Biden’s biggest clean-energy partner: China
With help from Jesse Naranjo and Lorraine Woellert
THE BIG IDEA
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the opening of the 73rd World Health Assembly in May 2020. | Li Xueren/Xinhua via AP
THE GEOPOLITICS OF RENEWABLES—It’s a dirty truth. The U.S path to clean energy goes straight through China.
President Joe Biden’s plan to green the economy by 2035 will require cooperation from America’s largest trading partner, which controls a vast share of the minerals used in electric batteries, the cheap materials that make up solar panels and the guts of wind turbines.