed 120 GW of wind powerImage: CFOTO/picture alliance The Trump administration stopped participating and funding 66 international organizationsit deemed contrary to the country's national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty. "It has stepped away from science that everybody in the world accepts," David M. Hart, a senior fellow for climate and energy with the US think tank The Council on Foreign Relations, told DW. "It's a foolish decision and will hurt the US in the long run." Could China become the leading voice when it comes to climate action? Despite having installed more solar capacity than the rest of the world combined, China doesn't seem to actively seek out climate leadership. "Their style, their philosophy, say less and do more, actually serves them very well," Li said. "They don't want to promise too much, in particular internationally. What they promise they want to be absolutely sure they can deliver." However, while China builds up renewables, it also still heavily invests in coal. Albeit with a changing strategy, according to analysis by global energy think tank Ember.Rather than using coal-fired power plants as a baseline provider, the country has shifted to using it as a flexible use of power. Clean technology such as battery energy storage provides much better flexibility than coal and Li says China's added battery capacities are enough to balance out fluctuations in the grid. In addition to bringing their own emissions down, Hart says China also helps cut emissions in other countries. "This might be an interesting way for them to develop their sort of leadership credentials to say, 'well, okay, our own country is moving at such and such a pace, but we're also helping all these other countries move more quickly.'" Trump held a "Champion of Coal" event on February 11, celebrating the revival of the coal industryImage: Lenin Nolly/NurPhoto/picture alliance The US, in turn, has announced plans to expand its coal fleet as part of Trump's executive order to reinvigorate "America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry" and is pushing new gas projects, such as the largest ever natural gas power plant in Ohio.China is miles ahead of the US (and everyone else) when it comes to solar and wind China added 318 Gigawatt (GW) of new solar capacity last year, along with 120 GW of additional wind power. That puts the combined grid-connected capacity of wind and solar power at 1.8 billion kilowatts. To put these figures into perspective, the US NGO Global Energy Monitor said China had "crossed a historic threshold" and could generate three times as much as its closest peers, US and India. "The US last year I believe installed about 20 plus GW of wind and solar. China had more than 300 GW. So we're talking about just completely two different worlds," Li said. That view is echoed by Hart. "There's nothing in the world that's even close to it." Why solar power is booming in PakistanTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videoWith renewables largely being cheaper than plants powered by fossil fuels, and a tremendous demand for power in the US, Hart still sees a future for solar in America. But it's not going to grow as quickly as it might have under previous policies, he said. "When it comes to the clean tech sector, the US now is really stonewalling itself. It has become an island when it comes to solar panels, prohibitively high tariffs," Li said. Can the US keep up with China's EV and batteries? "The median new car in China is an EV, whereas the US share is closer to 10%," Jeremy Wallace, professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told DW. While China's transportation sector has largely been electrified, the US could become an "island of combustion vehicles", said Hart. "The rest of the world is going to go electric over some decade or two and the US could really be a backwater in that industry." That leads to ripple effectsway beyond the EV sector, with higher costs elsewhere, too. "If you don't have an electric vehicle to provide demand for the battery industry and some other industries like the electric motor industry, then other sectors that use those technologies will also be harmed. Their costs will be higher than competitors abroad that have access to lower cost batteries." China is the clear leader when it comes to EVs and battery productionImage: AFP/Getty ImagesWhen it comes to Chinese EVs, they are essentially banned in the US market, Li said. "There is at least a decade's gap when it comes to industrial competitiveness, when you look at solar, wind, electric vehicles and batteries," he said, adding that producing solar panels in the US was up to five times more expensive than in China. When it comes to batteries used for energy storage and EVs, he said "the US simply doesn't know how to produce them." China's shift: Climate action not a burden, but economic chance Investment in clean energy being canceled under the Trump policies comes at "a real economic cost," Hart said, compared to economic growth projected under the previous policies. Green jobs were also on the rise in the US, with positions in the clean energy sector exceeding those in oil, gas and coal by more than three to one. Hart believes the US is going to get left behind in a "number of industries that are growing rapidly," calling it a "lost opportunity." Meanwhile, Li says he's seen early signs of China possibly taking on a bigger climate leadership role in the future, pointing to what Chinese leaders are actively championing at home. "That rhetorical shift right from seeing climate action as a burden to economic growth to actually trumpeting it and embracing it and turning it into new forces that they can use to grow their economy is, I would say, one of the most significant developments in international climate action over the last decade." Edited by: Tamsin Walker