Note: This transcript is auto generated and lightly edited.
JOANNA: I do think that climate can be a unifying issue for the US-China relationship. I think making it a polarizing issue is really a missed opportunity because we cannot solve climate change without China. And so I think that everyone should be thinking about ways to leverage what China's been able to achieve in its low carbon transition for the global good as opposed to just being focused on how to counter it.
MONICA: Welcome to Policy for the Planet, a new bimonthly podcast exploring the global response to the climate crisis.
I'm Monica de Bolle, a best-selling author and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, based in Washington, D.C. My work bridges the fields of economics, science, public policy, and public health–all under an international lens.
In each episode, I speak in-depth with experts to understand how governments are responding to the monumental challenges of the climate emergency. We'll unravel the complex tradeoffs of different policy choices to steer us toward sustainable practices and public well-being.
Welcome to the conversation!
The global race to combat climate change hinges on our ability to scale clean energy technologies rapidly. But as nations compete to control critical supply chains, geopolitical tensions threaten to slow progress toward our climate goals.
In this episode, we'll examine how one nation — China — has come to dominate solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles — and how this dominance has sparked heated debates about economic security, technological innovation and the future of cooperation in climate action worldwide.
Joining me is Joanna Lewis, whose research dives into US-China climate change engagement. Joanna is the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Energy and Environment and Director of the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
She's written many award winning books, including her latest published by MIT press called Cooperating for the Climate: Learning from International Partnerships in China's Clean Energy Sector.
Today, I'm delighted to welcome Georgetown University Professor Joanna Lewis to discuss China's critically important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Joanna, welcome to the show. Some 10 years ago, you authored an award-winning book on China's green innovation. Can you please describe the status of China's green transition then and how it has evolved over the past decade? And what do you think people should know about China's climate efforts.
JOANNA: Yes, happy to. I think the key point is that China's climate efforts are very much tied to its green industry development and that that development is motivated by far more than just climate change. So the book you mentioned, the research for that began over 20 years ago at this point. That was really the very early days of renewable energy development in China.
So if you think 20 years ago, China had a handful of wind energy projects, very few solar projects. And then you saw the drafting of a renewable energy law that came out in the year 2005 that really set the framework for the renewable energy development that would come in the last two decades. And then following the renewable energy law were a variety of other policies that were put in place to subsidize and promote first wind power and then solar power projects. And alongside these policies to really promote these technologies, you also had policies to promote the development of the industry. So you really have this sort of parallel strategy, both on the supply side and on the demand side, right? So to manufacture these technologies and to create a market to deploy them domestically.
And you saw climate policy efforts really kind of come alongside the development of these green energy industries. For the most part, I would say climate policy came a bit later, but really began with the policies you were seeing to promote renewables, promote energy efficiency, including national level energy intensity targets that then turned into carbon intensity targets.
And then now the launch of China's emissions trading system, which when finalized will be the largest carbon emissions trading system in the world. All of this helps China be in a good position to put forward NDCs. These are the nationally determined contributions that countries pledge as part of the Paris Agreement. But really, these international goals are enshrined in a lot of what's been happening in China domestically.
MONICA: So Joanna, we know how difficult it is to get people to focus on climate change. And in many countries, it isn't even cited amongst the most pressing voter policy priorities or preferences. How do people in China view climate change?
JOANNA: Well, I think it's honestly not that different from how people in the United States view climate change, right? In that it's not really seen as a huge priority, but it is certainly something that people are increasingly living with day to day, right? The impacts of climate change, right? Storms, floods, droughts, fires, hurricanes, typhoons. I think people do realize the climate is changing, but people haven't really made it high level priority, right? And it hasn't really translated necessarily to sort of a day-to-day political priority. Even of course, the political system is different in China in terms of how leaders respond to public opinion, right? But it is something that they do pay attention to even without an open election system. I think also, just like, again, in China, as in the United States, people really see climate change more as a global issue as opposed to a local one. I think one area where we saw, you know, particularly an environmentally focused issue really shift political action in China was the issue of air pollution. You know, about a decade ago, was really, China was having these major air pollution episodes, particularly in eastern China, urban areas.
