As challenging as the glut is to manage at the technical level, its economics are even more vexing. As Econ 101 teaches, prices go down when supply rises faster than demand. But in most markets, there’s an end point to this process: free*. Electricity markets are different. Some power-generating entities (like the aforementioned coal and nuclear plants) are so loath to ramp down their production that they offer to pay for the privilege of continuing to generate power. This, combined with the absolute imperative to keep the grid balanced, can create negative prices, which have become common in China’s heavily populated Shandong Province. It’s an untenable situation, but energy-hungry industrial firms are happy to milk it. Decades ago, the metals giant Weiqiao Aluminum left the Shandong grid in favor of running its own captive coal fleet to power its smelters; this past year it plugged back into the grid to take advantage of cheaper rates coming from green tech.

As the oversupply of Chinese panels has spilled into the international market, the bizarre dynamics have spread with them. Just as in Shandong Province, negative prices for electricity have also become common in Germany, thanks to Chinese panels. Or take Pakistan. Around 2022, a global spike in natural gas prices made the Pakistani electrical grid even more expensive and less reliable than usual. But instead of just suffering or firing up diesel generators, millions of Pakistanis installed solar panels to free themselves from the grid. The country imported so many Chinese solar panels that the grid as a whole began to fall into what is called a death spiral. Customers started opting out, leaving the grid to charge ever higher prices, which led even more people to flee, and so on.

Indeed, the greatest beneficiaries of China’s renewables revolution may, in fact, be consumers, both inside and outside of China. In sun-blessed Australia, where rooftop solar panels sit atop nearly a third of all households, the country’s energy minister, Chris Bowen, proposed a “solar sharer program” to offer three hours of free electricity on sunny days. Solar and battery systems have allowed Hawaii to close its final coal power plant, and such systems are similarly helping other islands like Jamaica to reduce their need for imported fossil fuels.

Mao Zedong famously declared that a revolution is not a dinner party. It is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. The green tech revolution—whose violence is principally financial, a withering assault on the value of fossil firms’ assets—is not a dinner party. Nor is it inevitable. It could still be held back or slowed down. Yes, it is the result of the conscious choices made by people, firms, and governments, many of the most critical ones made in China. But it is happening now, and faster than our systems—electricity grids, industrial sectors, labor, geopolitics, and more—are ready for.

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