Britain’s rush to net zero fuelled China’s energy dominance

"But if you're buying it from China, you have to be aware you are surrendering a lot of your grid and capabilities to someone who then has control over how this works.

"You have to understand that there are two sides to this coin."

Green technologies

Britain and China took fundamentally different approaches to net zero from the start.

This country pledged emissions cuts under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, then passed the Climate Change Act 2008, introducing legally binding carbon budgets.

In 2019, the UK became the first country to enshrine a 2050 net zero target in law, compelling every arm of the state to work towards that goal.

Britain also developed policies and subsidies to encourage demand for renewable electricity. The Renewable Obligation, launched in 2002, handed generous top-up payments to wind and solar farms for the electricity they generated, funded by levies on consumer bills.

A feed-in tariff came after in 2010, paying households and businesses for rooftop solar power. Contracts for difference, launched four years later, then offered renewable schemes guaranteed power prices.

Yet what was conspicuously absent, despite Britain's position at the vanguard of the transition, was any accompanying plan to boost manufacturing of green technologies.

It has been largely foreign companies, such as Denmark's Vestas and Germany's Siemens Gamesa, that have built the 12,000 wind turbines erected in the past two decades.

A 2023 government report found that the UK's share of capital spending on projects "rarely" exceeded 25pc. UK Steel separately found that "almost none" of the steel used in British wind farms was domestically produced.

By some measures, the green energy rollout has still been a success – our carbon emissions have fallen by around 50pc since 1990 and a study for the Confederation of British Industry last year found net zero supports more than one million jobs.

But this has coincided with a halving of manufacturing's share of national output, so it has arguably come with significant costs as well.

Beijing's Communist government, by contrast, has taken a command-and-control approach to the green transition, with a heavy focus on production and abundant, cheap energy.

China was outside the World Trade Organisation and classed as a developing country when Kyoto was agreed.

And while the UK has pledged to cut emissions by 81pc on 1990 levels by 2035, China has only promised a 7pc-10pc reduction from an undefined peak by then (and net zero by 2060).

This is because, experts say, China's primary reason for adopting clean energy is not to cut carbon emissions but to insulate itself from geopolitical pressure.

Reliance on imported energy

In 2003, Hu Jintao, China's then president, warned of the "Malacca dilemma": the dependence on a shipping corridor that Beijing could not control.

About two thirds of China's trade passes through the South-East Asian strait, including oil and gas from the Gulf, while US naval vessels ply the same waters.

Beijing has responded by seeking to reduce its reliance on imported energy. From this strategic concern, China's green energy revolution was born, says Sam Geall, an expert on Chinese energy at Chatham House, a think tank.

"Most of what China's done can be explained in terms of its own national self-interest, rather than in terms of what has happened at the UN," he says.

China viewed renewable energy as a means of reducing its reliance on chokepoints, such as Hormuz and Malacca, and volatile prices set by cartels and conflict. By adopting electrified technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs), it could become less dependent on supplies of foreign fuels.

"It was always quite geostrategic, and always had quite a hard edge," Geall says.

After widespread power shortages in the early 2000s, Beijing also sought both greater efficiency and more generating capacity.

A 2005 renewable energy law gave provincial governments incentives to go green, unlocking investment in utility-scale wind power.

"For the first time, it was at utility scale. And it was about energy security," says Philip Andrews-Speed, of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Then in 2006, China became the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and pressure grew to join the West's bandwagon.

Beijing still resisted challenging climate goals, arguing that a developing economy should not shoulder too much of the burden. But in 2011, renewable energy and transport electrification became major parts of the Communist Party's five-year plan, unleashing even more state support.

So far, so planned. But from this point, Beijing was also fortunate.

'A happy coincidence'

Europe was also embracing the green revolution. Beijing saw an export opportunity, and backed its own manufacturers. And the Europeans regarded Chinese raw materials and finished products as a much cheaper way to meet their targets.

"There are a number of critical minerals where there is refining and processing and industries across the world," Geall says. "But many countries then just said, 'Actually, we'll just let China handle that.'"

China's growing dominance of these supply chains was "a happy coincidence, and benign neglect on the part of other countries that allowed it to happen".

Jane Nakano, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, agrees. "I don't think it was necessarily any nefarious strategy. There was an opportunity that the Chinese enterprises could seize on, capitalise on."

But after Donald Trump became US president in 2016, Beijing increasingly saw control of supply chains as imperative.

Its "Made in China" strategy focused on winning the race for technological supremacy, accelerating the development of wind, solar, battery storage and electric vehicles.

