China’s cleantech exports are widening the “energy dominance” gap

China is exporting clean energy technology, like solar panels and electric vehicles, at a fast-growing pace. In the first half of 2026, clean tech made up 6.6% of all Chinese exports, worth $140 billion, up from 2.7% in 2020. At home, China's electricity use grew 5% last year, and all of that new demand was met with clean power, mostly solar and wind. Coal-fired power generation is now slowing or declining in more than half the regions the report tracked, a shift analysts see as a turning point: China has moved from simply adding clean energy to actually replacing fossil fuels.

U.S. tariffs meant to slow China's clean tech exports appear to have mostly redirected them elsewhere. Solar shipments to Sub-Saharan Africa rose 37% in a year, Brazil's electric vehicle registrations jumped 300% on Chinese imports, and Pakistan brought in more than 50 gigawatts of Chinese solar panels. Meanwhile, in the U.S., 2025 was the first year of net negative clean energy investment in over a decade, a $22 billion drop from 2024.

None of this changes what's available to homeowners directly, but it points to a wider trend: much of the solar and battery equipment used in home upgrades worldwide, and increasingly in the U.S., traces back to Chinese manufacturing and components. As U.S. policy leans toward tariffs and fossil fuel exports rather than building out domestic clean power, the cost and availability of clean energy hardware here may continue to diverge from trends in the rest of the world.