Jason Bordoff

And China for decades has been pursuing a strategy of

to electrify more of its economy.

That's why half the cars sold in China are electric.

A much higher share of their overall economy is electrified than in most of the rest of the world.

That's more about energy security than it is a clean energy transition or climate change.

And then they want to produce that electricity from domestic sources.

For them, that's coal and renewables mostly, some nuclear.

So I think in the long run, the question is whether other countries say if you're import dependent in Europe and you say, look, we can't go through this again.

We went through it in 2022 with Russia.

Now we're facing an energy shock again.

We really need to produce our energy at home and we need to electrify more.

What does that mean?

It means you've got to buy a lot of stuff from China, all of the batteries and electric vehicles and all of those critical minerals and solar panels.

And I think that China in the long run could end up a bit of a winner here in the sense that they're the ones supplying all of that.

And they have long been trying to position themselves as a reliable commercial partner, while the United States is the source of geopolitical instability.

And this conflict doesn't make it harder for them to make their case.

I think it's exactly right.

And as I said, this conflict might give a boost to China in the sense that it was a big concern before for countries that were thinking about moving much faster toward electrified economy, toward clean energy.

The constraint was, do I want to be heavily dependent on China?

I mean, I've been thinking for the last couple of years.