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For now, U.S. energy policy is firmly moving in the direction of a massive expansion of European wind and solar power, thanks to the Inflation Control Act of 2022. Unfortunately, this rush ignores the most important aspect of energy policy: national security.
Without security, nothing else matters: just ask Ukraine.
And there are three key features of the “energy transition” that should put freedom-loving nations at risk and worry our military planners: increased geopolitical dependence, especially on China; the transfer of wealth and knowledge to China; and increased vulnerability in the event of a military conflict.
Much of the energy transition involves wind, solar and batteries, and China completely dominates global production in all three sectors. (iStock | Getty Images)
The consequences of relying on unfriendly countries for energy are easy to imagine, but Germany serves as a cautionary tale.
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After the 2013 tsunami in Japan damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant, Germany decided to close all its nuclear plants and became significantly more dependent on Russian natural gas. When Russia decided to invade Ukraine in 2022, Putin no doubt calculated that dependence on Russian gas would cripple any resistance in Europe, and especially Germany.
The initial invasion was anything but certain, but thankfully Europe did not surrender and has largely retreated (at great cost) from Russian gas.
Just as Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine were clearly bolstered by Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, it is not difficult to imagine a similar dynamic playing out in Taiwan. The outbreak of military conflict in the region would present the global economy with two daunting challenges: Taiwan’s heavy reliance on its semiconductor industry and its even greater reliance on China’s energy and minerals sectors.
A large part of the energy transition to renewables involves wind, solar and batteries, and China completely dominates global production in all three sectors. China currently controls 80% of most stages of the solar value chain, and this market share is predicted to rise to 95% over the next few years. China also manufactures 60% of the world’s wind turbines and almost 60% of EV batteries (including 85% of the battery cells).
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Amazingly, China also has 80% of the refining capacity for the raw materials needed for battery energy storage systems (BESS), which are needed in large quantities at wind and solar power plants.
The combined global solar, wind and battery manufacturing market is nearly $500 billion in 2023. To put this in context, even in 2005, America’s “peak oil import year,” the U.S. only sent $400 billion (in 2023 dollars) overseas to buy oil – something we’ve been lamenting for decades because of the potential negative geopolitical impacts.
We are now about to send a similar amount of capital overseas again, much of it (perhaps most of it) to China. This, of course, will strengthen the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a political entity openly bent on replacing the United States as the world’s geopolitical leader.
But we’re not just transferring wealth to China, we’re also transferring knowledge: About half of U.S. science and engineering PhD candidates are (still) foreign-born, and by 2023 Chinese students will receive the largest percentage of student visas.
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Unfortunately, higher education is not the only way to gain knowledge. In a shockingly blatant attempt to steal U.S. government research, the Chinese government has sought to recruit 154 researchers to work at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories in 2022. Informally, a senior DOE official confirmed to me recently that 15% of DOE scientists and engineers are nationals of “sensitive countries.”
America rightly prides itself on its tolerance and openness, especially when it comes to education, but allowing a rival to train and infiltrate a critical field like energy research is a bit like the Yankees letting Red Sox players invade spring training.
In addition to the challenges of strategic dependencies and wealth transfer, the country’s renewable energy facilities also face serious cyber and kinetic vulnerabilities.
A solar power plant engineer in California, who wished to remain anonymous, recently told me a story about BYD, a Chinese company that is one of the world’s largest battery manufacturers.
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To perform battery maintenance, California operators would have to contact BYD, which would then remotely shut down the facility from China. When the engineers involved asked California officials whether this constituted a security risk, they were told, “BYD has assured us (California) that it will never allow politics to interfere with the maintenance of its U.S. power plants.”
surely.
In fact, renewable energy facilities’ electronic equipment, mostly made in China, makes them highly vulnerable to malicious cyberattacks. Moreover, when it comes to physical attacks, wind and solar farms are geographically dispersed and exposed, making them vulnerable to attacks.
In 2017, the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma demonstrated that they could gain physical access to one turbine and take down an entire wind farm by simply cutting a single lock. From there, it was trivial to hack into the rest of the so-called “air-gapped” plant.
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In any military conflict with China, Americans should expect to lose much of their wind and solar generating capacity through both cyber and kinetic attacks.
Some may say these fears are unfounded and overblown, but such naive assertions ignore worrying geopolitical trends.
China has become increasingly aggressive in recent years, attacking and sinking civilian ships in the South China Sea, effectively annexing Hong Kong and regularly violating Taiwan’s airspace with large-scale mock air strikes.
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Not surprisingly, at the 13th National People’s Congress in 2018, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said, “We are determined to wage a bloody battle against our enemies with the firm determination to take our place in the world.”
To quote Maya Angelou, “When someone reveals themselves, be the first to believe them.”
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