Climate policies and developments announced by the US and EU in recent months leave both poised to challenge China’s dominance in clean energy technologies, according to a special report published by consultancy Kaya Advisory and commissioned by the Inevitable Policy Response (IPR). The report highlighted the EU’s Emission Trading System (ETS), carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) and Net Zero Industry Plan, as well as the US’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), carbon border adjustment tariff on steel and aluminium, and proposed Energy Transition Accelerator – the latter of which was announced at COP27. “China’s own success in clean energy and critical raw materials leaves the rest of the developed world with production voids that need to be filled,” said Brian Hensley, Partner at Kaya Advisory. “The US has decided to decouple from China supply chains with the IRA which has initiated a chain reaction of similar measures by other countries. The EU is compelled to initiate its own industrial policy support and is finding it hard to be as flexible as the US. All of this has enormous significance for private investors.” The IPR’s latest Quarterly Forecast Tracker (QFT) assessed 117 global developments between October 2022 and January 2023. Eighty-nine have “sufficient credibility” to be included in the QFT, with 68 supporting or confirming the IPR’s 1.8°C forecasts, while 20 showed increased ambition and two signalled a decrease.
