Illustration by Tracy Worrall

10 min read7 min

For years, the political logic of the energy transition has rested partly on the promise of greater sovereignty and less economic exposure to volatile oil markets, unstable regimes and geopolitical shocks. But as countries race to electrify transport systems, build offshore wind farms and expand solar generation, another dependency is becoming harder to ignore: China’s dominance in the clean energy supply chain.

In a surprisingly hawkish speech in Brussels earlier this month, EU commissioner for climate, net zero and clean growth Wopke Hoekstra said that the EU had been “too naïve for too long” over the role of China in Europe’s energy sector.

He warned of the danger of creating a new reliance on Chinese cleantech after the negative impact of dependencies on Russian gas, and imported liquefied natural gas from the Middle East and the US has become increasingly obvious.

More than 20 years ago, the first “China shock” came when China’s accession to the World Trade Organization unleashed a wave of low-cost manufactured exports that transformed global trade and hollowed out industries across Europe and the United States, contributing to political backlash, increasing populism and economic insecurity in the Western world.

Analysts are now increasingly speaking of “China Shock 2.0”: The Financial Times has reported on the extent to which it is now not just cheap consumer goods flooding global markets, but Chinese dominance in electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and the critical minerals supply chain underpinning the energy transition.

Loom, a UK-based strategy and research group focused on the intersection of climate policy, energy security, industrial strategy and geopolitics, has published a new report arguing that the transition away from fossil fuels risks creating new strategic vulnerabilities if governments fail to develop domestic industrial capacity and more resilient supply chains. It describes China as Europe’s “next energy blind spot”, with strategic dependence being relocated rather than removed.

The Iran conflict has highlighted the structural risks embedded in fossil fuel dependence, hastening calls from the pro-climate movement to further expand the UK’s renewable sector.

However, while Britain has made significant progress in decarbonising electricity generation, much less progress has been made in electrifying heating and transport, leaving large parts of the economy heavily dependent on oil and gas.

Dan Marks, research fellow in energy security at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) tells The House that instability in fossil fuel markets is not temporary but structural.

“While Vladimir Putin is in charge of Russia, while the ayatollahs are in charge of Iran… Russia could be sanctioned at any point, and Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz at any point. So that’s structural risk built into the oil and gas market for an indefinite period of time.”

Unlike fossil fuels, which require continuous imports vulnerable to price shocks and disruption, renewable infrastructure generates energy domestically once installed. However, there are still widespread concerns around both the economic dependency and national security implications.

Chris Aylett, research fellow in the Environment and Society Centre at Chatham House, describes the most significant effect as being that the UK could forego huge economic opportunities in an energy system where China is the leader.

“China’s been working on this and developing this massive green industrial behemoth for decades,” he says.

“It’s absolutely at the top of its game, it’s producing to the highest quality and lowest cost, and it’s just really difficult to challenge that. Other countries, including in Europe, are making a bit of headway, but it’s not going to match China, and certainly not in the UK.”

This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, as China is still building out its capacity.

The US may have been the only western economy with the scale to seriously challenge that dominance through former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which aimed to boost domestic green manufacturing, but that effort was weakened after President Donald Trump reversed major parts of the policy.

There is also concern that the US could pressure allies to remove Chinese technologies from energy supply chains, echoing the Huawei dispute. But Aylett believes this is increasingly unlikely as Washington’s leverage has weakened after the “strategic blunder” of the Iran War.

“It’s diminished him [Trump] in a way… his power on the world stage of being able to say and do whatever he wants,” Aylett says.

Alongside the economic risks are the direct risks to the UK’s national security from Chinese interference, which extend to both clean energy infrastructure itself and some of the communications technologies used.

Graeme Downie, Labour MP and chair of the Coalition for Secure Technology, points to Chinese-made cellular IoT modules – essentially low-tech semiconductors – which are prevalent in many products from traffic lights and IT routers to parts of the energy system.

“Anything that can communicate usually has a module in it,” he tells The House. “Energy security means security of supply, but it also means security of technology.”

Aylett warns that these connected technologies can create vulnerabilities regardless of where they are made.

“Connected technologies are vulnerable to cyber attacks, whether that be remotely operated via a back door, or whether they are just vulnerable to attack generally due to poor security standards and practices,” he says. “Russia, for example, doesn’t make clean energy tech but engages in cyber attacks on energy infrastructure. So that is a risk.”

Downie believes the current crisis should force a broader rethink of the UK’s energy security system. “We should have learned this lesson after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he says. “We’ve got to take this opportunity to do it properly.”

