Is America Ready for Great Power Energy Competition?
Energy and energy technology are already elements of U.S. competition with both China and Russia. Competing effectively will require both new U.S. policies as well as more determined efforts to align America’s approaches with those of its closest friends.
COMPETITION WITH China and Russia is profoundly reshaping U.S. national security and foreign policy. Policymakers are increasing America’s military capabilities, rethinking key trade policies, and consolidating alliances. Especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington is applying similar logic to energy policy, though the Biden administration has yet to act on the full implications of geopolitics for its energy and climate aims. In both areas, America needs policies that strengthen U.S. technological capabilities and leverage relationships without setting aside necessary energy sources. Two key partners in East Asia—Japan and South Korea—should be important pillars of U.S. global energy and climate strategy in this new era. Unofficial dialogue among U.S., Japanese, and South Korean experts hints at significant opportunities.
Humans have competed for access to energy since before recorded history; this competition began with conflicts over food, the biological energy we need to survive. As societies discovered and developed new ways to obtain and use energy, competition expanded over energy resources, as well as technologies to convert energy into useful work—from water wheels to steam engines, and eventually, nuclear reactors. In the late nineteenth and especially the twentieth centuries, energy and other forms of competition among great powers became global.
Tension surrounding access to energy resources has been common in international affairs in recent decades. This has included China’s “grey zone” activities to assert energy-laden (and strategically significant) maritime territorial claims in East Asia, Russian efforts to use natural gas and oil supplies for political leverage, and Saudi Arabian and Russian attempts to undercut U.S. unconventional oil producers. America and its rivals have scrambled to build or block pipelines, to make or prevent overseas energy and related infrastructure investments, and to establish, thwart, or counter naval and other bases to protect shipping lanes.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has elevated pre-existing energy-related tensions to levels unseen since the 1973 OPEC oil embargo or, for that matter, the 1941 U.S. oil embargo against Imperial Japan. U.S. and allied sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and Russia’s selective oil and gas supply cutoffs are reshaping energy markets and policies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. These strains come atop escalating technology competition in energy, information, communications, artificial intelligence, space, and other sectors.
Energy technology competition has included policies to promote innovation as well as to ensure that others cannot dominate global markets for important energy resources or conversion technologies (i.e., systems to shift energy from one form to another; e.g., from sunlight, wind, or fuel to electricity). In the United States, political leaders have supported research and development in many areas, such as small modular nuclear reactors and liquid biofuels. Congress has also focused on China’s role in manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries in addition to extractive industries producing key commodity inputs.
So-called critical minerals for electronics and batteries are a top concern in America and other countries; calls to ensure U.S. access to domestic and international supplies have stimulated domestic and international actions by the Biden administration, swelled the list of relevant bills pending in Congress, and encouraged new mining and processing. That policy concerning critical minerals has been an area of general continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations signals that vital U.S. national interests are at stake.
Critical minerals are not the only link between energy and electronics in today’s interconnected world; developed-country energy infrastructure is increasingly difficult to separate from the networked control systems that ensure safe and efficient operation, sometimes remotely. This links energy-related competition to parallel high-stakes competition surrounding artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cybersecurity. Criminal hackers had a stunning impact on the Colonial Pipeline’s gasoline deliveries and hinted at the potential consequences of determined nation-state cyberattacks.
Finally, because climate policy requires energy policies, efforts to fight climate change unavoidably import the latter’s competitive aspects. Climate policy has been highly competitive since emerging as a global issue in the 1992 negotiations that produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At that time, the UNFCCC advanced the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” as a compromise between developed countries that were primarily responsible for elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and developing nations seeking future economic growth. Accepting that they could neither pragmatically nor morally deny that opportunity to developing countries, the developed world accepted greater responsibility to reduce emissions.
Yet competition to avoid the costs of cutting emissions has constrained efforts to set binding global limits on greenhouse gas emissions. For three decades, the United States has been unwilling to accept mandatory emissions reduction targets if China does not do the same. Notwithstanding their stated positions, some other developed nations have welcomed this U.S. stance as a shield behind which they can avoid making painful commitments. The 2015 Paris Agreement eschewed binding limits in favor of voluntary and unenforceable “intended nationally-determined contributions,” or INDCs.
