🌎 An Energy Transition Turned Global Competition
In the United States, Europe, and China, the same idea is taking hold: greening the economy is no longer enough, production must be controlled. Solar panels, batteries, wind turbines, and electrolyzers are no longer mere climate tools; they have become the strategic weapons of the 21st century.
Since COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, the world has rediscovered the words “dependency” and “supply chain.” The result: after thirty years of liberal globalization, a new protectionism is emerging — but this time in the name of climate action.
Green America, but Above All Sovereign
In 2022, Joe Biden launched the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a massive $370 billion incentive plan for clean technologies. Officially, it is meant to support America’s energy transition. In reality, it is a strategy for massive industrialization: only companies producing on U.S. soil benefit from the subsidies.
Tesla, LG, Volkswagen, and Northvolt (which later went bankrupt) all announced factories in the United States, drawn by generous tax credits and simple procedures. The message is clear: America First, green edition.
For Washington, the green recovery is both a climate project and a tool of power. The U.S. aims to secure critical supply chains, create industrial jobs, and reduce dependence on China. So far, it is working.
Europe: Between Green Ambitions and Strategic Disorder
Faced with the American challenge, the European Union wanted to respond. The Green Deal Industrial Plan and the Net-Zero Industry Act in Brussels set ambitious goals: produce on the continent the technologies that will achieve carbon neutrality. But behind the slogans, Europe’s machinery is faltering.
The Union suffers from a major political and structural handicap: it has a single market, but no real shared political, budgetary, or industrial capital. Decisions are fragmented between Brussels, national capitals, and local industrial interests. The result: a 27-speed Europe, where major powers spend massively while smaller countries wait for support from a limited EU budget.
Berlin wants to protect its automotive industry; Paris its energy champions; Rome demands fiscal leeway. Meanwhile, the European Commission tries to arbitrate, often too late, often too timidly. The European Investment Bank acts, but without the firepower of a U.S. Treasury.
Europe has 21st-century ideas but 20th-century tools
The lack of coordination and pooling of capital has become the Achilles’ heel of European sovereignty. Until the Union has a true common financial instrument capable of massive and rapid investment, it will remain dependent on national decisions and budgetary constraints.
Businesses do not wait: investments in batteries, hydrogen, and semiconductors go where rules are simple and subsidies guaranteed. And for now, that is often… across the Atlantic.
Result: Europe talks about transition, America finances it, Europe debates, China produces. This is the paradox of a continent that wants to lead the transition but still struggles to organize itself as a true power.
China: From Green Champion to Industrial Fortress
China, for its part, watches with a mix of irony and concern. Beijing has invested massively in green technologies since the 2000s. Today, it controls 80% of global solar panel production, 70% of batteries, and a dominant share of rare metals.
Its subsidies are less visible than those of Western countries, but just as powerful: state credits, opaque support for “national champions,” export controls. Facing U.S. and European barriers, China now responds with rare-earth restrictions and a nationalist message:
“You accuse us of green dumping? We sell you your transition.”
The paradox is total: it is China, long criticized for its pollution, that provides the world with the tools for decarbonization.
And Switzerland in All This?
Switzerland has not launched a comparable massive plan. It relies on private innovation and centers of excellence (EPFL, ETHZ, cleantech, precision industry). But as economic blocs close off, the Confederation could find itself on the periphery of major industrial supply chains.
Its challenge is not to subsidize like the U.S., but to remain integrated in a fragmented European system. Switzerland is best served by focusing on agility, applied research, and international partnerships rather than racing to spend billions.
💡 Towards a Geopoliticized Economy
“Green protectionism” is no longer a contradiction: it is the new grammar of global capitalism. States invest, direct, and plan, in the name of climate, but with the instincts of power. Every solar panel becomes a matter of sovereignty; every battery, a commercial weapon.
This shift has three major consequences:
- The return of the strategic state. Governments redefine economic priorities, even if it distorts international competition.
- Market fragmentation. The world is divided into blocks, American, European, Chinese, each protecting its technologies and raw materials.
- A two-speed transition. Countries capable of investing hundreds of billions move forward, others follow, or fall behind.
🧩 Conclusion
What we are witnessing is not just an ecological transition: it is a restart of industrial capitalism. Free trade gives way to the logic of blocks, and ecology becomes the new language of power. Behind green rhetoric lies a simple truth:
the race to decarbonize is also a race for economic domination.
The question is no longer “Who will save the planet?” but “Who will build the decarbonized planet?” And the answer is measured in billions.