And this really caused people to get angry, know, people particularly as incomes increase and, you know, people sort of expect a certain quality of life and a certain, you know, ability to breathe clean air for their families, for their children. This is something that policymakers in China had to respond to because they really saw, you know, not just an increase in protests, but just all the sort of indicators they're watching, right, and like social media, you know, people really expressing themselves and displeasure with the situation. And there was also just this situation where the data that the official Chinese agencies were releasing on air quality was in stark discrepancy to the international data, including the US embassy data. And so you just had this also this situation where it was really causing a lack of confidence in the government, right? That they're, are they being lied to and what's happening there? So this I think was actually something that was quite dramatic and we saw a lot of policies put in place to reduce urban air pollution. Some of this was beneficial for climate change and some of it was not, right?
Because as we know in a coal-based system, if you shift away from coal, that's good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But a lot of what was done was, for example, electrification of vehicles. A lot of the urban air pollution is caused by tailpipe emissions. And so that's a lot of what was behind China's push for EVs, not just passenger vehicles, but bus fleets, et cetera, taxi fleets.
Again, EVs are potentially great because we can decarbonize the electricity system and this allows us to decarbonize the transportation system. But China is still, for the most part, a coal-based electricity system. And so now we're basically, they have a country that's running EVs on coal, which is not ideal, right? From a climate perspective, of course, as they make strides to decarbonize the power sector, this will in turn spill over to the transportation sector.
And the other policy I think that people don't always realize is that when you are moving away, you're trying to sort of put more cleaner burning fuels also in urban areas to try to reduce air pollution. One of the things that China was doing was actually taking coal and liquefying it and turning into this coal-based, you know, fuel that again is cleaner burning than burning coal directly, but has a huge greenhouse gas footprint because you're essentially taking coal, converting it to a liquid fuel, and then you're burning it. And so it's using more energy than just burning the coal directly. And that results in more carbon emissions. So, you you have this situation where people, you know, I think care about air pollution. To some extent, this translates to caring about climate change, but not exactly in terms of how policy priorities line up.
But I think the one thing that's really different in China is you don't see the science being questioned in the same way that it is in the United States, and particularly among policymakers. In the United States, you know, climate change has just become this extremely divisive political issue when really there is no question in the scientific community. For the most part, China's leaders are technocrats, they're science driven, even with the other challenges they face. And so this is something that has not slowed climate progress in China. Any question about the science. And this is something that China's president has made a high level priority. And then the question is sort of where that ranks along with promoting economic growth and political stability, right? And those are always the overarching motivations of China's leadership and Chinese Communist Party. I think increasingly as climate change threatens those two things, that's when you see it having an increasingly important role in China's policy priorities.
MONICA: So that's very interesting. I recently watched a fascinating interview that you gave on Network 2020 about the US-China green energy race and its resulting security implications. Could you please share your thoughts about the state of the renewable energy race and how it can exacerbate or is exacerbating geopolitical tensions and how important is China in the different renewable energy supply chains?
JOANNA: Yeah, I think I mean, the first thing I guess I would say is I hate that term, you know, renewable energy race, right, that that we all use. You know, that really does imply that, you know, there's only sort of one winner in this race to to develop these technologies. But actually, we all need these technologies. And it's really a race to address climate change. Right. Like that is our end goal is to reduce emissions. And so, we all need to think about what is the optimum global strategy for deploying green technologies as quickly as possible. So with that sort of, know, with that said, of course, China's success in developing key renewable energy technologies and renewable market came with a global cost, right? You know, the same state interventions that drove the development of China's domestic renewable energy industries and wind and solar.
Initially, it was to compete with American and European industries, but these interventions ended up driving many of the European and American companies out of business. And so we're really now in a situation where China dominates the vast majority of the global clean energy supply chain. China controls around 80 % of the global solar photovoltaic module supply chain.
And it produced on average about 90 % of the world's solar PV components last year. China controls about 77 % of global battery production capacity and is set to install more battery storage than the rest of the world combined. So this dominance is creating tensions globally because while China is making these technologies for a large part for its own domestic use, they're also exporting these technologies around the world or at least in the case more of batteries and EVs being poised to export them around the world. And so many countries are going to need these technologies for their own low carbon transition. But when we think about the political economy of the green transition, it is such that the cost to invest in building up these industries is often higher than the return to the companies that invest, right? Because much of the benefit of these industries is the public good, right? It's climate change, it's carbon emissions reductions, and not necessarily a direct profit, at least in the near term. So companies and nations really only want to invest in these industries if they're gonna reap local economic benefit, right? And we think about that usually as like green jobs, right?
So this is where these policies come from that are really targeting the localization of production, right? Thinking about how to shift production from just China to other parts of the world. Of course, it's hard to do this when China can often produce cheaper and quicker than almost anyone else. But the United States and the EU are really starting to strategically about how to compete.
