China Is Rewiring the Global South With Clean Power
Faced with energy poverty, costly fossil fuels, and cheap solar, developing
economies are voting with their feet.
February 24, 2025 at 5:00 PM EST
By David Fickling
David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and
energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and
the Financial Times.
The energy transition is proceeding apace thanks to China.
The energy transition is proceeding apace thanks to China.Photographer:
Christopher Pike/Bloomberg
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5:31
Energy is destiny.
That’s an under-appreciated rule that applies across history, economics, and
diplomacy. The countries with access to the best resources — whether the
wind- and peat-powered 17th century Dutch Republic, coal-fired 19th century
Britain, or the oil-fueled 20th century US — have always been good at
dominating more energy-impoverished rivals.
Those with an excess of domestic supply are also able to accumulate the
wealth to become significant middle powers in their own right. Think of the
influence, out of proportion to their relatively small populations, of fossil-fuel
exporters Australia, or Qatar, or Saudi Arabia.
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Until recently, that dynamic has been dominated by the world’s great
hydrocarbon reserves. But clean energy is changing the picture — and China,
which produces three-quarters of the world’s solar panels, is emerging as the
clear winner.
China’s Solar Panels Are Lighting Up the World
Estimated generation from solar panels imported from mainland China in 2024,
as a share of 2023’s total electricity generation
Source: Ember, Bloomberg Opinion calculations
Note: Data for distinct markets and assumes solar capacity factor of 15%.
The past year has seen rising protectionism in rich countries to stem the flow of
China’s clean-technology exports, with tariffs of 60% on solar panels in the US.
Electric vehicles attract levies of 110% in the US and as much as 45% in the
European Union. Rising saturation in some markets — solar power now
accounts for about a quarter of generation in Greece and Spain, according to
BloombergNEF — also might lead people to suppose that this trade is now
stumbling.
Far from it. What’s happening instead is that products shut out of major
developed markets are going elsewhere — and the biggest beneficiaries are
likely to be the energy-hungry nations of the Global South.
The implications are immense. Countries that have been trapped in energy
poverty for generations due to the cost of imported fossil fuels may have a
chance to grow faster thanks to cheaper renewables. China could use its
technological expertise to burnish its relations with these rising powers, at a
time when a delusional and short-sighted Trump administration is abandoning
the world stage. Nations that have grown powerful on the back of their fossil-
fuel exports have a potent new competitor in town. The winners and losers will
define geopolitics and diplomacy in the 21st century.
New Powers
Many of the biggest importers of Chinese solar panels last year were
developing countries
Source: Ember
Data collated by Ember, a non-profit that favors the transition to clean energy,
illustrates the scale of this new trade. The US barely shows up. Thanks to round
upon round of tariffs and restrictions on Chinese solar products, it barely
imported more panels last year than the Dominican Republic.
Developing nations and, perhaps surprisingly, petrostates in the Middle East,
score far higher. Brazil, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and India took four of the top five
spots.
Compare solar imports to electricity generation levels, and you get an even
more powerful sense of how China’s solar industry is reshaping the world’s
grids. Pakistan’s imports last year alone would be sufficient to provide about
13% of its grid power, while Oman’s would supply 7.2% of the total. Brazil, Chile,
Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
Uzbekistan each bought enough panels to fuel between 3% and 5% of their
grids.
It’s possible to argue that trade numbers distort the picture. The Netherlands
takes the top spot in Ember’s data, with 40 gigawatts of panels imported from
China over the course of the year — a figure that is no doubt flattered by its
importance as a transshipment gateway into Europe.1
Still, unless you assume these paid-for panels are gathering dust in
warehouses rather than being connected, it’s impossible to avoid the
conclusion that solar power is now biting off substantial chunks of the world’s
electricity with each passing year.
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The world installed 599 gigawatts of solar panels last year, according to
BloombergNEF, up by about a third from 2023. It’s hard to comprehend
numbers on that scale. Generating power only 15% of the time, those panels
should produce about 787 terawatt-hours of electricity — equivalent to the
output of a third of the world’s nuclear reactors, or what you’d get from putting
a quarter of the entire worldwide LNG market through a baseload gas
generator.
Add that to the roughly 344 TWh of wind that was connected last year, and the
incremental amount of wind and solar added in 2024 alone was equivalent to
about 6.2% of all the fossil-fired electricity on the planet. Repeat that trick for
16 years running and hold demand steady, and net zero could, in theory, be
solved.
Sunrise
Solar installations keep on growing, but module manufacturing capacity is
rising even faster
Source: BloombergNEF
The problem, of course, is that demand for electricity is anything but steady —
and any excess is made up with fossil fuels. Historically, it’s grown at about
2.5% a year, but the International Energy Agency now expects it will rise by
about 3.9% annually through 2027, as electric vehicles, heat pumps, air
conditioners, data centers, and the like add new loads to the grid. If efforts to
produce green steel come off, that number might be even higher.
Still, there is plenty of room for the market in photovoltaics to grow. Factories
have abundant spare capacity to produce more panels, with BloombergNEF
estimating that module makers can now pump out 1,392 gigawatts a year —
more than double last year installations.
Faced with a choice between energy poverty, costly fossil fuels, and cheap
solar, developing economies are already voting with their feet. It might be
invisible amid the fog of war in Washington DC right now, but the energy
transition is proceeding apace. China looks like the winner.
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