by Marc Morano, Climate Depot:
U.S. energy experts are warning of the economic and national security implications of President Biden’s pact with China this week to move towards shutting down fossil fuel production in favor of green energy.
The State Department announced this week it had struck a deal with its Chinese counterparts pledging to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” with green energy sources like wind and solar power. The nations, which account for nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions, also agreed to “deepen policy exchanges” on reducing carbon emissions in various sectors, like power, industry, buildings and transportation, across their economies.
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But the agreement — in which the nations further pledged to “sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030” — was criticized over its potential impact on U.S. consumers. Experts also noted that China has rarely followed through on international accords and stands to financially benefit from such an agreement since it controls much of the world’s green energy supply chain.
“The agreement speaks heavily about advancing — doubling down and tripling down on renewables, wind and solar. The majority of them are made in China,” Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
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President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. ((Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images))
“So, you’re basically writing an agreement that guarantees China a customer and guarantees their manufacturing sector decades of purchasing. Of course China would love this agreement. And their obligations — they’ll just ignore that. They’ve ignored every other obligation,” Turner added. “It is basically guaranteeing China decades of wealth, guaranteeing America is going to buy their products.”
In addition, the U.S. and China pledged under the agreement Tuesday to each advance five large-scale carbon capture, utilization and storage projects by the end of the decade. Carbon capture is a nascent and expensive technology that is designed to catch a power plant’s emissions before they could enter the atmosphere, but it hasn’t been deployed at any power plant nationwide.
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The agreement was finalized during Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s meeting with Chinese Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua in Sunnylands, California, last week. And it came shortly before Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco.
“The cooperative initiatives outlined by State Department will create make-work for bureaucrats, subsidies for rent-seekers, photo ops for local politicians, and new opportunities for Chinese agents of influence and industrial spies,” Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marlo Lewis told Fox News Digital.
“The effect on climate change, if any, will be negative, as the ‘cooperation’ will nudge the United States closer to Beijing-style central planning, production quotas, and groupthink,” he continued.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is greeted by top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi before a meeting in the Great Hall of the People on July 18 in Beijing, China. (Florence Lo-Pool/Getty Images)
Overall, while the U.S. is the largest global producer of oil and gas which still drives every major industry from transportation and power to manufacturing and construction, Chinese companies have established a major foothold in green energy markets.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), for example, China produces about 75% of all lithium-ion batteries, a key component of electric vehicles (EV), worldwide. The nation also boasts 70% of production capacity for cathodes and 85% for anodes, two key parts of such batteries.
In addition, more than 50% of lithium, cobalt and graphite processing and refining capacity is located in China, the IEA data showed. Those three critical minerals, in addition to copper and nickel, are vital for EV batteries and other green energy technologies. Chinese investment firms have also been aggressive in purchasing stakes in African mines in recent years to ensure a firm control over mineral production.
