Indeed, the biggest beneficiaries of China’s renewable energy revolution may actually be consumers, both inside and outside China. In sun-blessed Australia, where almost a third of all households have rooftop solar panels, Energy Minister Chris Bowen has proposed a “solar sharing scheme” providing three hours of free electricity on shining days. Solar and battery systems enabled Hawaii to close its last coal-fired power plant, and such systems are similarly helping other islands, such as Jamaica, reduce their need for imported fossil fuels.
One country – especially one leader – is trying to buck this trend. Donald Trump hates many people and things, but wind turbines and solar panels seem to hold a special place of contempt in his heart. His administration has tried to cancel major offshore and onshore wind projects, as well as plans for Esmerelda 7, a solar megabase placed in the Nevada desert that would be worthy of western China. Trump and his energy secretary, Chris Wright, often talk about American energy dominance, but they paralyze the ability of American companies to deploy and build the cheapest sources of electricity in the history of our planet in favor of combining age-old arguments about the inevitability of fossil fuels and long-range bets on tiny modular nuclear reactors and, yes, fusion.
Even among billionaires who don’t share Trump’s belief that climate change is a hoax, this fondness for distant, disruptive technologies has long been a hallmark of American climate investing and philanthropy. This attitude is epitomized by Bill Gates, who once dismissed existing green technologies such as solar and wind energy as “cute.” Instead, Gates has always preferred a lordly, capital-intensive brand of decarbonization, pouring money into science fiction technologies that will remain in perpetuity in just five years, rather than a quick and messy approach that involves sprouting solar panels on every roof and recalibrating electricity pricing systems. (Recently, as it became clear that the transition to renewable energy sources was spiraling from success to success, Gates wrote a memo stating that he was withdrawing climate funding altogether.)
Mao Zedong famously declared that a revolution is not a party. It is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. The green tech revolution – whose violence is largely financial and is a crushing attack on the asset value of fossil companies – is not a party. It’s not inevitable either. It can still be stopped or slowed down. Yes, it is the result of conscious choices made by people, companies and governments, many of which are most critical in China. But it is happening now, and faster than our systems – power grids, industrial sectors, labor markets, geopolitics and others – are ready for it.
And that’s a good thing, too, because there’s another solar fusion-driven force that’s also reaching a force and scale we’re not prepared for: climate change. When Category 5 Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic in behind schedule October, killing more than 90 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless, much of the government’s investment in protecting people from the hurricane was not up to the challenge. Some shelter came from solar panels on the roof, which kept the lights on as the sun rose the next morning. The global energy system is the basis of contemporary life. Despite all the chaos, this system is undergoing a major modernization.
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