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Renewable energy is cheaper that fossil fuel energy but it doesn’t make wealthy political donors in the west rich. China realizes that the largest part of the cost in everything we buy is the cost of energy. Cheaper energy means cheaper products.
Part of it that once you build a fossil fuel power plant, that power plant is now a guaranteed fossil fuel customer for the indefinite future. With solar there’s no long term guaranteed profits like this. You can’t commodify the sun’s rays or wind.
The benefit mostly accrues to the people using the electricity solar and wind generate. If you’re making decisions for a society, instead of on behalf of rentiers who can donate, there are strong reasons to choose it.
Chinese provincial governments also spent a lot of money building out photovoltaic production capacity as part of their way to meet their GDP goals. With the property market crash still working its way through the Chinese economy, China needs to sell solar panels to keep its market afloat.
Not that it is a bad thing that China has a financial incentive to make more solar panels, just noting that there are more direct economic reasons for China to go all renewables.
I see lots of liberals online insisting that the US pulling out of the Paris accord will make everyone else, including China, abandon their climate initiatives.
If any nation does so then - just like the US - they weren’t truly committed in the first place, and they would have quietly rolled back their climate goals like the US has been doing already anyway.
Makes sense. China holds a good hand now, as they have probably peaked emissions five years ahead of their promise, and are not yet obliged with financial contributions. Also they need to sell renewables, electric cars etc. - especially to southern countries while US and EU put big tariffs. And if you look at the numbers, US is no longer so important in the world.