After multiple national security incidents involving China in recent years – including the arrest and investigation of individuals accused of spying for China, and warnings from MI5 that China represents a significant long-term espionage and interference threat – the UK government is alive to the risks.

China’s been working on this and developing this massive green industrial behemoth for decades

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In March, the UK blocked Chinese wind company Ming Yang from building a £1.5bn turbine factory in Scotland on national security grounds. The government has refused to elaborate on the reasons for that decision when asked by The House. Some speculate, however, it reflects a more aggressive stance on the technologies and desire to widen the supply base.

Mike Reader, Labour MP and member of the Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee, argues Britain’s vulnerability is partly the result of decades of deindustrialisation. “The Conservatives left us completely reliant on a global supply chain without UK capability,” he says. “The de-industrialisation of the UK was done without considering our sovereignty and our security.”

The government is therefore now trying to strengthen domestic resilience. Pranesh Narayanan, senior research fellow in IPPR’s Centre for Economic Justice, says the UK’s updated Critical Minerals Strategy is more sophisticated than previous efforts because it identifies parts of the supply chain Britain could realistically develop, particularly refining capacity.

But he warns the funding attached – around £50m – is insufficient and “not necessarily commensurate with the scale of the problem”. He argues the government should allocate some money every year over a longer term towards this to build resilience.

The government’s industrial strategy, too, is described by Narayanan as taking “positive steps” to identify the manufacturing base that the UK could develop. “But it’s going to be slow to deliver, and you’re going to need to commit to delivering it over many, many years.”

There are signs of growing co-ordination across Europe. The UK recently joined the Hamburg Declaration alongside countries including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands to develop a vast interconnected North Sea offshore wind grid.

Chatham House’s Aylett describes there as being a “decent amount of political will and momentum” in the UK to support the European wind sector, and develop offshore wind as one area where Britain could still carve out a competitive advantage.

However, any meaningful diversification away from China will take years and require sustained state intervention.

Narayanan points to India, Vietnam and Malaysia as countries developing alternative solar manufacturing capacity, but says markets alone will not solve the problem. “Some public effort is going to be needed as the market isn’t going to do it by itself,” he says.

Loom is set to produce further reports looking at where those alternative opportunities could emerge.

The Labour government has appeared to pursue a strategy closer to “de-risking” than “decoupling”: accepting that deep economic ties with China in sectors such as clean energy and critical minerals are unavoidable, but acknowledging that action is needed to reduce dependency.

European governments don’t want to communicate trade-offs

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Reader says: “It’s an almost hawkish, anti-China argument to say, are we reliant on China? The whole world is reliant on China’s critical minerals and rare earths, whether you’re talking about wind, EVs, phone batteries, the toaster that you’ve just bought…

“I wouldn’t say we are more reliant on China because we have clean energy. We’re reliant on the critical minerals and rare earth minerals supply chain. What’s important is that the government is setting out strategies to deal with that upstream challenge… When we build the next batch of small modular reactors, the factory that builds the reactor has to be in the UK, so not in France, not in Taiwan, not in Korea, it has to be in the UK supply chain.”

The ‘de-risking’ approach has exposed tensions inside Whitehall between security hawks and departments such as the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade, which are focused more on trade and investment. Business Secretary Peter Kyle, in particular, has been consistently keen on Chinese investment in the energy industry.

IPPR’s Narayanan argues policymakers need to be more precise about what dependency means. “What are the specific risks of buying things from China?” he asks. “Are we buying things that ultimately give the Chinese government some kind of access to our digital infrastructure or data?”

Rusi’s Marks argues that political leaders have avoided confronting difficult trade-offs. “What governments are meant to do is decide and to govern,” he says. “A lot of European governments – this isn’t just a UK problem – have just become technocratic, and all they really want to do is find win-wins: tweak this regulation, make this process slightly more efficient.

“They don’t want to communicate trade-offs. Nobody is preparing populations for what might happen if the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t open in the next two to three months. At no point have they come out and said we’re in a national emergency here.”

The energy transition may still reduce Britain’s exposure to the volatility of global fossil fuel markets, but the emerging debate suggests sovereignty in the age of net zero is becoming more complicated than simply replacing oil with wind turbines.

The challenge for ministers is no longer whether dependency exists, but which dependencies Britain is willing to accept and how much resilience it is prepared to pay for. It is a difficult balance for any government to strike, particularly one already grappling with multiple competing crises and mounting pressure to bring down energy bills for households still struggling through the cost-of-living crisis. 

