Greenwashing with Chinese Characteristics

In this episode we are joined by Seaver Wang to discuss the physical foundations of China’s industrial dominance in solar, batteries, electric vehicles, semiconductors, rare earth magnets, and aluminum. We examine how these sectors are presented as evidence by climate activists that clean technology is delivering a new kind of green industrial superpower and interrogate that claim at the level of production. 

What sits upstream of the electrotech stack is not a network of modular green technologies, but large scale industrial systems that turn electricity into materials. These products are best understood as “congealed electricity.” In China industrial electricity, in particular, is still predominantly coal fired, often anchored in captive, mine-mouth coal plants tied directly to industrial clusters producing polysilicon, graphite, metals, and intermediates. 

These are not flexible, marginal power sources that can be easily displaced by wind and solar but rather capital intensive systems built for continuous output, with emissions embedded deep in the supply chain and largely invisible at the point of use.

The disconnect between hope and physical reality sustains a form of greenwashing that many climate commentators continue to reproduce, despite the underlying industrial system pointing in a very different direction.

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