Trump’s Return Gives China a Second Chance at Climate Leadership
Welcome to our guide to the commodities powering the global economy. Today, reporter Dan Murtaugh looks at what Donald Trump’s victory could do for China’s energy outlook. To get this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
Donald Trump’s victory in this week’s US election comes with plenty of risks for China. But it also hands Beijing a rare opportunity.
The president-elect’s climate credentials are known. He immediately pulled out of the Paris Agreement after being inaugurated in 2017. He vows to boost fossil-fuel production and terminate domestic green policies he labels a “scam.”This should be Xi Jinping’s cue.
Last time, China’s efforts to play up global expertise, work with Europe and Canada, and bolster its emission-reduction targets largely came to nothing. Rather than being hailed as a leader, Beijing was accused of not doing enough to curb fossil fuels.
But fast forward to 2025, and China is in a much better position to take advantage.
Since the start of 2023, the nation installed 493 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity — about as much as France, Germany and the UK combined. The massive amounts of new clean energy put it on the cusp of peak emissions nearly a half-decade before the target.

China is still the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, and the most important thing it can do for the climate fight is to keep cleaning up. But the scale of the domestic market makes those transition efforts largely self-reliant and immune from Washington’s vacillations.
The country’s solar, battery and electric-vehicle companies currently dominate global production. They made clean technologies affordable, though they also resulted in Beijing being pilloried for undermining other countries’ supply chains.
These manufacturers can still help speed up the switch to renewable power, especially in the Global South. Many are already doing their part, investing in overseas factories to skirt tariffs and localization rules.
Trump’s plans to drag the US from the climate stage will leave a vacuum. China can step up its global presence, help untangle knots such as finance — and perhaps win enough trust to keep trade barriers low and sell more solar panels and wind turbines.
A lackluster domestic economy should only add to the incentive.
Second chances are rare. There’s every reason to take advantage.
--Dan Murtaugh, Bloomberg News

This year will be the hottest on record, and the first to exceed the global target set in 2015. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, temperatures in 2024 will likely be more than 1.55C above the pre-industrial level. The Paris Agreement called for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the hope of limiting global warming to 2C — and ideally 1.5C.
Oil slipped after the previous day’s roller-coaster session as traders weighed the likely impact of Trump’s win on the crude market, with the US dollar halting a post-vote surge.
Germany’s high energy costs are driving out manufacturers, and a looming snap election will make the problem even harder to fix.
Hurricane Rafael slammed the western coast of Cuba with Category 3 winds, causing an island-wide blackout before it’s expected to emerge in the Gulf of Mexico.
Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co., a top nickel producer, is sounding out banks for $2.7 billion in financing for a Ford Motor Co.-backed project in Indonesia, according to people familiar with the matter.
The damage gas has wrought to US and European coal is testament to the way it can work hand-in-hand with carbon-free energy to wreak havoc on the dirtiest sources of power, Bloomberg Opinion’s David Fickling writes.
Against the backdrop of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Bloomberg Green convenes the foremost leaders in business, finance, policy, academia and NGOs for candid conversations focused on COP29’s core goals. Join us in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 13. Learn more.