RMI, a non-profit organization originally known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, is publishing a series of reports on exponential growth in renewable energy, including by digging more deeply to figure out how and why some regions and technologies are moving along faster than expected.
The latest report in the series, “X-Change | The Race to the Top: Cleantech competition between China, Europe, and the United States,” examines the competition between these regions on developing and deploying technologies needed for the energy transition. The report notes that while China is currently leading in several clean technology sectors, there remain significant chances for Europe and the United States to catch up. The report also suggests that competition between these regions could play a role in speeding up technological advances in the Global South.
An overview of the report — focused on supply chains for clean technology, solar and wind deployment, electric vehicle sales and electrification — with charts is available at this link.
Here are key highlights shared by RMI:
1. China dominates clean energy supply chains, having outspent the United States and Europe 10-fold in the past five years to achieve market share in manufacturing of over 90 percent in solar and 70 percent in batteries. But United States and European capital expenditures are set to increase 16-fold by 2025.
2. Solar and wind deployment is a close contest with all three regions accelerating up S-curves. Europe has the largest share of electricity from solar and wind.
3. China is leading in the EV race, with Europe not far behind. Over one-third of Chinese cars sales are already electric, and this is likely to rise to 90 percent by the end of the decade.
4. China has leapfrogged in electrification to become the first major electrostate. Over the past decade, China has increased the electricity share of final energy by 1 percentage point every year to a level of 27 percent in 2022, more than 5 percentage points higher than the United States and Europe, which have remained static. The main driver has been the electrification of Chinese industry, which has already driven a 2014 global peak in industrial demand for fossil fuel energy.
Download the full report originally published by RMI on July 1, 2024.