AMERICA’S INTERNATIONAL climate policy rests upon the Senate’s seminal July 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution. With support from ninety-five senators, the body advised the Clinton administration—then negotiating binding limits in the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC—that it would not support any agreement that limited emissions by developed nations without imposing simultaneous restrictions on developing countries, or that resulted in “serious harm” to the U.S. economy. The administration’s chief negotiator, then-Vice President Al Gore, Jr., signed Kyoto despite the Senate’s objections. In its final years in office, the Clinton administration demurred in submitting the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Then-Senators Joseph Biden and John Kerry were among Byrd-Hagel’s backers.
The resolution’s two concerns—China’s greenhouse gas emissions and the costs of mitigating U.S. emissions—have been core questions in domestic debates on climate policy ever since.
Notwithstanding President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, which the Senate would not have ratified anyway, the Bush administration sought to address China’s emissions by founding a multilateral group, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The administration also tried to reduce costs through investments in clean energy technologies, including nuclear energy; carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS); and hydrogen.
The Obama administration pursued bilateral clean energy technology engagement with Beijing and, while failing to secure Congressional support for climate legislation, worked to reduce the costs of renewable power, especially solar and wind generation. After a false start at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, President Barack Obama and his team negotiated the Paris Agreement, which U.S. officials insisted was not a treaty and thus did not require Senate ratification.
Despite different policy approaches, technology priorities, and timelines, the Bush and Obama administrations had similar goals in working with China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while easing America’s transition to clean energy by helping to make low and zero-emissions energy cheaper. Indeed, the Paris Agreement was in some respects a vindication of the Bush administration’s perspective on climate diplomacy, when emphasizing technology and voluntary rather than binding goals.
The Trump administration did not share the general aims of its two predecessors with respect to China or climate policy. On the contrary, the administration withdrew from the Paris Agreement, citing its potential costs, without pursuing an alternative approach to reducing global emissions. Officials promoted nuclear energy for other reasons and the Trump administration largely discounted climate and emissions considerations in its domestic policy.
In 2021, President Joseph Biden reentered the Paris Agreement and worked with members of Congress to pass bipartisan infrastructure legislation that invests tens of billions of dollars in battery supply chains and clean energy demonstration projects, including nuclear energy, carbon capture, and clean hydrogen. Biden and Congressional Democrats may also succeed in passing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes $369 billion in energy and climate spending and could reportedly reduce carbon emissions by approximately 40 percent by 2030.
As U.S. competition with China deepens, China’s emissions are likely to become only more problematic as a political and practical issue. According to data presented by the World Bank, China’s total greenhouse gas emissions nearly tripled between 1997 and 2018, from 4.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2E) to 12.3 billion tons. Relative to the United States, China’s emissions rose from about two-thirds of U.S. emissions in 1997 (6.7 billion tons CO2E) to over double America’s emissions in 2018 (down to 6.0 billion tons CO2E). In 2019, one report stated that China’s greenhouse gas emissions exceeded not only those of the United States, but the combined total of the developed world, defined as the sum of the emissions of all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU).
Using World Bank data, one can calculate that by 2018, China’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1980 had overtaken total U.S. emissions during the same period. At current levels, every year of new emissions pushes China’s lead two years further into the past. From a political perspective, the stark reality of China’s share of not only current emissions but also total atmospheric CO2 concentration is likely to undermine Beijing’s claim to “differentiated responsibility” and to further complicate both U.S. climate debates and international diplomacy.
ESCALATING COMPETITION with China and Russia has collided with global climate diplomacy. Looking ahead, the United States and China (or Russia, though less weighty in this context due to its smaller economy and lower share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions) are quite unlikely to cooperate to establish deep, mutually binding emissions limits. Prior U.S.-China government-to-government collaboration in developing and deploying clean energy technologies has eroded if not entirely halted. Across multiple economic sectors, including energy, advanced technologies have become a central arena for America’s competition with China. Russia’s war in Ukraine exacerbated these energy, security, and climate dilemmas, but did not create them.
Climate advocates have hoped that a U.S.-China deal on substantial emissions cuts could facilitate an ambitious international agreement to reduce emissions. This view has long been misplaced. First, the United States has yet to develop and implement domestic policies that would allow U.S. leaders to make such commitments to China or anyone else. Republican opponents have not been solely to blame for this: Democrats controlled the White House and Congress in 2009–2010 and gave priority to other issues, such as immigration reform. In a similar position today, Congressional Democrats have been unable to enact emissions limits and have instead relied almost wholly on federal spending, especially through tax credits.