And at the moment, it's basically a two part strategy. One is to level the trade playing field through things like carbon border adjustment mechanisms and tariffs. And two, to support the development of domestic industries through policies in the United States like the inflation reduction.
MONICA: The impression that I have, and I wanted to hear you and hear your views, is that when we look at the way by which countries are trying to grapple with China's dominance in the renewable energy space, but also more generally in other spaces as well, we see this difference in approach, very clear difference in approach on the part of the US and on the part of the European Union.
So while, you know, in both cases, there are concerns about China and what China has been doing and China's dominance and all of that. The US, the United States has decided on an approach that is very different from the European approach. The European approach seems to be more constructive in a sense towards China than what the US has been doing. What's your reaction to that?
JOANNA: Well, I think in some ways that just reflects the structure of European industries in this space sort of, you know, compared to the US. I think electric vehicles are a great example where you have a lot of European manufacturers that are already very integrated in China with their supply chains. You know, I visited factories in China this past summer, including Volkswagen factories, where they are manufacturing EVs in China for the European market exclusively. And they've made these decisions to do that. And the way that the EU tariffs are playing out, as I understand it, that Volkswagen ends up getting penalized even more than a Chinese company exporting to the EU because of the structure of the tariffs.
So you have this real situation. I was speaking with German policymakers about this last week where they are trying to figure out a real strategy to promote German manufacturing. These are strategic industries. The auto industry is very much a strategic industry, just like it is in America. But they are farther ahead on EVs, have a larger global market share and are trying to think about how you handle the already existing kind of integration between their companies and Chinese companies and Chinese production and doing this in a smart way. And so I think they need to think strategically about, is it really about shifting all manufacturing back to the EU or is it about doing this in a way that protects national security, promotes economic development but also benefits German and other European companies.
MONICA: Yeah, and in that vein, the very fact that you have these European companies that are operating in China, and you cited the example of Volkswagen, means that they are well positioned, European companies in the EV space at least, are well positioned to get some technological transfers from Chinese companies, presumably because they're operating in the same market. And the US is kind of missing out on all of this, right? Because of because of its stance with respect to China and with respect to the dominance, I guess, of China in world markets.
JOANNA: And of course, Tesla would be sort of the one exception that had really developed this massive factory outside of Shanghai and really was able to benefit from that manufacturing scale and that it sort of got by shifting part of its production to China.
MONICA: Yeah, and I'm very glad you pointed that one out. So we keep hearing, you know, all of these stories about countries that want to disentangle themselves from China. we know that that is the US, the United States position with respect to China, the whole idea of de-risking from China, disentangling from China and whatever else we want to call it, to reduce its dependence on China.
So from what you've said in terms of how China is so dominant, is that possible? Is it possible for the United States to actually extricate itself or even isolate China?
JOANNA: I mean, think this is a really important question, right? I I think it may be possible in part, but not entirely. And, you know, I think one reason for this is China is not just in China, right? And what I mean by this is we see Chinese firms involved in developing clean energy supply chains all over the world. You know, I do think diversification is possible. I like diversification more than de-risking because I think it's actually more important than de-risking because diversification is not just about not importing from China. It's about helping countries all over the world to build up their own manufacturing capacity so that we have more places to source from. But also then you have more countries that can directly benefit from the low carbon transition.
So if the US goal is just to shift all manufacturing back to the US, that won't really benefit anyone, including Americans, because we will just pay more for that. But also, we will potentially be raising the costs of manufacturing globally such that other countries will be less able to afford clean energy technologies. And then you have a situation where they will just return to coal.
I think there's an idea floating around of a clean energy Marshall Plan which is basically proposing that the IRA will allow the US to advance manufacturing by selling clean energy products to the rest of the world. And while I agree that the US really does have a much larger role to play in helping other countries develop clean energy, we played, I would say, a much smaller role than, for example, China. But it's unrealistic to think that we're going to be the country that will make all these technologies for the entire world. We are just too far behind realistically in current solar photovoltaics, for example, in the kind of the current state of the art technology, also in lithium ion battery technology, to really compete on cost and manufacturing scale. I mean, that is just not where we're going to compete.
That doesn't mean we cannot compete. I think we need to be thinking about what is the right strategy for the United States. For example, there's a proposal to really just look to next generation technologies or specific elements of the supply chain where we really do have an advantage, right? And I think even better would be to think about this, not just in like a US centric way, but in a global way, right? So how can we make building supply chains a development strategy? So combining USAID, US investment, both public and private, helping other countries build up their own clean energy manufacturing capacity which again will contribute to diversification and not be a completely US- centered manufacturing strategy.