China has since become the world's largest builder of renewable energy. While Britain hopes to have up to 126 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity by 2030, China is building more than 400 GW a year, according to the International Energy Agency.

Wind and solar now generate almost a quarter of its electricity. This demand has created large domestic industries, with Chinese companies accounting for about 78pc of wind turbines built worldwide.

Yet China also continues to consume vast quantities of coal, unlike Britain, which has closed its coal plants and taxes gas generation.

Chinese coal consumption hit 4,953 million tonnes in 2024, and the "dirty" fuel still provides 54pc of China's electricity, although its share is shrinking.

Meanwhile, the electrification of transport is gathering pace. EVs now make up two-thirds of new car sales in China and one-quarter of new truck sales.

On the world stage, China is also converting green energy into diplomatic clout.

As Western aid and climate finance budgets shrink, it has started to present itself as an ally to poorer, developing countries, offering them cheap finance and technology while accusing the West of hypocrisy, Oxford's Geall says.

This is good business, too. Chinese net zero tech and EV exports to South East Asia have surged as countries, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, seek to reduce their dependence on Gulf oil and gas.

China's clean energy industry generated $2.1tn (£1.6tn) in economic output in 2025, according to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, equivalent to 11.4pc of its GDP and driving one-third of its economic growth.

But its dominance now poses major problems for European governments, as the spread of Chinese technology starts to erode the market shares of Western firms.

Solar sunset

The demise of Germany's solar industry offers the starkest case of how China can obliterate the competition.

Europe's biggest economy commanded 21pc of global solar panel manufacturing in 2007, supporting 111,000 jobs.

But after China poured tens of billions of state-backed financing into solar, panel prices plunged and the centre of gravity shifted.

Saxony-Anhalt-based Q-Cells, once the world's largest solar cell producer, collapsed in 2012. Other German companies soon followed.

Today, China controls 93pc of polysilicon manufacturing, 97pc of wafers, 92pc of cells and 86pc of panels, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. It also controls 80pc to 90pc of the market for solar production tools.

The lesson here is that once an industrial ecosystem has been lost to China it is extremely difficult to rebuild, argues Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

And Europe can no longer assume it can simply import low-value components while retaining the high-value production items for itself, he adds, pointing to the way that China has gone on to control both solar panel manufacturing and production of the machines used to make them.

"European governments have to think very carefully about ecosystem effects," he adds.

China has been able to build "massive industrial capabilities in the lower rungs of clean tech", he says, before moving into the "higher rungs of the value chain".

This has also been the case in EVs, he adds, where China started off producing low-value car parts and batteries – and now dominates the sector.

In Germany again, cut-throat competition from Chinese rivals, such as BYD, is forcing the once-invincible Volkswagen to cut tens of thousands of jobs and close factories to become more competitive.

This time around, the EU has been more defensive and put tariffs on Chinese EVs to mitigate the flood of imports.

Across green industries, Tordoir says, time is running out to protect domestic industries. He is in favour of policies such as the "Made in Europe" framework, which will funnel subsidies towards European carmakers, while requiring 70pc or more of components to be sourced on the Continent.

Even stricter rules have been imposed in America, where the use of Chinese "connected vehicle" components – which could be used to transmit data with the internet – are to be banned.

Hobhouse, at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, also agrees that Britain and its allies need to ensure alternatives to Chinese suppliers survive, particularly in sectors such as wind where Europe still maintains some strength.

That is becoming more difficult as China's companies attempt to muscle in on the Continent's markets with turbines that are up to 45pc cheaper.

Research by the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has found that Chinese turbine makers have reduced their costs from $1,200 per kilowatt in 2019 to less than $420 today, compared with more than $1,000 per kilowatt in Europe.

Companies such as Mingyang have also expressed a desire to supply turbines to key markets, including the UK, where there were plans to build a floating wind farm off the coast of Scotland using Chinese technology.

Its £1.5bn plan was ultimately blocked by government ministers, on the grounds of security concerns, although there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mingyang.

The company is lobbying for a reversal. Meanwhile, Chinese companies continue to supply solar farm kit, batteries and grid equipment to Britain and its allies.

Roughly 70pc of the UK's operational grid-scale batteries in 2024 were Chinese-made, according to research by Modo Energy. The biggest suppliers by far were CATL and BYD.

Hobhouse, however, argues that relying so heavily on China carries unquantified risks, pointing to reports last year that secret so-called kill switches were found inside Chinese-made solar power inverters in the US. These cellular radios were capable of remotely turning the devices off.