No less important, however, is that Beijing doesn’t appear prepared to do more either. China’s leaders earned an impressive public diplomacy boost from President Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement that the country would aim for carbon neutrality by 2060. After that, however, China has seemed to have little left to give. Xi and other senior leaders skipped the Glasgow climate summit. Since then, China’s economy has reeled from repeated COVID-19 lockdowns and its planned coal-power construction has soared relative to 2021.
Moreover, intense geopolitical competition hinders diplomacy. In China’s case, what were once distant American anxieties about Beijing’s possible forcible integration of Taiwan in 1997 became much more immediate by 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February is merely the most prominent example of increased tensions with Moscow. In these circumstances, even some who see climate change as an existential danger could reasonably consider its greatest risks to be distant in comparison with the prospect of war with a technologically advanced, nuclear-armed adversary.
Likewise, because China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, slashing emissions requires extensive and expensive projects to modernize China’s energy sector. In a period of heightened geopolitical tension, intense economic and technological competition, and potential military conflict, the United States is less willing to support its adversary’s economic growth, energy efficiency, and overall competitiveness. Congress is particularly skeptical of Chinese energy and technology firms seeking markets in the United States; for example, many pending bills target China’s solar panels.
FORTUNATELY FOR those troubled by climate change, it is possible to compete in energy and energy technologies with Beijing (and, in nuclear energy, with Moscow) while simultaneously taking meaningful action to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions. The path forward requires a nuanced understanding of successful collective international action, as well as a strategy that respects the practical limits of shared interests.
So far, climate policy advocates have argued that stopping and reversing climate change should be a shared interest among all nations and, therefore, that all governments should accept steadily stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions. This view is fundamentally flawed, in that a shared interest in emissions reductions is not identical to a shared interest in internationally negotiated, legally-binding emissions limits or, for that matter, in non-binding political commitments made under diplomatic pressure. The UNFCCC embodies the former, but many top-emitting countries are unwilling to embrace the latter because it may undermine their economic interests.
Effectively aligning national interests to reduce greenhouse gas emissions requires policies that respond to competitive aims rather than ignoring or resisting them. This means developing innovative clean energy systems to build or sell at home and around the world—something the United States should do anyway to maintain economic competitiveness during a global energy transition. If America does this, ideally in partnership with technologically advanced allies like Japan and South Korea, Washington could do considerably more to cut global emissions than it can in any feasible international agreement limiting greenhouse gases. This means not simply transforming America’s energy systems, but also working with U.S. allies to design, build, and sell transformative energy technologies around the world—especially in developing nations, where the United States is competing with its rivals for influence, and where Washington can make the greatest difference in cutting or avoiding future emissions. We need something akin to a clean energy arms race.
TOKYO AND Seoul welcome deeper cooperation with the United States on energy, technology, and climate—something evident in both official statements and unofficial dialogue meetings among experts from the three countries. Japan and South Korea are already leaders in engaging with the U.S. Department of Energy, though many past interactions have focused narrowly on nuclear technologies. Increased engagement could contribute substantially to achieving U.S. economic, technological, and climate goals. If pursued with sensitivity toward Japanese and South Korean interests and constraints, this collaboration can also usefully complement U.S. security relationships with the two countries and reinforce cooperation in other technology areas.
One challenge for the United States—as Japanese and South Korean officials readily admit—is that neither Tokyo nor Seoul is eager to confront Beijing or Moscow. They are far from the only governments with this view, in that most countries are weaker than China militarily and many are loath to risk their trade and investment relationships. In Russia’s case, energy-dependent governments tread cautiously. Like U.S. allies in Asia, many if not most of America’s European allies are also careful in dealing with China and Russia. Realistic American strategies for great power competition should incorporate a clear view of what U.S. allies will and will not do.
From this perspective, cooperation on energy, energy technology, and climate change is an important opportunity to strengthen U.S. alliance relationships precisely because the United States can do a great deal with its partners that does not pose direct security threats to America’s rivals. In broad terms, this includes policies to expand research and development partnerships among government, academic, and private sector laboratories, to ease and grow trade and investment, and to harmonize regulations and standards.
Trade or other policies that directly challenge China are the most difficult avenues for cooperation. In recent unofficial dialogue meetings, Japanese and South Korean participants pointed out that China is their nation’s largest trade partner—a major consideration for their governments. This is not only about money, but also about supply chains; in the energy and energy technology sector, they said, Japan depends heavily on Chinese firms for electric vehicle (EV) components, while China is a major solar industry supplier for South Korea. Both governments are reexamining supply chains, but changes will be complex, expensive, and time-consuming.
