China’s climate paradox is a lesson for Britain

“The rice bowl of energy must be firmly held in our own hands,” Xi Jinping told workers at Shengli Oilfield (“Success Oilfield”) in 2021, and liked the phrase so much he used it again at a politburo meeting a year later. Just as an “iron rice bowl”, tie fanwan, refers to a secure, lifelong job, so the general secretary has an autarkic ambition to control and secure China’s energy supply, away from potential foreign interference.

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The party remembers what it was like to be fuel-poor: in the People’s Republic’s first years, it was first subjected to an oil embargo from the US, then cut off from Soviet oil when Mao fell out with Khrushchev. It drilled its own oil in the 1960s but has nevertheless been a net importer since 1993, and a net importer of gas from 2006. Meanwhile, the country’s appetite for energy has grown more than tenfold in the past half-century, now consuming more than the US and the EU combined.

That about 80 per cent of this foreign oil and much of the gas come via the Malacca Strait, a waterway between Singapore and Malaysia that measures just 3km at its narrowest, causes justified anxiety in Beijing. The US and Indian navies are both present in the region, leaving China at the mercy of a potential blockade.

So it’s understandable that Xi would want to befriend Vladimir Putin — Russia offers China an overland supply of gas, away from US influence. After the invasion of Ukraine, this gas came at a discount too. But for years, Beijing has dragged its feet on a second pipeline, the Power of Siberia 2. Despite a supposedly close friendship, China worries about “too much dependency on Russia”, Isabel Hilton, an expert on China and climate change, says.

Unlike oil and gas, coal, renewables and nuclear are rice bowls that China can hold in its own hands. A third of its electricity now comes from renewables, with hydropower taking the lion’s share — a coming dam in Tibet will be three times bigger than the Three Gorges Dam. Nuclear is also a part of the mix: China has 33 reactors under construction, half of the world’s new nuclear power. Over the past five years, energy from renewables has helped China avoid importing the equivalent of what Europe uses in a year.

Mass deployment at home has helped the country open up a fresh frontier in exports. The “new three”, xinsanyang, refers to the trinity of electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells that have replaced the “old three” exports of TVs, fridges and washing machines.

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There’s much more to do, particularly in updating its grid, which is the “next big task”, says Hilton, as the present system is too inflexible to deliver renewably sourced energy efficiently. But while scepticism about China’s climate-change virtue-signalling is fair — not least because its latest targets still fall far short of the commitments undertaken at the Paris Climate Accords — the country’s green transition isn’t fake. In fact, its success is probably precisely down to the motivation being self-interest, rather than altruism.

I can’t help but feel that the UK, and the West in general, could learn something from this unashamedly unvirtuous approach. Of course Britain is hardly at risk of a gas embargo from Norway or Qatar, but the Russian invasion has shown how perilous our energy supply can still be, with expensive repercussions for households and the country.

So far, British politicians haven’t seen energy as a crucial resource for the country’s stability and security. Instead, they have left supply to the free market, doing little to support domestic companies while setting emissions targets that have only spurred demand for foreign-made turbines, solar panels and cars.

A self-interested British approach to energy could look very different. We’d prioritise gas storage to buffer against shocks like 2022. That year, Britain’s biggest gas storage site, Rough, had to be reopened. But the site’s future is again at risk as the government pushes responsibility to Centrica to keep the expensive operation running.

It’s also in our interest to build more small modular reactors and faster, and reconsider drilling in the North Sea to cushion against future price rises. Such an approach doesn’t mean writing off renewables, but the UK should choose its renewables smartly. Wind and solar installation can spur local jobs but a headlong rush into a petrol and diesel ban will only mean reliance on Chinese EVs in the short term.

All of this is only going to become more vital in the age of electricity-guzzling AI. “We are all enormously underestimating just how much firm baseload power we’re going to need,” David Claydon, an energy expert and former Foreign Office adviser, says. Frankly, the Britain of the future will need all the energy it can get.

Beijing understands this hard truth and it is powering ahead, hypocrisy or not. The UK could use a bit of that pragmatism.