China’s Low-Carbon Energy Relations with Emerging Markets

This book explores China’s contemporary energy relations with emerging markets.

Through the prisms of global low-carbon transition and power sector development, Ryan McLean utilises the multi-level perspective to build upon existing understandings of the Chinese renewables ‘revolution’ from a top-down interpretation. McLean presents an in-depth analysis of the external ramifications of China’s solar and wind dominance across the Global South in the areas of green technological trade, project construction, and regime financing. This research provides a convincing explanation for why Chinese coal incumbents have been proactive overseas in spite of the country’s clean energy dominance and Beijing’s climate commitments. Finally, the book argues that China’s low-carbon prowess has longer-term significance for the Global South, and in addition contributes to the rising debates over the geopolitics of renewable transition in a complex, multipolar world.

This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese energy policy and foreign relations, energy markets in the Global South, international politics, and the wider global energy transition field.