South Korea is the more vulnerable of the two as its economy is only one-third the size of Japan’s, which is in turn about one-third of China’s. Thus it is not surprising that South Korean experts saw Japan’s government as more willing than their own to support assertive U.S. trade policies toward China. Japanese experts agreed, stating that Tokyo is already discussing “selective decoupling” from China with Washington.
COOPERATION ON energy and energy technologies can play a central role not only in buttressing alliances and supporting a global transition to clean energy, but also in contributing to U.S. innovation, growth, trade, jobs, and competitiveness.
We use energy to generate electricity, to produce heat for residential, commercial, and industrial uses, and to provide mobility. However, various energy sources are not equally suited to each of these tasks, especially when incorporating clean energy goals. Energy-dense fossil fuels are efficient for power, heat, and mobility, but are only “clean” in conjunction with technologies that prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Nuclear energy provides efficient carbon-free power and heat, but has limited applications for mobility (in some warships and submarines). Solar photovoltaic technology and wind can provide clean—if variable—power, as well as mobility by charging EV batteries, but do not deliver the high heat needed for industrial processes like steelmaking. In tandem with clean energy for processing, fossil fuels can also serve as a source of hydrogen, which can, in turn, provide carbon-free power, heat, and mobility through combustion or fuel cells. Some hope to use nuclear, solar, and wind energy to produce hydrogen through electrolysis of water, which splits its hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
The United States, Japan, and South Korea can be close energy partners because they share challenges and have impressive technological capabilities. Moreover, while they are commercial competitors in some areas (such as gas turbines, nuclear reactors, solar panels, and EVs), their economies are complementary in others (especially U.S. natural gas exports, which are critical to both Tokyo’s and Seoul’s energy transition strategies today and could be—like hydrogen—in the future as well). In highly competitive areas, cooperation can become more difficult as technologies move from early research and development to demonstration and commercial deployment.
While high prices are currently a constraint, natural gas, CCUS, and hydrogen could be critical to reducing and eventually eliminating greenhouse gas emissions—and should be a centerpiece of U.S. energy and technology engagement with Japan and South Korea.
The Biden administration has been reluctant to advance cooperation focused on natural gas and carbon capture. The reasons are partly political, as many progressive Democrats see no future role for gas, even with carbon capture, because they seek an end to fossil fuel production. But there are also some practical reasons, such as so-called fugitive emissions, leaks from pipelines or processing facilities that contribute to global warming and reduce the advantages of natural gas, even with CCUS. While methane breaks down more rapidly in the atmosphere, it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. The administration has concentrated on limiting methane emissions, including through the Global Methane Pledge, a joint U.S.-European Union effort to persuade other governments to commit to reducing emissions by 30 percent over the decade. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes a substantial fee on methane emissions.
As experts from both nations noted during recent unofficial dialogue meetings, officials in Tokyo and Seoul are counting on abundant supplies of clean hydrogen to meet their climate goals. Hydrogen is attractive to Japan and South Korea because neither has easy and clean alternatives, something participants from each country acknowledged. Part of the problem, the experts observed, is that their geology is not well-suited for storing CO2 underground, a constraint on their future use of natural gas or fossil fuels with CCUS. Both also face political resistance to nuclear energy, an alternative source of baseload power (consistent or “firm” electricity supply necessary for electric grids) and heat. Variable solar and wind power cannot provide baseload power; existing storage (batteries) is helpful for short-term flexibility but inadequate to manage seasonal changes in sun and wind. Excluding the production of “energy carriers” like hydrogen with excess solar and wind power, the latter problem will be quite difficult to solve in a commercially viable manner, in that addressing seasonal variations would otherwise require building electricity storage infrastructure that grids might charge and discharge only one time per year. Or massively over-building solar and wind to ensure adequate supplies under the most adverse conditions.
Yet, the experts said, neither Japan nor South Korea possesses the domestic energy resources to produce sufficient hydrogen or the ready ability to store CO2 emitted during processing. In contrast, the United States has both plentiful natural gas feedstock and extensive carbon dioxide storage capacity. America has the world’s fifth largest natural gas reserves and, according to the U.S. Geological Service, has an estimated CO2 storage capacity of approximately 3,000 gigatons. This could store all current U.S. emissions for hundreds of years. According to Japanese and South Korean experts, their governments hope that the United States can emerge as an important hydrogen supplier.
