China dominates recent progress in global green transition: media

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China has dominated recent progress in global green transition, said an opinion article published by The New York Times.

"When you look at the world outside of China, those eye-popping global curves flatten out considerably -- green energy is still moving in the right direction, but much more slowly," said the article published on Monday.

In the area of solar power, in 2023, the world including China installed 425 gigawatts of new solar power; the world without China installed only 162 gigawatts, said the article. "China accounted for 263 gigawatts; the United States accounted for just 33."

From 2019 to 2023, China grew its amount of new added capacity more than eight times over, and the world without China didn't even double its rate, said the article.

The pattern extends beyond solar. According to one recent estimate, nearly two-thirds of all big solar and wind plants being built globally this year are in China, which is deploying green energy at more than eight times the scale of any other country in the world.

China is also helping power green transitions of other countries, said the article. "In 2022, roughly 90 percent of the solar wafers and solar cells produced in the world were Chinese -- by some measures more than twice as many as the rest of the world was even ready to install."

"Today, U.S. policymakers are throwing up green-tech tariffs to protect American clean-energy industries -- a sign that, measuring by price point, we are already losing that race, in addition to losing it as measured by rate of deployment," said the article.

China is wagering an enormous amount of its future on nascent energy technologies -- and racing well ahead of the global promises it has made about the speed of its own transition.

"This year, for instance, China hit its 2030 target for total renewable energy six full years early. In the United States, we seem perhaps more focused on artificial intelligence," said the article.