Peach Tree Times

As the United States pushes toward a heavier reliance on clean energy, China has positioned itself to be the OPEC of green energy, two developments that could cost Americans in the long run.

Georgia is one of the states that has resisted tilting the balance toward clean energy. A state profile, produced in 2021 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, noted that solar energy provided only 2% of all of the state's electricity. Solar amounts to 20% of the total renewable energy generation in the state. That doesn't mean, however, that the shift to green energy won't cost Georgians.

The Biden administration has advanced its green energy agenda on many fronts. In its spending bill that was debated in the lead-up to the recent climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, even the pared-down climate provisions in the bill would cost the U.S. around $555 billion, the New York Times reports.

The push toward clean energy in the U.S. is being offset by a corresponding increase in coal output in China. China recently ordered its coal mines to increase production, prohibiting mines from shutting down in an effort to stop the rolling blackouts that had been plaguing the country, CNN reports.

This decision was not met with a warm reaction ahead of the COP26 global energy summit. After all, China emits the most carbon dioxide of any nation in the world, nearly doubling the United States’ output of 5.41 gigatons as of 2018. 

Meanwhile, China is set to hold other countries at its mercy, with respect to any move toward solar power. Reuters reported that in 2019, China was the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic products, responsible for creating 80% of all solar panels globally. 

The dominance in the solar panels market comes at a price other than the dollar value of the panels. China has been accused of genocide against the Uyghur population, according to a January 2021 press release from the U.S. secretary of state, and the U.S. State Department published a report in January 2021 detailing the abuses China has inflicted on the Uyghurs for years. 

The same Uyghurs are a big part of the workforce in the solar panel manufacturing plants. Sheffield Hallam University, a public research organization in the United Kingdom, published research that said the Uyghurs are responsible for 45% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon, 95% of solar modules the world relies on.

According to the same research, every polysilicon producer in the Uyghur region has reported participation in the “labor transfer programs and/or are supplied by raw materials companies that have.” The labor transfers outlined in the report are involuntary and accomplished through “unprecedented coercion.” 

The research identified 90 Chinese and international companies whose supply chains are intertwined and, thus, could be impacted by the realization that the Chinese products are created using forced labor.

An article published in Forbes by Kenneth Rapoza makes the case that China is set up to be the world’s “Green OPEC.” Although one company in the top 10 solar manufacturers is an American company, eight of the nine remaining are Chinese. 

“One of the biggest mistakes the West has done on green policies to cut CO2 emissions and trying to reduce dependence on oil and gas producing nations is that the transition to renewable energy puts the West at the mercy of China,” David Zaikin, an energy industry consultant and founder of Key Elements Group in London, told Forbes.

According to Rapoza, nearly 80% of solar panels installed in the United States come from China or from Chinese companies.