MONICA: Joanna, what is your sense about whether or not that can happen? Can the US play that constructive role? Do you see an inclination on the part of the US to do so? I know it's a tough question.
JOANNA: No, absolutely. I mean, I, you the discussions I have with policymakers are, I mean, look, realistically, like this is a challenging time politically. It's election season, you know, and so there's just not a lot of willingness, I think, to think about this in a nuanced way. I think, you know, it would be in the U.S. interest to be very strategic and realistic about how we can compete with China, And different administrations have had different strategies on this over the years. whether it's just tariffs have won, they're sort of a means to an end, but they don't actually help US industries necessarily, right? I mean the solar tariffs, for example, that the United States put in place over a decade ago shifted where we get our solar panels from, but didn't sort of shift that manufacturing back to the US.
So do think there's this recognition that you do need these IRA type policies, which I think is extremely beneficial. mean, the Inflation Reduction Act, of course, has been called the largest and most successful climate bill ever to pass the US Congress. It's a bipartisan bill by all measures. It's directly benefiting both red and blue states in terms of where new manufacturing capacity is starting to be sourced. But it's insufficient. It has to come along with these broader investments that are being made in really building out the innovation system in the United States, which, to be honest, has been somewhat neglected, I'd say, over the last decade.
And it doesn't mean we need to be employing this China-style industrial policy in order to compete globally. I think it's about thinking about how to be innovative in these next generation technologies, where we do have competitive edge, where there's just amazing inventions coming out of universities and these sort of clean energy ecosystems where you have programs at the Department of Energy and in the national labs really trying to move technologies to market. There are things the United States I think still does better than the rest of the world. And that's where we should be really doubling down as opposed to trying to compete with China on the things that are not necessarily our strengths.
MONICA: Yeah, including because when we look at the Global South, for example, we already see that, you know, as you very well said, China is not just in China. So you do see China present in many countries in the Global South and you see China present in ways in some countries that are actually beginning to benefit, in some sectors at least, beginning to benefit these countries own transitions towards climate adaptation and so on. So China is sort of already playing that role in some countries of the global South and perhaps not yet exactly to the point of transferring technology, but certainly to the point of setting up companies, having companies occupying certain spaces, beginning to motivate the emergence of a green, so to speak, little bits and pieces of a green economy in parts of the global South. And you know, that's a first mover advantage, right? They have already taken that step. They have already done it. They are already in these countries. They have been there for years. And it just isn't realistic for the US to want to compete with China on the same terms because, you know, it just won't work. And at the end of the day, it ends up being also problematic for the global South country.
So I did want to ask you, how does China, you're so knowledgeable of China, how does China view its own strategy with respect to the global South on the climate issue?
JOANNA: Yeah, it's a complicated topic because, and I think in the context of, for example, the international climate negotiations, we end up sort of outside of China taking a pretty narrow perspective on, you know, what is China's role been in, for example, climate finance in the global south, right? And China would sort of argue in the context of these global negotiations, it's really the role of industrialized countries to be leading in helping the global South pay for their low carbon transition because they're the ones that caused this problem.
But on the flip side of this, as we know through the Belt and Road Initiative and other sort South-South engagement that China's been extremely involved in, they've actually had a very outsized role in shaping energy infrastructure decisions all over the world, right? And particularly in a lot of key developing and emerging countries. So I think the real question is sort of what motivates, what China is doing in these countries. I think for a while, we have the situation where China was building primarily coal plants in these countries. And a lot of this was motivated by the fact that China was no longer able to build as many coal plants domestically and really had become a global producer of coal technology in the same way they have now for clean energy.
But you have this shift, I think that's really been happening over the last five years or so where these countries, many of these developing emerging economies actually have very ambitious climate goals domestically and they want to now be sourcing the cleaner technologies. And so that at the moment comes from China, right? Again, because they're the key source of most of the supply chain. so China, think, is playing an increasingly important role in not just exporting clean energy technology to these countries, but as you say, really actually starting to build up local manufacturing in these countries.
