Liam Denning, Columnist

Biden Fights a New Cold War With Solar Panels

Drafting cleantech to fight China could help sell voters, but endangers his climate goals.

April 9, 2021 at 11:00 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

President Joe Biden sees a green Cold War.
Photographer: OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images

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“Secretary Blinken says that America becoming a green-manufacturing superpower will help democracy triumph over autocracy. That’s a lot to ask of a solar panel.”

Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners was talking about the recent hawkish turn in the Biden administration’s cleantech rhetoric. President Joe Biden — and his secretary of state — have recast cutting carbon emissions as not just about saving the planet but also saving U.S. primacy on said planet. China is viewed, correctly, as having raced ahead in the energy technologies of the 21st century; an autocracy making democracies look bad.