By East Asia Forum By EAF editors Achieving net zero carbon emissions globally was never going to be easy. It’s been made that much harder and more costly by US President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, ramp up US production of carbon fuels and cut American access to low-cost renewable goods and inputs to renewable energy production even further through imposts on foreign trade. The task of cutting emissions requires reducing the carbon footprint in consumption (for example, via increased use of electric vehicles) as well as in inputs into production (via the sourcing of electricity, the processing of metals and materials manufacture). Improving energy efficiency is a high priority in reducing the costs of decarbonisation and is best achieved through international trade in the whole range of consumer and producer goods and inputs (such as electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, processed lithium, iron and other minerals) that are necessary to achieve it. Using the strong complementarity in the new energy goods production and supply chains between China and other economies around the world is thus crucial to reducing the costs of the global energy transition. The energy transition requires a massive transformation in production and consumption around the world over the next few decades. At the heart of that is the electrification of industrial economies with renewable power. This industrial transformation will need vastly improved access to climate finance, ensuring both that existing funds are properly allocated and that they are utilised in a way that does not undermine climate goals. The global climate finance landscape is growing rapidly, with large amounts of financing now coming from China, but funding amounts are still insufficient to fulfil the Paris Agreement objectives. There’s a huge gap estimated at US$5 trillion annually in both public and […]
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