By Chinese Ambassador to Guyana, Guo Haiyan

TO navigate the challenges posed by climate change to the whole of mankind, energy transition is the key approach and now is well underway worldwide. As a big and responsible country, China highlights the development of new energy sector and has promised world’s largest reduction in carbon emission.

Besides meeting strong domestic demand, China’s new energy sector also makes significant contributions to the world’s endeavour of addressing climate change and green development. Guyanese government targets low-carbon development and new energy transition, immense space of co-operation between China and Guyana in the field can be expected.
1. China’s emphasis on new energy development and significant advantages achieved

China’s new energy products including electric vehicles (EVs), lithium batteries and photovoltaic equipment have gained significant progress after decades of development. As of 2023, China’s share in power battery market, production and sales of EVs and installed capacity of solar power had ranked first in the world for eight, nine and 10 consecutive years respectively.

In the same year, China contributed more than 50 per cent of global newly added installation of renewable energy, and above 60 per cent of global sales of EVs was absorbed by Chinese market. China’s new energy products with high quality and good competitive price are in short of supply in many markets especially in the developing countries keen to achieve new energy transition.
Over the past 10 years, largely relying on the Chinese products, the average kilowatt-hour generation cost of global wind power and photovoltaic power have been decreased by more than 60 per cent and 80 per cent respectively. A number of new energy technologies and the capacity of equipment manufacturing in China are leading the world, from the world’s first 16 megawatt power generation offshore wind turbine, to the battery with a range of 1,000 kilometres per charge.

As Mr. Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency underscored, China’s support to other countries has significantly enhanced the accessibility and affordability of clean energy and green technology.

The strong competitiveness and leading technology of China’s new energy products lies on early industrial layout and sustained R&D input, and combining with China’s complete industrial chain, mega-size market and rich human resources, the comprehensive competitiveness of new energy sector is formed.

Certainly, above mentioned success cannot be achieved without the efforts made by Chinese entrepreneurs. It is thus clear that China’s advantages in new energy sector are the result of market competition.

2. China’s contribution to address the insufficient capacity of global green production
Today, new energy transition is in pressing need while the threat of climate challenge is imminent. However, the market demand for new energy products is far exceeding the global production capacity.

According to the data of International Energy Agency, by 2030, the global demand for EVs will reach 45 million units which will be 4.5 times that of 2022, global demand for newly installed photovoltaic capacity will reach 820 gigawatts, which will be about four times that of 2022.

Therefore, China’s new energy sector development provides the world with vital support to catch up the surging demand, especially to the developing countries for their efforts to deal with climate change and green transition.

Recently, there’s voice accusing China of overcapacity in new energy sector, which is absolutely groundless. In 2023, China sold a total of 9.495 million units of EVs, almost 90 per cent of which are domestic sales, the rest 10 per cent for export.

The exclusively foreign-owned enterprise Tesla China accounts for about 30 per cent of that export. Obviously, the main Chinese production capacity are used for meeting China’s domestic demand, the voice of overcapacity is ridiculous. As some people called on, we cannot claim shortage of production capacity in world’s new energy sector while talking about climate change, on the other hand accuse China of production overcapacity while talking about Chinese new energy sector.

Such deliberate accusation of so called “overcapacity” against China is clearly for the sake of suppressing China’s industrial development, will not only hold back global green transition and shake confidence in the co-operation to address climate change, but also dampen the determination of enterprises to engage in foreign trade and investment co-operation.

3. Grasping the historical opportunities to achieve mutual beneficial and win-win co-operation between China and Guyana
Focusing on global climate and energy security, Guyana firmly adheres to “net zero” carbon emission policy in pursuit of oil and gas development, and is playing an increasing leadership role in region’s energy transition. According to Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030, the share of renewable energy will increase to an average of 50 per cent by 2027 and 70 per cent by 2030, of which solar power will be the main energy resource on the local grid.

China’s advantages in new energy production capacity, technology and engineering are strongly complementary to those of Guyana, which has been preliminarily reflected in the start of solar power co-operation between the two countries.

At the same time, the big potential in the EV related co-operation will be quickly released in the near future.

With Guyana’s fast economic development, broad opportunities of co-operation between China and Guyana in energy transition are emerging, the two countries share a bright future in jointly exploring technology transfer and production co-operation.