- [Narrator] China has held the mantle
of the world's biggest polluter
for more than a decade.
It emits the most greenhouse gases
and uses more coal than the rest of the world combined.
But in September,
it made the biggest climate commitment ever made
by any nation.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] China's pledge is expected
to not only improve lifestyle
and air quality for urbanites tired of smog,
it could also boost the clean energy business
and bring hundreds of millions of electric vehicles
on the road.
After President Xi Jinping's announcement,
stocks of Chinese renewable energy giants soared.
There are questions about whether China
can really achieve its climate goal.
But as Beijing pushes ahead with its plan,
the growing green superpower
could affect the US and the rest of the world.
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China's green energy leap won't be cheap.
Over the next 30 years,
Beijing and clean energy companies
will need to spend anywhere between 5 to $20 trillion.
- So we don't know exactly how much Beijing
is going to spend.
Although, it's already spending a lot.
We do know that Beijing's very good
at stimulating the creation of very large industries.
- [Narrator] The first step is ramping up renewable energy.
And that's not impossible
because China already has a lot
of solar parks and wind farms,
more than any other country.
But China needs a lot more.
90% of the country's energy has to be renewable
or nuclear by 2050 to achieve net-zero emissions.
In past years, renewable capacity
has boomed in large part because of subsidies
and these companies haven't had to compete
in the global marketplace.
In a strategy shift, Beijing wants to roll back some
of that direct support for companies.
- They kinda slowly dial down the support
and only the companies that are actually on quality
and are able to innovate
will be able to survive that.
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- [Narrator] Having renewable energy on tap provides
a clean source of power for its electric vehicles.
China already has the most in the world
and wants 300 million on the road by 2050.
- [Nathaniel] China has the resources to do these kind
of top-down government pushes.
They've just mandated that a certain percentage
of all government-owned fleets,
like a certain amount of the buses,
a certain amount of the corporate fleets
or the government have to be EVs.
And so that kind of creates a baseline kind
of structural-level demand.
- [Narrator] But Beijing has also cut subsidies
for people in the market to buy electric vehicles,
as well as for local manufacturers.
As a result, companies like BYD and Bike
have seen their sales slump,
while Tesla has been able to speed ahead
to become the market leader in China.
But still, Beijing is keeping foreign automakers
in check by requiring them to use Chinese-made batteries.
This kind of policy has helped China get a good grip
on the supply chain for lithium ion batteries,
which accounts for more than half of global production.
But that advantage could slip.
- There's a lot of lithium out there in the world.
If lithium prices start to go up,
I think there'll be a lot of capital coming
from a lot of different places
to develop those deposits.
I think it would be quite hard for China
to kind of dominate the control of lithium.
- [Narrator] Renewables can only have an impact
if China moves away from coal
but it won't be easy to switch off these plants.
- There's a lot of banks that lent
to those coal plants.
That's potentially a financial problem.
There's still a fair amount of people working
in the coal industry.
So there's gonna be a lot of vested interests
in keeping coal alive in some form or another in China.
- [Narrator] Enter carbon capture technology,
which would allow some coal plants to stay online.
The technology would remove CO2 from the atmosphere
so it can be stored or repurposed.
Many of these techniques have been around for decades
but it's still incredibly expensive,
costing about $43 to capture one ton of CO2.
That means for a country of 1.4 billion people,
where each person emits seven tons
of carbon dioxide every year,
the cost would be astronomical.
So Beijing will have to make polluters responsible
for their own carbon emissions
by making them pay for it.
- They're also gonna have to create an inventive
to make it more expensive
to produce emissions by burning coal
or other forms of fossil fuels.
And so a real carbon trading program in China,
that would be a huge incentive for coal producers
to invest in carbon capture technology.
- [Narrator] In October, Chinese officials announced plans
to expand its emissions trading program
in the next five years.
While the current pilot schemes cover sectors
like steel and cement,
the nationwide one would bring in heavy emitters,
like the aviation industry.
China's 2060 goal could have ripple effects.
Its large-scale investments
could further drive down the costs
of clean tech around the world.
The same way solar panel prices have plunged more than 80%,
in part because of the dominance of Chinese firms.
But China isn't alone in thinking
about this energy transition.
Its relatively smaller neighbors Japan
and South Korea set a 2050 deadline for carbon neutrality.
And some European players
are investing heavily in renewables.
While Trump has signaled that he sees an energy transition
as a threat to the oil and gas industry,
Joe Biden has proposed a $2 trillion climate change plan.
These competitors and countries
could also grow increasingly wary of China.
- There'll be a worry both in terms of subsidies
and China producing things below cost,
then also being too dependent on China
for their energy supply.
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