The Energy Export Race Has a Clear Winner: China

China has positioned itself as the world’s clean tech export hub while the US — especially under President Donald Trump — has pitched itself as a global gas station. That’s set up a battle for energy export supremacy. It’s solar, wind and batteries vs. oil and gas.

Today’s newsletter reveals the leader — for now.

Plus, we look at a seemingly sci-fi way to generate solar power: using satellites to reflect sunlight to the dark side of the Earth. One startup’s proposal to do that has astronomers on edge.

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By Akshat Rathi

There’s a battle underway to win the energy export market between the world’s two largest economies: The US wants the world to buy its fossil fuels, while China wants to sell the world its clean energy technologies.

For now, there is a clear winner: China.

The country’s exports of electric vehicles, solar panels, batteries and other carbon-cutting technology has been climbing for years. Exports hit a record in August, with $20 billion in products shipped globally, according to a new report from the think tank Ember.

“China reached a record value in cleantech exports even as technology prices have fallen sharply,” said Euan Graham, a data analyst for Ember.

The US, which has positioned itself as a major fossil fuel exporter, sold $80 billion in oil and gas abroad through July, the last month with data available. China exported $120 billion in green technology over the same period.

That’s a continuation of a trend. The US hit a record in oil exports in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration. Yet China’s clean technology exports were $30 billion higher.

Dollars only tell part of the story. The price of solar panels is falling, which means that China is exporting more of them per dollar earned. August’s solar export revenue was nowhere near the high set in March 2023. But the 46,000 megawatts of power capacity shipped abroad set a record.

Crucially, China’s exports in emerging markets are growing rapidly. This year, more than half of China’s electric car exports have come from outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a rich-country club.

It’s worth noting that China is a big importer of oil and gas, and it’s so energy hungry that it deploys most of the clean tech it manufactures. This quarter, China will sell more electric cars domestically than all cars sold in the US, regardless of fuel type. The US, on the other hand, can meet all its fossil fuel needs.

Still, both countries have excess capacity in their areas of strength, which helps them generate billions of dollars in export revenue each year. The US may boost fossil fuel exports further and start to earn more revenue than China does from low-carbon goods that keep getting cheaper. However, China’s clout among other countries will likely grow because the volume of its clean tech exports will keep increasing.

From the point of view of countries importing American or Chinese energy goods and technologies, the division could not be starker: “Clean energy exports is hardware, which once a country has bought it, will generate electricity for a decade or two to come,” said Greg Jackson, chief executive officer of Octopus Energy, the UK’s largest energy retailer. “Whereas with gas, the day you buy it, you use it, it’s gone forever.”

— With assistance from Ruth Liao, Stephen Stapczynski, and Grant Smith

Read the full story.

By Coco Liu

A startup that aims to keep solar farms running at night by reflecting sunlight from space has sparked controversy among astronomers whose work relies on dark skies.

California-based Reflect Orbital recently requested a license from the Federal Communications Commission to launch a demonstration satellite in 2026, as its first step to creating a constellation that will redirect sunlight to precise locations on demand. The startup says it plans to launch dozens more over the next two years, with a goal of having about 4,000 satellites in orbit by 2030.

Reflect Orbital’s plan has won the backing of investors that include Sequoia Capital and tech billionaire Baiju Bhatt. But while its mission is to extend the operating hours of solar farms, astronomers say doing so will come at the expense of their research.

“Illuminating the ground at night with 4,000 bright satellites of this kind is potentially ruinous to state-of-the-art, ground-based optical astronomy,” says Anthony Tyson, the chief scientist of the Rubin Observatory, which will begin its sky survey next year.

While Reflect Orbital says the redirected light from its first demonstration satellite will be similar to the illumination of a full moon, that would still be “blindingly bright” for sensitive astronomy cameras, Tyson says.

The American Astronomical Society launched a survey in August asking its members to weigh in on the impact of Reflect Orbital’s proposed satellite. Of more than 1,400 astronomers who submitted their responses so far, the majority said that their work would be impacted.

Reflecting sunlight to the dark side of Earth may have other pitfalls. Scientists have documented how artificial light at night can disrupt the behavior of nocturnal species such as moths, frogs and bats, and degrade some of the benefits ecosystems provide. Light pollution can also have adverse impacts on human health, though with many large solar farms located far from population centers, that may be less of a concern. Reflect Orbital has pledged that it will assess the environmental impact and potential effects on local communities at every location the company serves.

“We understand that because our system introduces a new scale to redirect natural light, it will continuously raise important questions,” Reflect Orbital wrote in an emailed statement to Bloomberg Green. The startup says it is working with the astronomical community to mitigate potential impacts.

Read the whole story to learn more about the increasingly clogged skies.

How COP30 succeeds — or fails — will be the defining climate legacy of Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bloomberg Green looked at six aspects that will determine the summit’s fate.

Hedge funds speculating on wildfire insurance claims in California were dealt a legal blow after the state adopted new legislation designed to stifle such bets.

A decision by Japan’s $1.8 trillion pension fund, the world’s biggest, to consider a shift into impact investing has triggered a wider adjustment among the country’s money managers.

Rising power demand from data centers for artificial intelligence has led to a shortage of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity. This shortage might not seem the most obvious climate story, but it’s having impacts across the entire energy sector. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski joins Akshat Rathi to look at what’s causing the bottleneck in gas turbines, if the shortage will make companies look to renewables or coal, and whether natural gas is really a “bridge” fuel.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

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