"The ability and the capability is very much there," adds Hobhouse. "So then it's a question of whether you're willing to stomach the risk."

The European Commission has previously said that 70pc of inverters installed in Europe come from China, with two companies – Huawei and Sungrow – together controlling more than half the market.

Luke de Pulford, the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, says that Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has explicitly stated a desire to control supply chains and use them for leverage.

"I do not know why we have walked headlong into this trap," he says.

Yet pushing back against Chinese net zero equipment may also provoke protests from energy companies, who have argued that reducing competition will push up energy prices.

Hobhouse argues that this "security premium" is worth stomaching.

"You can't just allow things to hinge on [price]," he says. "It's not huge values, if you look at the inverter costs, it's probably about 5pc more, which is relatively small."

"With wind turbines, it's a little bit different, but not massively more," Hobhouse says, adding that the cost of not being secure, or being beholden to China, is far higher, he says.

Dan Marks, at the Royal United Services Institute, says the UK Government should also lay out a more coherent China strategy, instead of making ad hoc decisions about firms such as Mingyang or the Sizewell C nuclear power station, where China General Nuclear was ousted as an investor.

"It keeps happening," he says. "But if they looked at it more seriously up front and were more hard-nosed about it, there'd be less delays."

For example, according to Marks, the National Wealth Fund indicated that it was open to joint investment with Japan, South Korea and China in battery production.

"But again, will that really stand? Or will they just waste loads of time trying to get Chinese investment, and ultimately annoy their Chinese counterparts more?"

Still, Chinese firms themselves don't appear happy to take a back seat.

In the UK, BYD is investing in a national network of EV charging stations and fellow Chinese giant CATL has partnered with Octopus Energy, Britain's biggest energy supplier, to build battery-swapping stops for lorries up and down the country.

Octopus, which previously sought to partner with Mingyang in the UK, has argued that any concerns posed by Chinese technology can be mitigated through tight cyber security and corporate governance practices. It says that neither CATL nor Mingyang would have access to British data.

"We shouldn't be naive about the security risks," says Greg Jackson, the company's founder.

"But we shouldn't be naive about China's lead in energy technologies, either – not through state subsidy but outstanding research and development."

He points out that some of Britain's most sensitive conversations and data are already carried on iPhones made by Apple in China and yet "we've found ways to secure them".

"Surely we can do the same with less-sophisticated hardware like wind turbines and batteries," he adds.

"We now need to grit our teeth and do the same with China in energy – with all the appropriate safeguards – to catch up rather than be left behind."

Tariffs dilemma

So far Britain has hesitated to take a tough line on China's dominance of the materials and kit needed to deliver net zero – or, indeed, on almost any Chinese imports.

Unlike the rest of Europe, it has placed no additional tariffs on imported Chinese cars, which are now some of the most popular on sale in the UK.

In the first eight months of 2026 alone, vehicle brands, such as BYD, Jaecoo and Geely, tripled their market share to 11.7pc of new car sales – up from 3.8pc during the same period in 2025.

European firms continue to complain this is down to the artificially low prices offered by Chinese brands, who are in search of export markets amid vicious price wars back home.

But Labour ministers say that pushing back would be counterproductive, as Beijing would retaliate against British companies, such as Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley.

"If you put trade protections up, you've got to understand that they'll probably be reciprocated and you'll lose out," Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, told The Telegraph last week .

But Britain also runs a risk if it takes its economic weapons off the table.

In an echo of the row about Huawei telecoms equipment a decade ago, some have warned that becoming too dependent on Chinese technology could prompt a painful – and expensive – reckoning should Washington decide to impose tariffs or other export controls.

Donald Trump, the US president, like his predecessor Joe Biden, has pressured allies to put national security and economic sovereignty priorities first.

This has included urging countries to block some Chinese investments in energy, telecommunications or infrastructure.

Washington, like Brussels, is wary of other markets becoming a conduit for cheap Chinese goods to enter their own.

"There's a bigger risk for Britain in doing nothing on China. If Washington and Brussels conclude that Britain has become the back door for Chinese overcapacity, the squeeze comes from them instead," says Alicia Kearns, the shadow foreign minister.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has called for Chinese technology to be banned from the energy system.

Yet this highlights another inherent tension between these security concerns and Britain's current approach, which began under the Tories. UK government documents admit that without China, it will be all-but-impossible to meet official net zero goals.

Back in Kent, Cleve Hill is a prime example of this trade-off in action.

With so much Chinese technology already embedded in our energy system, Labour can only hope it won't spectacularly backfire.