Name: U.S. and China’s next economic battle will be over climate change, experts say
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U.S. and China’s next economic battle will be over climate change, experts say

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Key PointsHaving long been at loggerheads over , and , the world's foremost economic superpowers are turning their attention to as the next path to commercial supremacy.&nbsp;China outspent the U.S. by nearly 2-to-1 on energy transition-related investment between 2010 and 2020, according to BNEF data cited by Bank of America's ESG Research team in a report last month.13 hours agoPressure points including "supply chain dominance, domestic-focused manufacturing policies, human rights-related laws and carbon-related trade tariffs," BofA analysts said.BofA managing director of research Haim Israel said a "climate war" between Washington and Beijing would follow the tech war and trade war as climate change becomes the dominant economic and political theme of the coming decades.Renewable energy capacity could grow 20 times by 2050, Bank of America says"It's not just about saving the planet. We believe climate strategies offer a route to global supremacy, as much more is at stake here: the economic impact of climate could reach $69 trillion this century, and energy transition investment needing to rise up to $4 trillion per year," Israel said in a research note in February.&nbsp;"Energy independence and supply chain control are also at stake with the geopolitical balance of power also linked to peak oil in 2030."Israel told CNBC that the U.S. would look to ramp up legislation, innovation and such as wind, solar, batteries and hydrogen."We also see a ramp-up in electric cars. Remember that today, give or take, 50% of all oil in the world is allocated to the transportation market, and cars is a big part of it. So whoever will will definitely have a big advantage going forward," he added.Tensions between the U.S. and China have continued under President Joe Biden's administration, with conducting terse discussions with Chinese delegates in Alaska last month.&nbsp;U.S. and EU still may need Chinese cooperation on North Korea: AnalystHarry Broadman, managing director and chair of the emerging markets and CFIUS practices at Berkeley Research Group, told CNBC last week that developed countries' ability to create, execute and sell products that advance the climate agenda without negatively affecting the labor market would shape the economic landscape in the coming years.&nbsp;"As long as people believe that there is going to be a market for such technologies and that's going to be dictated by how cheap it is, and whether it destroys jobs or creates jobs — it does not necessarily have to destroy jobs at all — that is going to be the driving imperative, and I think that race is already underway," Broadman said.&nbsp;Ahead of the in Cornwall, U.K. in June, Broadman, an assistant U.S. trade representative during the Clinton administration, said the group of major economies will need to drastically evolve their research and development and sovereign-to-sovereign science and technology collaborations in order to compete with China.&nbsp;Broadman is pushing for an "R&amp;D7" to be included on the G-7 agenda, similar to other working groups across members on issues of global importance. Its aim would be to reform the structure underlying the negotiation and execution of international science and technology agreements among G-7 countries. It would also form a stand-alone body tasked with ensuring that these agreements strengthen and recalibrate R&amp;D collaboration within the G-7.&nbsp;"We've done really well among democratic countries collaborating on investment and trade, but we've done an extraordinarily poor job in R&amp;D, and this is where China is frankly a huge competitive and potentially a huge economic and maybe geopolitical, threat," he said.&nbsp;China has pledged . Countries operating net-zero pledges currently account for just under half of all global emissions, with China representing around two-thirds of these, according to a recent equity research report from Goldman Sachs.&nbsp;China's economy will become larger than that of the U.S. by 2032, says economistHowever, this could be a tall order, since China is by far the planet's biggest polluter. The country accounts for around 30% of the world's CO2 emissions, more than twice that of the U.S., and is rated by Climate Action Tracker as "highly insufficient" under the "fair share" principle in combating climate change.Goldman analysts led by equity business unit leader Michele Della Vigna plotted the country's potential path to net zero by sector and technology, laying out the $16 trillion of clean tech infrastructure investments China will need to embark on by 2060.&nbsp;&nbsp;Collectively, these could create 40 million net new jobs and drive economic growth, they projected, and would be based on three interconnected scalable technologies: electrification, green hydrogen and carbon capture.&nbsp;China's spending on research and development in 2020, outpacing the U.S., according to the nation's National Bureau of Statistics.Meanwhile, Europe is home to eight of the 10 largest "clean tech" companies in the world, with potential for a fourfold increase globally in clean tech capacity by 2030, BofA analysts projected. Investors have also shown growing interest in companies seen as pioneering the energy transition, from electric vehicles to clean energy.&nbsp;As China finds itself "incrementally boxed out" of access to technologies from the U.S. and the rest of the G-7, Broadman suggested that a , creating a "China-centered orbit" and a "G7-centered orbit" that would be unsustainable.&nbsp;"There can be only one sort of standard in the world from a pure economic perspective. The economies of scale are so powerful that if you have two co-existing standards, someone is going to lose money," he said."That's why I think whoever wins that race is going to be on top. That race has begun and the G-7 have not pursued this through collective action, and that is what they have to do. Climate is just an extraordinarily critical case in point."&nbsp;

Key PointsHaving long been at loggerheads over , and , the world's foremost economic superpowers are turning their attention to as the next path to commercial supremacy.&nbsp;China outspent the U.S. by nearly 2-to-1 on energy transition-related investment between 2010 and 2020, according to BNEF data cited by Bank of America's ESG Research team in a report last month.13 hours agoPressure points including "supply chain dominance, domestic-focused manufacturing policies, human rights-related laws and carbon-related trade tariffs," BofA analysts said.BofA managing director of research Haim...

U.S. and China’s next economic battle will be over climate change, experts say

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