As the European Union struggles to find consensus on how to meet its greenhouse gas targets, and with the COP30 summit looming on the horizon, the European Commission and government leaders face a strategic choice, according to a leading climate expert.
Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Climate Agreement, says the EU must learn from China’s clean tech strategy, which has seen it establish a commanding manufacturing dominance in solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles.
Tubiana, who is CEO of the European Climate Foundation and was appointed the COP30 special envoy to Europe by the summit’s Brazilian president, was in Luxembourg in September to address a forum organised by the Chamber of Commerce.
In a press briefing she argued that the EU’s defensive industrial policy on clean tech and electric vehicles from China was the wrong approach. As recently as 22 October, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament that the bloc must learn lessons from the way it lost out on being a global leader in solar energy to “heavily subsidised Chinese competitors”.
Laurence Tubiana said that seeking agreements with China that create the conditions for joint ventures, investment, and technological cooperation was a smart approach © Photo credit: Anouk Antony
That was a “a cautionary tale that we must not forget,” von der Leyen told MEPs the day before a council meeting of EU leaders in Brussels agreed to move ahead rapidly – before COP30 – with setting a 2040 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% compared to 1990 levels.
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They ambitiously want to finalise the appropriate amendment to the European climate law at a meeting of environment ministers in the Belgian capital on 4 November, just two days before the COP Heads of State Summit in Brazil.
Von der Leyen insists that the shift to a clean economy is Europe’s chance to revitalise industries and cut reliance on imports from China.
Strategy could create jobs and help develop new skills
This is contrary to what Tubiana wants to see from the EU leadership. She said that seeking agreements with China that create the conditions for joint ventures, investment, and technological cooperation was a smarter approach, especially if such a strategy could create jobs and help the workforce develop new skills.
Tubiana is supported in her views by fellow climate experts Emmanuel Guerin and Bernice Lee. “Europe and China must find common cause on clean trade and investment – one of the few areas where strategic self-interest and global public goods still converge,” they wrote in an article for Project Syndicate.
But Luxembourg is not biting. Not publicly, at any rate. In response to a query from Luxembourg Times, Luxembourg’s ministry for foreign affairs and foreign trade said that “as a general rule” it “does not comment on policy outlines and recommendations of individuals in academia.”
Rather than merely hosting Chinese manufacturing, Europeans should consider what they can learn from it
Laurence Tubiana
CEO, European Climate Foundation
Tubiana has argued that Europe must show humility in recognising that technological leadership has shifted. “The transfer of knowledge must be reversed,” she said. “Rather than merely hosting Chinese manufacturing, Europeans should consider what they can learn from it, just as China did from European and American firms in earlier phases of its industrial rise.”
Indeed, as The New York Times pointed out in an article this summer, “China applied for more than twice as many high-quality clean energy patents as the United States in 2022, the most recent year of complete data.” These include what the NYT called “new, groundbreaking versions” of widespread clean energy technologies that were pioneered elsewhere.
That article cited Jenny Wong Leung, an analyst and data scientist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who said that the sheer volume of Chinese investment in clean tech has been significantly larger than in the West. “It meant they [the Chinese] could build industries from the ground up, all the way through the supply chain,” Wong Leung said.
Luxembourg-China trade
Bilateral trade between Luxembourg and China, including Hong Kong, reached a total volume of €5.69 billion in 2024, placing China 12th among Luxembourg’s individual trading partners according to state statistic office Statec.
“Luxembourg is among the countries in the world where China is not among the three biggest trading partners,” the ministry of foreign affairs and trade told Luxembourg Times.
If grouped by trading bloc, China comes 5th as Luxembourg’s top export and import destination – behind the rest of the EU, US, UK and Switzerland.
Trade between the two countries has grown consistently, by 62.5% over the past decade, while Luxembourg’s overall foreign trade has nearly doubled (+99.1%) during the same period.
But, as Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel pointed out in his annual address to parliament last week, while China is the world’s largest producer of green technology it is also the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. Its emissions from fuel combustion made up 32.1% of the global total in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.
Luxembourg must maintain dialogue with China
Bettel, who together with Economy Minister Lex Delles led a delegation to the Middle Kingdom last year with a focus on clean tech and the automobile sector, said that Luxembourg must maintain dialogue with China, “even if we are not of the same opinion or if subjects are difficult,” he told MPs last week. “We shouldn’t be afraid to say anything.”
There have been suggestions that Chinese clean tech could pose security risks, for instance by exploiting cyber vulnerabilities in supply chains, alongside a slew of warnings that AI platform DeepSeek and social media app TikTok could serve as a tool for mass data collection and surveillance. Luxembourg seems to think it has such threats in hand.
“Any personal data transfers from the EU to third countries — including China — are strictly regulated under the GDPR,” the foreign ministry said in an email. “Luxembourg’s data protection authority, CNPD, and the other EU independent supervisory authorities are responsible for monitoring the application of this regulation.”
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And the ministry also said that Luxembourg, along with its EU partners, will continue to “maintain a balanced and independent approach in its relations with both the United States and China.”
This comes after new US Ambassador to the Grand Duchy Stacey Feinberg issued a warning during evidence she gave to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in July that she believed Luxembourg was blind to what she called the “nefarious” intentions of China. She said that she would “humbly like to educate” Luxembourg about how to scrutinise China’s intentions and argued that the Grand Duchy should “decouple” from China.
That pressure was perhaps eased somewhat last week after US President Donald Trump came away from a meeting with Xi Jinping gushing about an agreement that will see China pause for one year sweeping export controls on rare earths, which are crucial to the manufacturing of much clean tech hardware. Maybe that is a first step towards the sort of cooperation that Tubiana says the world so desperately needs.
