China’s rising energy clout comes despite the fact that it is by far the world’s biggest oil importer. But it has used that purchasing power to build a massive stockpile of crude and has emerged as a key supplier of petroleum products in the region. In recent months, Beijing has shown that its entry into those petroleum markets — or its absence — can determine what happens to energy consumers around the world.
And China is cementing its role in the global energy economy in part by offering a new type of energy security for vulnerable countries reliant on Middle Eastern oil and gas, experts said. Chinese exports of solar panels and EVs are booming, which only increases the country’s role as a major energy superpower.
“There’s this perception in China that the world is at a point where the basis of energy security is shifting from control of physical resources — barrels of oil, tons of coal — to control of technology,” said Downs, the former CIA energy analyst.
“And since China dominates the manufacturing of so many of the clean technologies, they feel like they’re in sort of a great position, not only to ensure their own energy security, but also to sell these technologies to other countries that are also looking to do the same,” Downs said.
The overall effect is that the war is boosting China’s clean energy exports into major new markets, particularly in developing countries, said Ethan Zindler, head of country and policy research at BloombergNEF and a former Treasury Department official in the Biden administration.
In regions of the globe that are still seeking to electrify, such as sub-Saharan Africa, a Chinese solar panel is going to be a more immediate solution than an American barrel of oil, he said. And as power demand grows across the globe, that means the U.S. tech sector is ceding even more ground to the Chinese, he said.
“I don’t know that the world fully understands just how much of a favor this war has been for the Chinese clean tech sector, that it came at a time when it really needed it,” he said. “And it is going to frankly allow these equipment makers to extend the lead that many of them already have over Western companies and extend their reach into far more countries.”