We did a review a few years ago of China's overseas solar activities across over 100 other countries and what they're doing there. And you saw very small levels of technology transfer, a lot more just setting up operations. But that is changing in part because of the need to get around global tariffs and shift a lot of that capacity elsewhere. But that is actually to the benefit of these countries. A lot of these countries are now asking for more and really want to be part of the higher value added segments of the supply chain, right? Not just kind of raw materials or these lower. So, you know, I do think it's a missed opportunity for the United States not to be sort of thinking about how to more directly leverage what China's doing in these third countries. You know, we had a paper that came out last month that really shows like some options for how the United States could think about leveraging clean energy finance in developing countries. You there are things we do better. There are things that China does better. And, you know, while it seems politically challenging to think about how to engage in this space, actually think it would be it's something that the Chinese have expressed a lot of interest in and certainly developing countries have as well.
MONICA: Yeah, absolutely. Because being myself from a developing country, that is precisely the view. I mean, the view is, you know, there's no interest in US or China centrism of any kind. Nobody wants to be in anyone else's orbit. know, countries just want to align with whatever interests they have and let that dictate the terms of how they engage with others. So, you know, they in principle do not want to be caught in this tension between the United States and China because both are extremely important for them. And it just doesn't really make a lot of sense and it doesn't really help anyone. But that is the world we're in and it's just fascinating to think about these questions and you know, how China is really playing a big role in these countries that the US has kind of left, you know, a vacuum. And as we know, there is no vacuum in politics, right? Somebody is always going to end up occupying the space.
So just to switch over to, we talked a bit about, you talked a bit about green industrial policies and what countries are doing and using these green industrial policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a lot of the measures that are tied to these green industrial policies do involve, at least in the case of the United States, somewhat in the case of the European Union, but more so in the case of the United States, do involve loosening or cutting off altogether trade ties with China. So the question I have for you is what impact are these policies having on China? How do you expect the Chinese government to react going forward, particularly if US policies towards China become even more aggressive?
JOANNA: Yeah, think, I mean, we do see green industrial policy on the rise globally, you know, for the reasons that we've been talking about, you know, in the United States, policies like the IRA are really specifically about competing with China, right? I mean, that is their mission. And of course, the United States has also put in place tariffs for over a decade on the solar industry, which have recently been expanded, most recently on the battery and EV industries.
And perhaps not surprisingly, China is not thrilled with any of this. And it is already, you we see this sort of US green industrial policy response affecting all aspects of the US-China bilateral relationship. But most notably, and I think, you know, this is somewhat of a shift from the past, you most notably in the climate sphere.
You know climate change is sort of long been one of the areas where US and China have been able to engage bilaterally even when we were not able to engage on other topics right or even when we sort of had far less agreement on other aspects of the relationship we've sort of always been able to find at least some common ground in the climate space because for the most part, our interests are actually relatively aligned in achieving global progress in this area.
But now that we have this situation where clean energy tensions are increasingly at the center of the economic relationship, it is directly affecting the climate relationship as well because climate cooperation is not just about science and kind of sharing policy information, right? Ultimately, technology cooperation is really key. mean, clean energy technology cooperation has really been the center of US-China bilateral cooperation on climate energy over the last three decades. And that was the topic of my most recent book, Cooperating for the Climate, which reviews three decades of bilateral engagement, not just between the US and China, but all countries in the climate area and the vast majority has been technology focused cooperation and for good reason. There's just been huge benefits to thinking about China's role in the global innovation system and the role which is becoming increasingly central and so how different countries can leverage their own technology capacity and actually push it forward more rapidly through engagement with China and the Chinese market. I mean, I think one great example of this is in the area of carbon capture and storage technologies where this is a technology that China is just like in order for the world to meet ambitious global climate goals, 1.5 or wherever you think we could end up, you cannot do that without capturing carbon emissions from Chinese coal plants, Chinese industrial facilities, right? I mean, even if China starts to move away from coal, you have so many plants that are still running, right? And they're going to run for decades to come. it makes, know, China is actually already using CCS, or I should say at least carbon capture technology at scale. It's cost competitive.
Mostly it's used to capture carbon for use in enhanced oil recovery. So you actually have this economic reason to be doing a lot of carbon capture in China across a whole variety of facilities. And this is something that US companies, particularly even like US oil and gas companies are excited about. mean, this is actually a pretty old technology. There's not a lot of competition in this technology because it's been around for a long time.
