Interview by Pascal Riché
Published on December 14, 2025, at 6:30 a.m., modified on December 14, 2025, at 4:25 p.m.
Reading time: 5 min.
The Chinese are on track to succeed in their bid to green their economy. Admittedly, they are continuing to open coal-fired power plants, but these are more flexible than the old ones and are designed to support renewable energies, explains economist Cédric Philibert in an interview with Le Monde . »
Cédric Philibert is a researcher who is fairly optimistic about the energy transition. An expert at the International Energy Agency for nineteen years, he published Climat. Les énergies de l’espoir (Climate: The Energies of Hope) (Les Petits Matins, 224 pages, €20) in October. According to him, the industrial choices made by China will accelerate the decarbonization of energy in that country, but also in others.
You predict an “avalanche” of greenhouse gas reductions, fueled by Chinese green technologies. Will the world’s biggest polluter save the planet?
What is certain is that if the biggest polluter does not clean up its act, we will not save the planet. The good news is that China has started to do so. This is the result of a strategy that began some fifteen years ago. Chinese greenhouse gas emissions plateaued eighteen months ago. We must be cautious, but it is likely that they will begin to decline even before China’s official 2030 target. And, at the same time, so will global emissions. By 2025, global solar energy production capacity will increase by around 650 gigawatts, more than 50% of which will be in China. One gigawatt is the power output of a nuclear power plant.
China’s efforts do not explain everything. The economic slowdown has also played a role in this shift…
That’s true. In particular, the decline in construction activity, as steel and cement consume a lot of coal. But the rise of renewable energies in electricity production and the decline of coal are structural dynamics.
However, many coal-fired power plants continue to open every year. Capacity is expected to increase by around 80 GW in 2025…
If the Chinese increase the number of their power plants, this does not mean that coal consumption will increase. More efficient and flexible than the old ones, the new coal-fired power plants will support renewable energies to compensate for their intermittency. They will not operate continuously but, in the long term, only when there is no sun or wind. In other words, each power plant will consume less coal.
Chinese industry also consumes a lot of coal…
Its consumption is increasing in the coal chemical industry (ammonia, plastics, etc.), a sector that is much less important than cement or steel, where its consumption is declining. It is also used to produce silicon, which is essential for photovoltaic cells. This is a real paradox, but the overall impact of photovoltaics on greenhouse gas emissions remains very positive.
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China has become the world leader in green energy, resulting in lower prices for solar panels and electric cars around the world. Is this good news for the planet?
China supplies many countries with the components they need for their transition: photovoltaic panels, batteries, nuclear power plants, etc. Today, it is China that is reducing its coal consumption. Tomorrow, it will be South Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan… In 2025 alone, Pakistan purchased 26 GW of solar energy production capacity from China.
Obviously, this Chinese offensive has destroyed our photovoltaic industry, which is not a happy development. But by promoting the use of solar energy around the world, it is having an undeniably beneficial impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The share of renewable energy in electricity has long been limited to 20%, which corresponded to hydroelectricity. In 2023, we passed 30%; in 2027 or 2028, we will pass 40%. And in less than ten years, perhaps as early as 2032, half of the world’s electricity will be renewable. The acceleration is underway. In 2005, it took a whole year to install 1 GW of solar power worldwide; in 2015, this was achieved every month; and since 2023, it has been achieved every day!
The decarbonization of electricity is therefore well underway. The next step will be to use this electricity to replace fossil fuels in transportation, industry, and construction. That’s another matter entirely, because it’s difficult for a country to switch to green steel, which is more expensive to produce, on its own. To avoid unfair competition, all producers must do so at the same time.
Not easy in the current geopolitical context…
Absolutely. We were on the verge of reaching an agreement on maritime transport, but Donald Trump brutally opposed it, and the decision has been postponed.
Would the fastest route to decarbonization be to open up our borders to Chinese solar panels and electric vehicles?
As far as solar panels are concerned, this is already the case: China controls 90% of the market. That said, we shouldn’t regret this too much: it is the local installation of the panels, not their manufacture, that provides the most jobs.
Isn’t there an issue of sovereignty?
Sovereignty means freeing ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels as quickly as possible in favor of local energy sources, and solar is one of them. So the more solar panels we buy from China, the faster we become sovereign. However, given the explosion of solar energy to come, I think there will be room for a few producers outside China: in India, the United States, Africa, and Europe.
What would happen if, to exert pressure, the Chinese stopped selling us photovoltaic modules?
Not much, really, because the panels already installed would continue to produce electricity. We would not be in a stranglehold as we would be with an oil or gas embargo. I don’t really see what interest the Chinese would have in doing so.
In 2025, we are witnessing political setbacks on environmental issues in the United States and even in Europe. Is China immune to such a phenomenon?
The transition to carbon-free energy is a central objective in Beijing’s strategy. The problem is that this is not necessarily the strategy of all regions of the country. They have a degree of autonomy. Since 2014, for example, they have authorized the opening of coal-fired power plants. This has led to an explosion of projects, which the central government has only partially succeeded in blocking.
The regions are concerned about energy security and employment, particularly in the mining industry. They are therefore resisting the move towards carbon neutrality. The central government must take this into account in order to maintain its regional support. But it is staying the course, especially as China’s industrial and commercial interests are aligned with the energy transition.
The Chinese government has managed to combine planning and competition: is this the right approach to a successful ecological transition?
Planning is necessary, but you don’t need to be a dictatorship like China to implement it. I regret that in France, the General Secretariat for Ecological Planning has lost its influence since Gabriel Attal replaced Elisabeth Borne at Matignon. The government has lost interest in it, which is serious.
Similarly, the planning role played in part by the Commission, with the support of the European Parliament, is tending to erode under pressure from the European People’s Party, which is increasingly voting with the far right. This is tragic, but we must not despair: in my experience, every setback on the environment is followed by a new, higher and stronger green wave. This is because the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly clear: forest fires, heat waves, hurricanes, glacial regression, etc.
Is China becoming a driving force in the COPs, the annual international climate conferences?
I have participated in or attended almost every COP since the first one in 1995, up to the one in Paris in 2015. From the outset, the countries of the South, starting with China, have considered that it is up to the countries of the North to make the necessary efforts. They consider that they have a right to industrial catch-up. But ultimately, when tensions between the South and the North became too high, it was always the Chinese who took the Cédric Chine Le Monde 13-12-2025 (1)small step that allowed the dialogue to continue. Beijing needed time to prepare for the energy transition, but above all did not want to break the COP system. Then, in 2020, Xi Jinping committed to the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060.