Nuclear energy likewise can and should have higher priority in U.S. cooperation with Japan and South Korea. As one U.S. expert argued in recent discussions, America has fallen far behind Russia and China in international nuclear markets at precisely the time when many governments are increasingly interested in nuclear power as a source of zero-carbon baseload electricity. While the United States and South Korea have been nuclear competitors—at times with some acrimony—experts in all three countries saw common interests in preserving and strengthening nuclear supply chains and human capital, as well as in reducing emissions. In May 2021, the Biden administration and South Korea’s government agreed to expand cooperation in global civil nuclear markets, though the understanding suggested that Seoul would take a harder line on U.S. nonproliferation concerns as well. An American expert called for cooperative financing of nuclear projects among the three countries.
U.S. participants appeared more optimistic that emerging small modular reactors could win a larger role in domestic electricity generation, as well as a greater share of global markets. In Japan, one expert explained, officials expect that nuclear power will provide a declining fraction of the country’s electricity as existing reactors continue to operate but overall electricity demand grows. South Korea’s previous government sought to shut down reactors before their licenses expired, but experts saw looming adjustments in Seoul’s policy by the new president.
Solar and wind power offer opportunities for collaboration too. Notably, both Japanese and South Korean experts said that their governments are pursuing the two renewable technologies largely for energy security reasons—not strictly for their roles as zero-carbon energy sources. Because solar and wind do not require fuel imports, some see them as more secure than oil, gas, or coal. One American expert pointed out that, unlike fossil fuel exporters, solar panel or wind turbine manufacturers’ efforts to cut off exports might compromise future electricity generation but would not affect current power output.
Nevertheless, a South Korean expert acknowledged, land constraints will limit the country’s construction of solar facilities and onshore wind. Consequently, one South Korean research priority is improving rooftop systems and developing other space-saving photovoltaic materials, such as power-generating windows for offices and large residential buildings. South Korean researchers are also pursuing offshore wind. While the United States has considerably more land, political opposition to such development has prevented some states from meeting their renewable power goals. Affordable technologies that sidestep this problem could be valuable to America as well.
In addition to concerns surrounding reliance on Chinese solar and, to a lesser degree, wind manufacturers, several experts noted China’s substantial role in extracting and processing critical minerals—specialized materials used in making solar cells, powerful magnets in wind turbines, and EV and other batteries. One American expert described significant continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations in focusing attention on diversifying and securing U.S. critical mineral supplies, as well as heightened activity on this issue in Congress. Another U.S. expert highlighted the Biden administration’s enthusiasm for American lithium production to support electric vehicle deployment. The latter expert welcomed the administration’s effort to promote not only extraction, but also processing—without which, U.S. supplies might well go to China anyway for this intermediate step.
A Japanese expert emphasized Tokyo’s determination to pursue critical mineral recycling and a wider “circular economy” to limit import dependence and environmental impacts. Indeed, this expert suggested, future governments might penalize imported goods that do not incorporate recycled materials. The expert compared this to the European Union’s planned carbon border adjustment mechanism, an emerging policy that would impose duties on energy-intensive goods from countries without emissions-limiting policies comparable to the EU’s. While expressing support for recycling research and policy, a U.S. expert urged skepticism about its long-term contribution to replacing new mining due to its costs and the scale of demand. Another expert argued that like the past evolution of solar and wind power, these technologies may transition from today’s expensive and inefficient projects to tomorrow’s commercial realities.
U.S.-Japan, U.S.-South Korea, and trilateral cooperation on clean energy could be even more important when oriented toward supporting energy transitions in developing nations. This could be especially fruitful in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ten-nation group includes Indonesia, a global top-twenty economy, U.S. allies Thailand and the Philippines, the financial and shipping hub Singapore, as well as Vietnam, an emerging economy and leading beneficiary of others’ efforts to diversify manufacturing and trade away from China.
The stakes are high. As a group, ASEAN ranks as the world’s fifth largest economy. It is among the regions experiencing the fastest growth in electricity demand; as a U.S. expert pointed out, just four ASEAN members (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia) could account for 13 percent of global power demand growth. The Biden administration has given greater attention to competition with China in the region, which President Biden has described as a “linchpin for maintaining the resilience, the prosperity, and security” of the wider Indo-Pacific zone.
U.S., Japanese, and South Korean experts generally agreed that one of ASEAN’s biggest energy challenges will be reducing its consumption of coal, which analysts currently expect to provide roughly 40 percent of the region’s power over the next two decades. In addition to facing diplomatic pressure to reduce CO2 emissions, ASEAN member governments are contending with pressure from multinational companies reluctant to continue investing in the region if it undermines their global efforts to cut corporate emissions, one U.S. expert said.
Particularly difficult is that China, Japan, and South Korea have invested heavily in building coal-fired power plants in ASEAN countries, a South Korean expert added, and that many of these plants are still under construction. Without significant financial support to switch these plants to other fuels such as natural gas, the expert continued, ASEAN will lock in its reliance on coal for years to come. Japanese experts suggested that the region’s coal-fired power plants could begin by co-firing coal with natural gas, hydrogen, or ammonia as a step toward hydrogen or ammonia-based power.
In unofficial dialogue meetings, experts debated the role that natural gas might play. One U.S. participant argued that natural gas would be essential in balancing variable solar and wind power in ASEAN countries, where nuclear power might develop too slowly to serve this function. However, another American noted that the Biden administration has been unwilling to engage ASEAN members in this area, as U.S. officials argue that new gas-fired power plants and infrastructure would require thirty years to recover initial investments, by which time they assert the projects would be obstacles to meeting net-zero emissions goals. Developing the plants could also be arduous, in that some U.S. experts suggested it could be hard for American firms to compete with Chinese state-owned enterprises on their own, while a South Korean expert argued that Japan and South Korea are competing with one another and reluctant to antagonize China in ASEAN.
BIDEN AND other top American officials have already described the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea relationships as key alliances in meeting America’s twenty-first-century challenges. They also have discussed cooperation on clean energy technologies with both governments. What is lacking is a bold vision that anchors these two nations economically and technologically to America while advancing U.S. geopolitical, energy, and climate aims. While worthwhile, routine efforts like a recent Japan-U.S. Clean Energy Partnership meeting are inadequate to that task.
Some ambitious but realistic options for U.S. policy could include:
A trilateral or larger regional clean energy technology trade agreement. U.S. membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—the successor arrangement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—may not be politically realistic in America today. But a clean energy technology agreement could be. In addition to its economic and political value, an agreement like this could accelerate deploying clean energy technologies in the Indo-Pacific region, one of the most important ways in which the United States can help to reduce global CO2 emissions.
Joint engagement on clean energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment in select ASEAN countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Several ASEAN members are strategically and economically important to the United States in addition to being significant drivers of global energy demand and rising greenhouse gas emissions. Cooperative U.S., Japanese, and South Korean projects to build technical and governance capacity (e.g., through support for and partnership with university researchers and policy experts), and especially to jointly finance and develop clean energy projects, would support multiple U.S. geopolitical, economic, and climate objectives. A more ambitious version of the administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity could incorporate this.
A dramatically scaled-up partnership on liquified natural gas, CCUS, and clean hydrogen. Such an effort could build upon and benefit from new federal funding for hydrogen power while integrating liquified natural gas and CCUS into America’s clean energy policy, tightening the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea energy relationships, strengthening allies’ energy security, and consolidating America’s place as a world leader in emerging clean energy technology fields. Such leadership could have lasting benefits for U.S. trade, jobs, and competitiveness as well. A partnership built around LNG may face headwinds at a time of tight gas markets and high prices, but an announcement would send an important signal to governments, energy companies, and investors contending with war-related market disruptions. Cooperation could also include hydrolysis-based hydrogen, which is more economically competitive when natural gas prices are high.
Transformative collaboration on nuclear energy research and development. Nuclear power will likely play an even more important role in global energy systems as demand for clean power grows and small modular reactors reduce costs and limit proliferation concerns. The United States has strong ongoing collaboration with Japan and South Korea on nuclear energy but can do much better in several areas. Some initiatives will require Congressional action, such as restoring funding for the Versatile Test Reactor, which is not only critical to American nuclear research, but could also become a key vehicle for cooperative projects. Other actions may not, such as research and development partnerships with America’s national laboratories and co-financing or other approaches to joint development of nuclear projects in third-party countries. Aligning regulatory standards is essential to speeding the deployment of small modular reactors, which are likely to become commercially available within a decade.
In addition to their contributions to combating climate change, energy and energy technology are already elements of U.S. competition with both China and Russia. Competing effectively will require both new U.S. policies as well as more determined efforts to align America’s approaches with those of its closest friends. As technologically advanced leading economies in a strategic region, Japan and South Korea can be close and impactful allies. A more focused and disciplined U.S. effort to engage these two nations—and others—on energy and energy technology is necessary.
Paul J. Saunders is President of the Energy Innovation Reform Project. He was previously Executive Director of the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI). He remains a member of the center’s Board of Directors and a senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at CFTNI.
Image: Reuters.