But really where the engagement can happen is then thinking about how you do the next step, like how you go beyond capture and actually sequester and store this stuff in the long term. And so this was actually one of the areas that even as sort of all technology focused climate cooperation between the United States and China pretty much come to a halt over the last five years, particularly with the expiration of the US-China Science and Technology Agreement. This was the cornerstone agreement of the US-China relationship signed back in 1979. But CCS was one area where the US Department of Energy was leading a lot of engagement, as I understand, up until very recently, where the politics just, again, became untenable, not necessarily because there was any risk any real national security risk. It had already been determined by both sides that this was sort of a comfortable area, right? This was not a technology where we're directly competing with the Chinese, where there's no national sort of defense dual use concerns, things like this, right? But even so, when Congress and others sort of found out this was happening, the pressure that was put on those involved was just too much to keep it going.
This is all to say that I think the state of the relationship and the US stance on how we're responding to global supply chain security, it's increasingly damaging for not just the US-China bilateral relationship, but more broadly, right? Because the rest of the world really does watch what the United States and China do, both individually and together.
And when they can agree, it has mobilized global action. We saw a lot of tangible examples of this in the lead up to the Paris Agreement when both sides announced their pledges a year ahead of Paris. And we've seen this in other areas like in HFC reductions and in the Montreal Protocol. But right now, I think it's just hard to do bilateral engagement in a serious way given these broader tensions.
MONICA: Yeah, I mean, what you've just said is incredibly important. And in a sense, you know, it just brings us down to earth in a way when we think about these issues, because as you've pointed out, carbon capture is not something that should be creating tensions between countries, because as you've said, you know, it's it's not it's it's just not the type of technology to create that kind of thing. And yet, given the state of where we are, we are creating problems in areas where problems should not be created. And these areas like carbon capture are critical for climate adaptation and climate mitigation and the transition that we need to do. And as you also pointed out, which I think is crucially relevant, is how everybody looks to the US and China to sort of orient themselves.
And if that's going to be the situation with carbon capture, then you can just see that other countries may not be as engaged or as involved or as willing to do carbon capture. And that is a problem. So it is unfortunate, right? This state of play is extremely unfortunate at a moment in time when we really need to be cooperating and not fragmenting.
So moving on to just an additional point on this. What is your sense of the potential damage to the global renewable energy market resulting from these escalating tensions between the US and China?
JOANNA: I think, I mean, it's early to say, but again, if we create this situation where in shifting global supply chains sort of away from China, we are gonna increase costs and this will affect the countries that have the least ability to pay the greatest, right? And when we look at where these technologies need to be deployed not just this decade, but by mid-century, it's primarily in the developing world. It's not in the United States and Europe exclusively.
So these are countries where costs really matter. So this is really complicated topic, right? Because of course, I live in Washington. I'm very, I have a political realism when thinking of all these topics. And I understand climate change is not the only thing that policymakers care about, right? Unfortunately. So, you know, this is the world we live in. Of course, if you were to design an optimal global climate strategy that would deploy clean energy technologies as quickly and as cheaply as possible and as many countries as possible, you would basically move all manufacturing to China, right? And you would say, like, make as much solar wind batteries as possible, as quickly as possible, sell it around the world, right? And great, we'll meet global climate goals. The geopolitics of these technologies are never going to allow this to happen.
And so any trade interventions, green industrial policy interventions are going to essentially slow the low carbon transition. There's just sort of no way around this. And so really it's about coming up with something in the middle, something that's going to allow the domestic politics, and domestic politics, it's not that they're not important, right? I mean, we would have never seen something like the IRA pass Congress in the United States if there wasn't this feeling that we were competing with China, that this was gonna allow the United States to get back in the game and really develop local industries and there will be direct local economic benefits to this, and there absolutely will.
So it's extremely important, right, that countries have a stake in the low carbon transition and see these direct benefits. But we need to be strategic about how we're doing this in a way that affects other countries. And so you really need what I would call like an IRA B, Part B, is a little more strategic about the global impacts that shifting or resourcing, reshoring manufacturing will actually have globally and then thinking about how you counter with strategic investment mechanisms that can really help support particularly developing countries. And I think as you have these escalating tensions, it does make it harder to do climate cooperation between the United States and China, but not impossible. And I think the Biden administration has been relatively strategic about trying to find areas to cooperate that are not as politically sensitive.
So focusing on things like high-potence greenhouse gases, and not on things like trade and supply chains. Although at the end of the day, we are gonna need to have, I think, hard conversations with China about this if we're gonna make progress globally, and again, sort of avoid some of these potentially really adverse global implications.
MONICA: Well, thank you very much, Joanna, and hopefully we'll have you back on the show at some point. Thank you.
JOANNA: Thank you so much for having me.
MONICA: Thank you for joining me on Policy for the Planet. Have a question or a topic to suggest? Email me at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you.
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