One supply scare pushed China into renewables. Two real crises still haven’t woken Europe up

In 2003, Chinese president Hu Jintao worried about what became known among the country’s leadership as the ‘Malacca dilemma.’ Some 80 percent of China’s imported crude passed through the Malacca strait which Beijing’s naval forces could not control. This gave rise to a wider security doctrine of supply-chain resilience which became the basis for China’s transformation into the clean tech powerhouse it is today. When the US–Iran war disrupted Middle Eastern oil flows this year, Xi Jinping called China’s early bet on wind and solar “forward-looking” – as recounted in a new paper from the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute published on Monday (26 October). The paper identifies green growth as “the answer” to geopolitical uncertainty. Clean tech isn’t just clean, it’s also secure and not dependent on imports. Plus, it delivers a “more durable pathway” to “economic resilience.” Some governments want to expand fossil-fuel imports, or drill more oil or gas wells, arguing that a more diversified supply chain improves resilience. But the paper dismissed that. Oil and gas are priced on global markets, so even producers are exposed to price shocks. More North Sea drilling would save UK households between £16 and £82 (€19 to €98) a year, the paper finds, citing Oxford University research, compared with £105 to £441 on a renewables and electrification pathway. It's interesting comparing how the two political systems respond to (hypothetical) supply shocks. In China, the mere threat of losing control of one strait was enough to transform energy politics gradually over many years.