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Workers commute as smoke billows from a coal fired power plant on November 25, 2015 in Shanxi, China. Heavy dependence on coal has made China the source of nearly a third of the world's total CO2 emissions. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

The Biden administration has placed climate change agreements at the top of its legislative agenda—but the United States' clean energy ambitions are complicated by some vexing geopolitical realities. Meaningful action on climate cannot succeed without cooperation from China, yet there are few grounds to believe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will comply with any international agreements constraining its economic activity, and every reason to believe that it will exploit the issue to shore up its own authoritarian governance and exploit the supply chain vulnerabilities of other countries.

This week we're highlighting three Hudson scholars who are shedding light on the challenges facing President Biden's climate change agenda. On Twitter, Nury Turkel [[link removed]] highlights the troubling connection between U.S. solar panel supply chains and forced labor in China; in an op-ed for The Hill, Nadia Schadlow [[link removed]] warns that the energy storage sector, a critical element of clean energy, is increasingly dominated by China; and Nate Sibley [[link removed]] convened policymakers from the U.S., U.K., and Canada to explore conservative solutions to climate change. See below for key highlights from Nury, Nadia, and Nate.

Fifty percent of the world's polysilicon products, a component of solar panels, are produced in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region where state-sanctioned forced labor is prevalent. Nury Turkel [[link removed]], a Uyghur-American lawyer and senior fellow at Hudson, calls attention to congressional efforts to ensure the integrity of U.S. solar panel supply chains:

How Our New Climate Policies Could Lead to Increased Reliance on China

Key takeaways from Nadia Schadlow's op-ed in The Hill, " How Our New Climate Policies Could Lead to Increased Reliance on China [[link removed]]"

1. China holds considerable leverage over the Biden administration's climate change priorities:

Key climate goals of the administration, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the energy and transportation sectors, may be held hostage by China. This is because a shift away from fossil fuels depends on lithium ion batteries. Since China dominates that industry, the administration will need its strategy to mitigate the leverage. While climate envoy John Kerry hopes to approach climate as a “standalone issue,” the fact is geopolitics will shape the environmental choices of the administration, and it will not be able to separate domestic climate policies from China.

2. The production of energy storage and critical minerals are controlled almost exclusively by Chinese firms:

Energy storage is the glue within a low carbon economy, which enables greater use of intermittent power sources like wind and solar. China of course dominates the four stages of the battery supply chain, which are mining, processing, assembly, and recycling….China has now solidified control over the critical minerals of lithium, graphite, cobalt, and nickel. Chinese firms account for about 80 percent of the total global output for raw materials for advanced batteries. Using favorable deals with companies in South America and Australia, Chinese firms control around half of the global lithium production.

3. While the U.S. energy sector enjoys considerable freedom from government intervention, the CCP treats China's commercial sector as a powerful tool of political influence:

China has a global plan that includes “new energy” as a key area of focus and will not easily watch its advantages melt away. It is also ahistorical to think that China will not use this leverage.

China enacted a law last year allowing the Communist Party to control the exports of products that fall under the broad category of national security. China threatened to cut off the United States from access to supplies with processing rare minerals, as it continues to punish Australia by restricting imports unless Canberra submits to some political demands.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Read the Op-Ed [[link removed]]

Rethinking Climate Change and Environmental Issues

Key quotes from the event, Rethinking Climate Change and Environmental Issues: A Conservative Approach [[link removed]], featuring conservative policymakers from the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

U.S. Representative John Curtis on confronting the largest global polluters:

Our goal is to reduce carbon in the air. So you have to ask the question, does the Paris Accord do that? And it doesn't, it actually increases it. In the United States, we could take our emissions down to zero, and that would change worldwide carbon by about 14%. Unless we engage China and Russia in India in dramatic reductions such as the U.S., U.K., and Canada have done, we're really fooling ourselves. Perhaps I'm being a little bit hard on the Paris Accord, but it is frustrating to conservatives here in the United States that we give a pass to quite frankly, not only the largest polluters, but those with human rights violations and other problems that are very, very serious.

British Member of Parliament Alicia Kearns on engaging China on environmental issues:

Access to resources is at the heart of so many conflicts throughout history…And that is where China does come in. We can't tackle climate change unless China does. And China is investing so heavily in coal. It's using all its natural resource investments to develop and exert influence in developing countries. And yet it's sitting at the table claiming that it's going to be tackling climate change.

We need to have constructive engagement with China, but there's a real challenge where if we say we want to work with them on climate change issues, where does that lead with regards to everything else? They're using environmentalism as a flag to suggest that they are reaching out internationally, that they are a cooperative partner that can be trusted. And we know that's not the case. So on climate change, I still think there's a balance that needs to be reached of how much do we engage with China and how do we not allow them to use it as essentially a free pass to suggest that they're a fair and decent partner in the world.

Canadian Member of Parliament Greg McLean on the adverse effects of Keystone XL's cancellation:

Look at Keystone XL. It was already built across the border [in Canada]. With a new president in the U.S., that pipeline is never going to flow any oil and that has huge economic consequences for energy production. But it was also a very, environmentally friendly pipeline. The transportation of oil from Canada to the Gulf coast was zero emissions. The United States is going to need to source from somewhere else, anyways.

You’re trading off clean transportation of a beneficial oil from highly transparent public companies [in Canada] for what we call “dictator oil” coming from all kinds of regimes around the world that aren't necessarily as transparent about how they produce their oil. In my opinion, it's a huge loss for Canada, the U.S. and the world environment.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Watch the Event [[link removed]]

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America’s Allies Finally Take on the Uyghur Genocide [[link removed]]

On Monday, the U.S., EU, U.K., and Canada stated with unmistakable clarity that they will not stand idly by in the face of genocide, writes Nury Turkel [[link removed]] in The xxxxxx. This has been a long time coming. The EU has not sanctioned China since the Tiananmen Square massacre over 31 years ago.

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Counterbalance Ep. 4: Miles Yu, Framing the Free World's Struggle with the CCP [[link removed]]

In the latest episode of the Counterbalance podcast, Miles Yu, former China policy advisor to Secretary Mike Pompeo, joins Mike Doran [[link removed]] and Marshall Kosloff [[link removed]] to discuss how the U.S. can maintain a world order based on democratic values and address the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to spread authoritarian methods of governance to other countries.

Watch [[link removed]]

US-Australia Series: China and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities [[link removed]]

Australia and the U.S. face shared concerns on issues of supply chain security and manufacturing sectors that are at risk of exploitation by the CCP. This panel of leading experts convened by Patrick Cronin [[link removed]] examined the vulnerabilities in critical U.S. and Australian supply chains such as those of semiconductors and rare earth minerals and discussed the steps that Canberra and Washington should take to better secure their supply chains.

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