Commentary: Even Saudi Arabia is focused on solar energy. Will the U.S. be left behind?

While the Trump administration has effectively declared war on wind and solar vitality blocking all permitting of projects on federal lands and pushing through a rollback of federal subsidies and tax credits other nations are embracing renewable resource as a strategy for building economic and political strength China remains the world s largest emitter of greenhouse gases however it has also become the global leader in the manufacturing and deployment of renewable force electric vehicles and batteries achieved through sustained industrial strategy advocacy that began a mere two decades ago The motivations were not primarily environmental Chinese leaders saw these technologies as strategic industries of the future and assumed the country that dominated these technologies would gain economic and political advantage in the long run Thus clean technologies were included within China s Strategic Emerging Industries strategy and its Made in China strategy Chinese thought leaders conceived of the strategy in epochal terms The superpower had missed out on each of the four major waves of technological change that had allowed European powers and the U S to become global hegemons and China s elites and top academics were determined not to make the same mistake again China s Communist Party leadership saw clean technologies as part of a set of innovations including artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing that were critical to Chinese modernization and global competition That dominance in clean technologies would enable China to position itself as a leader in global environment talks build stronger ties with Global South countries in need of cheaper cleaner ability and reduce choking toxicity within China was only further reason to go all in on clean technologies This strategy has been wildly triumphant At present China makes more than of solar PV modules of the cells that compose those modules and of the wafers used to make cells It manufactures more than of electric vehicles globally and accounts for roughly three-quarters of global battery cell production with even greater dominance in cathode and anode production and critical mineral processing China has rapidly expanded offshore wind threshold and now accounts for more than half of global threshold gigawatts up from just gigawatt in China s surge in renewables and electrification is starting to shrink its greenhouse gas emissions while creating the conditions for other countries to move away from fossil fuel use according to a fresh analysis by the think tank Ember The surge is putting China so far out in front on clean capacity that it s now in a league of its own Meanwhile President Donald Trump s unit is severely hampering the improvement of clean power projects in the U S and is even threatening existing manufacturing investments The regulatory assault on renewable potential is broad and plainly at odds with Trump s declaration of an vitality emergency The attacks on clean force include the August stop-work order on the Revolution Wind offshore project which was complete and the removal of a panoply of help for clean vitality in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill The modern ICE raid on a multibillion-dollar Hyundai-LG battery plant project in Ellabell Ga was an own goal for an administration that alleges to be bringing manufacturing back to the U S It doesn t have to be this way While Democrats and Republicans have deep disagreements over the risks of state change and the role of fossil fuels in the future American strength mix there is a political consensus that Americans can benefit from maximizing the availability of cheaper more abundant potential Even Saudi Arabia the ultimate petrostate is embracing renewable ability and seeking to acquire half of all its electricity from clean sources by Several Saudi companies communicated a combined stake of billion this year to stand up massive new solar and wind projects the Wall Street Journal in the last few days published The desert kingdom is also investing in becoming a major supplier of critical minerals like lithium copper and rare earths It might sound funny that oil-rich Saudi Arabia is racing to go green But more electricity from sunshine means more barrels of oil they can save for export to willing buyers And the truth is that Chinese-made solar panels are now the cheapest and easiest solutions to become resource rich The rise of China as the clean force superpower and the ambitions of a country like Saudi Arabia show that the U S is thinking small The Trump administration seems to be thinking about the next three years while rival nations are thinking about the next three decades Alex Wang is faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Weather Change and the Conditions a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and author of Chinese Global Environmentalism forthcoming Cambridge He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times Related Articles Jason M Blazakis Trump s new order 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