It's just a bit galling for those of us who live in Europe or the USA that our countries are so far off the pace when it comes to the green technology revolution. After years of dithering around, we're now doing “just about enough” on renewables, storage, clean manufacturing, and so on. But the gap between all that and what's happening in China is still startling—and barely understood even by politicians who talk so enthusiastically about a Green New Deal or a Just Energy Transition.

It’s not all about the numbers, but the numbers are still mind-boggling. Back in July, the Global Energy Monitor gave the figures for the amount of new renewables under construction. In China, it was 339 GW (each GW is 1000 MW), made up of 180 GW solar, and 159 GW of wind. Compare that with the whole of the rest of the world at just 187 GW! Which includes a miserable little 40 GW in the USA. As the Monitor said: “the wave of construction guarantees that China will continue leading in wind and solar installation in the near future, far ahead of the rest of the world.”

Deep down, even the Democrats in the USA don't really get what a full-on transition away from fossil fuels would look like. In a recent article, fellow Meer contributor Bill Becker pointed out the following:

“According to the International Monetary Fund, American society's direct and indirect support for fossil fuels totalled a staggering $757 billion in 2022 (or $2,243 per person). That's more than twice the $370 billion investment that the Inflation Reduction Act allocates for clean energy over the next 10 years.

American citizens have already paid a heavy price for this hydrocarbon incumbency, and it will inevitably get worse. The Communist Party in China has no equivalent of someone like Senator Jo Manchin (a DiNO – Democrat in Name Only), who's up to his eyeballs in fossil fuels, and drives the hardest of oily bargains at every turn.

President Biden did his best against that kind of backdrop, against a Republican-dominated Congress, relying on “dirty deals” (the Inflation Reduction Act is 70% pro-renewables, but 30% pro fossil fuels), and, latterly, an appeal to patriotic values. The idea of “electrifying the Great American Roadtrip” just sounds weird to Europeans, but is all about staking out the terrain for making America great again in a rapidly decarbonising world.

Years of dogged resistance to anything small and electric puts US car manufacturers at a massive disadvantage in competition with China's—assessed by many industry experts at somewhere between five and seven years. Again, the numbers are startling.

China is responsible for 60% of all new EV manufacturing in the world today (including western companies based in China like Tesla and VW), and exports about 1.5 million every year. 25% of new cars sold in China are EVs, with a target of increasing that to 45% by 2030, and the Chinese government still provides significant subsidies and incentives as it has done for the last 20 years. As a result, EVs are cheap, high quality, and come in every conceivable range and variety.

So, all good then? China leads the world in getting rid of petrol and diesel gas-guzzlers, putting the internal combustion engine on death row.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that! There are around 1.4 billion vehicles on the world's roads at the moment, the vast majority of which are internal combustion engines. All other things being equal (i.e., politicians remaining catastrophically complacent about the climate emergency), that number will rise to about 1.7 billion by 2030. It's been calculated that replacing all of those ICEs with EVs by 2035 would require an annual production level of between 75 and 80 million new EVs every year. Great for economic growth, of course. But another hammer blow for life on Planet Earth.

And that's mostly down to the environmental impact of the lithium-ion batteries that currently dominate the EV world. It's reckoned that demand not just for lithium, but for all the other metals on which these technologies depend (copper, nickel, cobalt, rare earths, and so on) could triple by 2030, and (according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance) grow fivefold by 2050 if governments drive an accelerated transition. And that's even allowing for a big increase in battery recycling and end-of-life repurposing.

It's a massive problem, as recognised in a new guide from the UN (“Resourcing the Energy Transition"), which is recommending seven guiding principles to put basic equity and environmental sustainability at the heart of the transition.

Many countries are already experiencing something of a “metals boom," with countries in Africa, for instance, anticipating returns of around $24 billion per annum by the end of the decade.

Unsurprisingly, environmentalists and human rights campaigners are having to commit more and more money and time to addressing these challenges and are far from persuaded that the latest UN Guidelines will make any real difference on the ground.

But EV advocates are starting to push back against what they see as an unwarranted assault on one of the fastest (and cleanest) ways to decarbonise the global economy.

And there's no doubt that the total volume of mined materials will fall dramatically in this transition - especially as we phase out coal for electricity production and oil for transport. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has crunched the numbers, coming to the rather surprising conclusion that “all of the refined metals needed to reach Net Zero by 2050 will add up to less than the volume of coal mined in 2023 alone.”

So we have to keep this in perspective. And that's before we consider the massive health benefits that will flow from getting rid of hundreds of millions of petrol and diesel vehicles on our roads.

The latest figures quoted in the British Medical Journal in November 2023 put the number of deaths attributable to pollution caused by fossil fuels at 8.3 million—that's roughly 11% of total deaths worldwide. Health experts regularly cite 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, but statisticians find it impossible to confirm exactly what percentage of that number is caused directly by vehicle-related pollution. But this is still an ongoing health crisis.

For all that, however, and not that far off down the decarbonisation/dematerialisation track, we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that we should be aiming for a year-on-year reduction in the number of privately owned vehicles on our roads—whether EVs or ICEs—instead of the projected increase. Getting our heads around this now would allow us to start planning, with serious intent, for a genuinely just transition.