“Great visions require concrete actions,” said Xi Jinping during a speech at the recent UN Climate Summit, and republished in these pages.

If history has taught us anything it is to be extremely wary of communist dictators who have great visions and are prepared to take concrete actions. Such actions tend to end in mass graves. Take Xi’s predecessor, Mao Zedong, a man of vision and action, whose Great Leap Forward resulted, according to historian Frank Dikötter, in the deaths of approximately 45 million people, either through state-orchestrated starvation or execution.

Xi claims he wants to secure a: “green and low-carbon transition,” to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, and to see a wider adoption of: “green” technologies, such as wind and solar energy capacity.

Xi went on to point out that: “some country is acting against it.” Presumably the country Xi is referring to is the United States (US) because under President Donald Trump it is embracing a pro-energy future with increased exploration and use of hydrocarbons.

Like so many communist dictators before him, Xi is, of course, wrong.

If one is concerned about carbon emissions, and there are very valid reasons not to be, the United States has fared better than most in reducing them. According to the Institute for Energy Research (IER), between 2005 and 2023 US carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 20%. Over that same period the size of the US economy increased by around 50%. And the US population increased by approximately 15%, so that per capita carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 30%.

Over approximately that same period, when China’s population grew by about eight percent, the country’s carbon dioxide emissions increased threefold.

Reduction

How has the United States managed to reduce its carbon emissions while growing both its economy and population? It is not, as some environmental activists would love to claim, because of an increase in so-called: “renewables” like wind and solar. As the IER points out, even though nearly half US states have implemented renewable energy mandates, and the federal government has lavished tens of billions of dollars of subsidies on wind and solar, they account for less than 3% of primary energy. Coal and natural gas account for around 75% of primary energy.

Wind and solar are intermittent, they only provide energy when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining. Some energy can be stored in batteries, but batteries can only do so much.

According to a leading energy analyst, Mark Mills, if Tesla’s Nevada battery factory, the world’s largest, were to produce batteries non-stop for 500 years, it would produce enough battery capacity to store just one day’s worth of the US energy demand.

The reason the US economy has managed to produce more output while emitting less carbon dioxide comes not from government diktats or grand plans, but because of energy entrepreneurs pursuing their own interests. Fracking entrepreneurs figured out how to discover and extract oil and gas trapped in shale deposits. This revolution has lowered costs for consumers and has driven, via market forces, an increased reliance on natural gas and a decreased reliance on coal.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, is largely responsible for the decrease in US carbon dioxide emissions.

Foundation

Energy is the foundation of any modern economy and by allowing US entrepreneurs to experiment and explore they have created a more robust foundation. By taking risks, these entrepreneurs have become very wealthy, but all consumers and the entire economy have benefited from an energy abundance approach.

Those countries that have embraced energy poverty and have limited energy exploration, such as much of Europe, have weakened their economic foundations, making them less competitive and providing fewer opportunities for their people. The dismal economic growth in much of Europe, when compared to the United States, should stand as testimony to the folly of the: “green” energy transition.

The idea of: “green” energy is not just foolish because it cannot deliver the energy needs of a modern economy, but because it isn’t environmentally friendly. To build wind, solar, and battery capacity requires vast amounts of non-renewable materials. As Mills explains, to build a 100-megawatt windfarm, which would power 75 000 homes, would require 30 000 tons of iron ore, 50 000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of plastic.

A solar farm of the same capacity would require 150% more material than wind, in the form of steel, cement, and glass. And all that, mining, excavation, and processing, to say little of the plastic, requires fossil fuels. And just consider all the forests, prairies, and wilderness areas ripped up and paved over with solar panels and windmills.

If one were being cynical, one might conclude that far from wanting a more environmentally friendly world, Xi is pushing his: “green” vision because China is a major producer of solar panels and of electric cars. Having more countries reliant on China and not exploiting their own fossil fuels would suit Xi just fine.

One might also conclude that it would suit the Chinese Communist Party to have the Western democracies accelerating their race to: “green” energy as it would leave their economies weaker and less competitive.

Being a communist dictator, Xi might be able to ram through his preferred policies regardless of their environmental, economic, or human costs. He would be able to imprison, or permanently silence, any dissenters.

But democracies, such as South Africa, should not buy into Xi’s vision. In fact, doing the exact opposite of communist regimes is a pretty good rule of thumb. Securing property rights in energy exploration, and indeed all things, and ensuring a free market with entrepreneurs able to reap the rewards of their investments is the way forward for any government that seeks to grow sustainably.

Richard Tren is a director of the Washington, DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom