How worried should we be about our reliance on China for Net Zero?

The risky business of energy security

This is the fifth post in a series from Britain Remade’s Policy Researcher Michael Hill looking at China’s role in decarbonising Britain. You can read the first post here, the second one on if green goods made in China are really green here, the third one looking at just how dominant China is in green supply chains here and the fourth on how they got there here.

So far in this series, we’ve seen how imports from China can cut our emissions and in some cases, our bills. We have seen how dependent the UK is on China for its net zero transition. We’ve also seen that China’s rise to become the world’s leading manufacturer of green technologies owes less to some master strategy than to its geography, economy, and sheer scale.

But that doesn’t mean the reliance is risk-free. In this piece I ask: how worried should we be? I look at three areas of risk: geopolitics, supply chains, and the possibility of China literally turning off the lights. This is the area with the greatest uncertainties, where we deal with conflicting ‘known unknowns’ and there are fewer definitive answers. Nevertheless, there are risks that we simply should not accept. The government is mostly successfully avoiding those risks, but being too quick in our march to net zero creates real risks that we must be wary of, while understanding that relying on fossil fuels is far from risk free either.

Super-power conflict (and cheaper products)

Over at least the last 15 years, there has been steadily intensifying competition between China and the United States. Green technologies have been one of the main battlegrounds.

By the end of President Biden’s term, US tariffs on Chinese net zero goods were severe:

• 100% on electric vehicles

• 50% on solar cells and modules

• 25% on lithium batteries and key parts

• 25% on certain critical minerals and components, scheduled from 2026

Trump has not only maintained but expanded these measures. As well as a blanket tariff on all Chinese imports of 30%, he has also raised the solar tariff to 60%. These measures actually understate the level of control, as specific firms and products can be targeted for higher tariffs, effectively banning them from the US market. For example, some Chinese firms manufacturing facilities in Southeast Asia are subject to tariffs of 3,521% and many Chinese imports are blocked under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

The European Union has been more circumspect, but not idle. Its tariffs currently apply only to Chinese EVs, and vary by company: Tesla’s Shanghai-made cars face a modest 7.8% tariff, while state-owned SAIC Motor is hit with a 35.3% duty. The EU has also launched Foreign Subsidies Regulation investigations into Chinese firms bidding on European contracts. A handful of major Chinese solar companies have already pulled out of projects in response.

Both Washington and Brussels argue they are losing out to unfair subsidies and competition, a reflection of China’s dominance in the sectors that underpin the net zero transition.

For the UK, the picture is different. A tangible Brexit dividend has been the ability to avoid automatically applying EU tariffs on Chinese goods, while avoiding the worst of the US’s tariff blitz under Trump. This has kept costs lower for UK consumers and developers, while successive governments have so far managed to smooth over any diplomatic frictions with allies.

The price consequences of these policies are most obvious in the case of US solar. The median panel bought wholesale costs around £0.22 per watt in the US. In the UK we pay closer to the global prevailing price of around £0.09 per watt for wholesale panels. For now, price differences between the US, EU and UK on electric cars are small. However imposing EU style tariffs would undoubtedly make them more expensive in the UK.

That is not to say there is no risk. Future disputes, especially if US-China rivalry deepens, could strain the UK’s relationships with its closest partners. President Trump has threatened to impose secondary sanctions on countries that continue to trade freely with Russia. It is at least plausible that he could one day threaten the same secondary sanctions during a dispute with China. In a war time scenario dependencies on China may make the US question how reliable an ally the UK can afford to be. But so far, the UK has managed to walk the tightrope: importing cheaper Chinese hardware without becoming collateral damage in the tariff wars. For now, these geopolitical risks remain real but manageable.

China’s Weaponisation of Trade

The nature of Britain’s dependence on China is very different from its dependence on imported fossil fuels. With oil and gas, vulnerability lies in the flow: if supplies are interrupted, the consequences are immediate: shortages, soaring prices, and potential blackouts. Yet fossil fuels are traded on vast global markets. It is true that if one supplier becomes unavailable someone else will likely sell. But usually at a far higher price. These global markets mean even though Britain buys most of our fossil fuels from Norway and the US, disruptions to supply elsewhere still cause massive price spikes for us. Dependence on China for green technologies is not like that. Renewables are front-loaded: they require large quantities of minerals, metals, and components during construction, but once built they generate electricity without further inputs.

If China suddenly stopped selling us renewables equipment tomorrow, it would badly damage our ability to build new capacity and our Net Zero targets would likely have to go, but the infrastructure already in place, the wind turbines, solar farms, and electric vehicles, would continue to operate. The flow of materials for repairs would diminish, but that would take time to have major impacts and we would likely still secure materials needed from non Chinese supply chains, albeit at very high prices. The danger, therefore, is not that Beijing could literally “turn off the lights” overnight, but that it could slow Britain’s progress towards the future. That risk is real, but of a different kind from that of fossil fuel dependency.

China has a long record of using export restrictions as a tool of political and economic leverage. Between 2009 and 2014 it imposed strict quotas on rare earth exports, a move widely seen as protectionist and later overturned by the World Trade Organization. More recently, in late 2024, Beijing tightened its grip again, restricting exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony to the United States, while continuing to limit supplies of a broader basket of rare earth elements such as samarium, dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, along with the specialist magnets that rely on them. These curbs may appear technical, but they underline the point: China is prepared to weaponise the raw materials essential to modern technologies.

Nor are such tactics confined to Net Zero. Australia saw coal, wine, and barley exports to China blocked after its government called for an investigation into Covid-19’s origins. Lithuania was targeted when it permitted a Taiwanese representative office under the name “Taiwan.” South Korea faced boycotts after deploying a US missile defence system. Each case illustrates the same pattern: when Beijing feels crossed, it is willing to use trade to punish others. For countries like the UK, which rely on Chinese inputs to build wind turbines, solar farms, and electric vehicles, that willingness increases Beijing’s potential leverage.

Understanding that difference matters. China’s control of critical materials and components does not endanger Britain’s day-to-day energy security in the way that gas dependency did in 2022. But it does pose a serious risk to long-term climate goals and the UK’s ability to expand clean capacity quickly. The challenge is not that China could stop exports and plunge us into darkness, but that it could slow or stall the construction of the next generation of low-carbon infrastructure.

Could China turn off the lights?

The most dramatic concern is whether China could ever threaten the functioning of the UK’s electricity grid. The grid must balance supply and demand almost perfectly, maintaining a frequency of 50Hz. Even small deviations risk damaging equipment such as magnets in turbines, transformers, and inverters. If frequency drops too far, blackouts follow. In the absolute worst case of a full grid collapse the National Energy System Operator (NESO) plans to restore 60% of demand within 24 hours. Seemingly small changes in frequency rapidly cascade. Poor grid management in an area producing lots of solar energy in Spain recently caused blackouts all over Spain and Portugal. While foul-play has been ruled out, the incident has demonstrated both how easily a blackout can emerge and the major impacts it can have. Spain’s mere four-hour blackout (less in some areas) cost around a billion Euros and left thousands of people stranded in subway trains and lifts for hours. Industry, ports and airports all either slowed down or closed. Emergency services were unable to communicate with each other properly. A blackout in the British winter could have worse effects, by causing severe hardship for those reliant on heat pumps for warmth.

So how might China pose a risk here? Two scenarios are usually discussed: cyber-attacks and hardware manipulation, most dramatically exemplified by ‘kill switches’.

Cyber attacks

Cyber risks come from all directions, including China. Several examples show how vulnerable critical infrastructure can be:

• In the Netherlands, a hacker gained control of 4 million solar panels through a poorly secured remote monitoring system. Fortunately, this was a ‘white hat’ hacker who wanted to alert the authorities to a problem they had spotted.

• In Ukraine, Russian hackers have repeatedly targeted grid operators, with attacks in 2015 and 2016 cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes.

• In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack forced the shutdown of a system supplying half the East Coast of America’s fuel.

The more digital and decentralised an energy system becomes, the larger its attack surface is. Solar panels, wind turbines and EV charging points can all be remotely accessed, therefore each is a potential entry point.

Chinese components per se are not the key vulnerability. What matters is whether they come bundled with software, remote monitoring, or hidden data pathways that could be exploited.

Kill switches

One of the more dramatic scenarios sometimes raised is the possibility that China could remotely disable parts of Britain’s net zero infrastructure- a so-called “kill switch.” The reality is more nuanced. Many of the core components of renewable technology, such as magnets, solar cells, or turbine blades, are passive: once installed, they simply sit in place and cannot be switched off at a distance.

Where the risk does begin to bite is in the smart equipment that does contain software and shut-down functions. Inverters and turbines, for example, are designed to be switched off periodically, whether to allow routine maintenance or to prevent oversupply destabilising the grid. In theory, those same functions could be exploited by a hostile actor.

It is highly implausible that China could hide kill switches in every inverter, turbine, or battery it exports. Embedding, updating, and concealing such systems across thousands of products sold into dozens of markets would be logistically overwhelming and almost certain to be uncovered. It is difficult to prove a negative, but so far there is only one case where it is possible that China has been doing this, but the information released publicly has been limited, making it difficult to judge what actually happened here. If it was proven that China was doing this, it would likely have catastrophic effects on their exports that they would surely rather avoid.

But targeted manipulation of higher-value equipment is harder to dismiss, particularly if Chinese manufacturers retain legitimate remote access to monitoring or servicing systems. The risk is not a vast, invisible “off switch” waiting to be pulled, but the more specific vulnerability that accompanies complex digital machinery when its oversight is in the hands of foreign firms.

Operational control

The highest level of risk does not lie in the components themselves, but in who controls them. Cyber threats will always exist in an increasingly digital energy system, and some degree of vulnerability is unavoidable. China may well be able to launch successful cyber attacks against systems that they have no hardware in. The North Korean ‘WannaCry’ attack damaged NHS computer systems without there being any North Korean hardware or software in the system.

But if Chinese firms were allowed to build, own, and operate large solar farms, battery parks, or wind farms in Britain, the risk would dramatically increase. Operational control would give those firms intimate knowledge of grid behaviour, making it far easier to identify weak points and to design an attack that could disrupt power flows.

The same logic applies to so-called ‘kill switches.’ No matter how careful Britain is in screening equipment, the possibility of hidden vulnerabilities in complex digital hardware will never disappear entirely unless China is excluded from the supply chain altogether. If Chinese firms were not just supplying hardware but running the assets they would no longer need to rely on hidden software backdoors or hardware switches. Operators of all kinds of power plants and grid infrastructure have to be given powers to pause or scale back generation for maintenance and grid balancing. This power could easily be abused by China in a wartime scenario. Operational control turns hard to implement remote attack into a straightforward exercise of operational authority.

This is not a hypothetical concern. The UK government has already drawn lines in the sand when it comes to sensitive infrastructure. China General Nuclear was forced to divest from the Sizewell C nuclear project and the Chinese led project at Bradwell was stopped altogether. The same principle should apply to renewables. Giving Chinese firms operational control of major pieces of Britain’s energy system would create a risk far greater than any posed by imported hardware alone: it would hand Beijing a lever with which to trigger blackouts at will.

What is to be done?

There is no such thing as a risk-free energy future. Every path involves trade-offs. Britain’s transition to net zero inevitably deepens exposure to China just as it reduces dependence on fossil fuels. The task, then, is not to eliminate risk but to decide which dependencies are tolerable, and where red lines must be drawn.

Some areas of Chinese control are simply unacceptable. Allowing Chinese firms to build, own, or operate critical infrastructure, large solar farms, large offshore wind farms, grid-connected batteries, or power plants, would hand Beijing a lever of strategic influence that no economic benefit could justify. That line has already been drawn for nuclear projects such as Bradwell and Sizewell C, and it should apply equally to renewables and grid assets. Hardware can be bought from abroad; operational control must remain at home, or at least with allies. So far, the government has not given Chinese companies this level of control. It should hold this line, even if sensitivities with China mean it can’t be made explicit policy.

Beyond those clear boundaries, the picture becomes more complex. Dependence on China for solar panels, batteries, and critical minerals is a national security risk, but how large of one is extremely hard to measure. By contrast, dependence on fossil fuels is a financial and geopolitical risk, but again, how big that risk is depends on volatile global events. Gas prices in the UK were under £0.30 per therm before Covid and the invasion of Ukraine; they peaked at £6.40 and spent more than a year above £1.30. Even now, at around 80p, they remain well above historic norms. The government is currently making dubious assertions about rising gas prices to justify Clean Power 2030. But that doesn’t mean the vulnerability isn’t real. Betting our energy future on any one system, whether imported gas or imported renewables, means accepting a huge amount of uncertainty. Balancing these risks is not easy.

That balancing act is at the heart of Britain’s dilemma. Relying on China exposes the UK to long-term strategic risks; relying on fossil fuels exposes it to sudden and severe price shocks. Some level of exposure in both directions is unavoidable. Renewables, even with their supply-chain dependence, can act as a hedge against fossil fuel price spikes, while fossil fuels remain an insurance policy against supply disruption in clean technology. The question is how much of each kind of risk we are prepared to bear.

In the longer term, there is a route that can ease both sets of vulnerabilities: nuclear power. It offers the possibility of domestically controlled, low-carbon, low-dependency energy that is less exposed to the geopolitics of either China or fossil fuels. Nuclear is the one technology where the UK can realistically combine security, affordability, and climate goals. It does not solve all of our problems. Electric vehicles will remain reliant on Chinese components for decades. But for power generation nuclear is the clearest way out of this double bind. Britain should therefore go hard on nuclear: approving projects more quickly and getting the regulation right so we can deliver at reasonable costs.

In the short term, however, there is no easy escape. The costs to consumers and climate must remain the dominant considerations in most of our decision-making, not anxiety about China. Where action on costs and climate aligns, where individuals freely choose to buy electric vehicles, or where building more renewables demonstrably reduces or at least does not raise bills, the government should not let fear of China stand in the way.

But the same logic argues for caution with more ambitious targets imposed by decree. Policies like the internal combustion engine phase-out or a government-mandated “clean power by 2030” goal undoubtedly increase dependence on Chinese manufacturing beyond what market forces dictate. Pursuing such targets faster than allies, faster than consumers can afford and faster than domestic and allied capacity allows, delivers climate progress at higher consumer costs and greater strategic vulnerability. Dependence on China is not a disaster that must be avoided at all costs, but it is a downside that should temper how fast the UK tries to move.

Net Zero, therefore, does not mean eliminating risk. It means recalibrating it, deciding which forms of dependence are strategic and which are manageable, maximising the benefits of cheap, abundant Chinese hardware while keeping control of critical systems firmly at home. It is not just the direction we move, but also the pace that we get there that matters.