A ferry going to Port of Dover after crossing the English Channel (David Vilaplana/Alamy)

4 min read30 min

As an island trading nation, more than 85 per cent of the UK’s imports and exports by volume move by ship, and the waters around our coast are among the busiest in the world. Recent instability in the Strait of Hormuz and wider disruption to global shipping routes have shown how quickly maritime security becomes an economic concern, reinforcing the importance of keeping vital sea lanes open, resilient and secure.

Every day, thousands of vessels transit UK waters, including through our own maritime chokepoint, the Dover Strait: container ships carrying goods to our shelves, tankers supplying energy, ferries connecting communities, and vessels serving the renewable energy sector.

Keeping these routes open, safe and efficient is not a luxury; it is an economic and national necessity. That resilience depends on a navigation system capable of operating reliably in all conditions while adapting to a rapidly changing maritime environment.

The General Lighthouse Authorities – Trinity House for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar; the Northern Lighthouse Board for Scotland and the Isle of Man; and Irish Lights for the island of Ireland – are charged in statute with delivering reliable, resilient and efficient aids to navigation service for all mariners. At no cost to the UK Exchequer, their shared purpose is to support prosperity and security, protect the marine environment and save lives at sea – at all times and in all conditions.

To achieve this, a small number of highly skilled seafarers and engineers operate from bases across the UK and Ireland, and at sea. Together, they maintain hundreds of aids to navigation, including lighthouses, buoys and lightvessels, marking some of the most hazardous waters in Europe. When a light fails, a wreck creates a hazard or an incident threatens navigational safety, teams provide a co-ordinated response around the clock to restore safety and keep shipping moving.

Their responsibilities extend beyond the maintenance of major aids to navigation. Thousands of local aids to navigation provided by ports, harbours and other authorities are inspected and regulated to ensure a consistent and dependable standard of safety across our waters.

The General Lighthouse Authorities also play a central role in the consenting process for marine developments, helping balance growth, environmental protection and navigational safety.

That role is becoming increasingly important as the maritime environment grows more complex, congested and contested. Offshore wind, tidal energy and other marine developments are expanding rapidly around the coast, while commercial shipping patterns continue to evolve.

Keeping these routes open, safe and efficient is not a luxury; it is an economic and national necessity

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At the same time, modern shipping has become heavily dependent on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS. While these systems are highly capable, they are also vulnerable to jamming, spoofing and accidental interference. As the recent Royal Institute of Navigation report into GNSS vulnerability highlights, these risks are no longer theoretical. Incidents of GNSS disruption are increasing globally and the consequences for vessels operating in confined or congested waters can be severe.

Resilience therefore depends on maintaining the right balance between physical infrastructure and advanced technology. Digital navigation systems, real-time monitoring and data-led traffic management are transforming maritime operations, but they cannot wholly replace traditional aids to navigation. Physical infrastructure – lighthouses, buoys, beacons and lightvessels – continues to provide an independent and highly reliable means of navigation, unaffected by cyber disruption or satellite failure. The challenge for the future is to integrate these systems effectively, ensuring that innovation strengthens resilience rather than creating new single points of failure.

That balance will become even more important as autonomous and remotely operated vessels become more common. New types of craft – operating with varying levels of human oversight and often alongside conventional shipping and leisure traffic – will place fresh demands on regulation, navigation standards and traffic management, particularly in crowded coastal waters. The challenge is not simply to adopt new technology, but to ensure that maritime safety frameworks evolve quickly enough to manage increasingly complex patterns of movement at sea.

The UK’s economy, energy security and global competitiveness all depend on the safe and efficient movement of ships around our coast. In an era of geopolitical uncertainty, growing technological vulnerability and increasing pressure on maritime space, maintaining resilient navigation systems and secure shipping routes has never been more important. 

Rear Admiral Iain Lower is Deputy Master and Chief Executive Officer, Trinity House

Hiroshi Suzuki tastes some ‘original recipe’ Irn-Bru in Glasgow in 2025 (PA Images/Alamy)

7 min read17 min

Honey, they say, catches more flies than vinegar. A marmalade-loving bear is certainly proving a more powerful diplomatic tool than the démarche. It is hard to avoid Hiroshi Suzuki online even if one wanted. The 64-year-old posts a steady stream of love letters to the UK, many featuring his stuffed toy Paddington.

Britons aren’t easily praised – but there is something winning about Suzuki’s open-hearted commitment to the cause of sucking up. John Redwood, as Welsh secretary, was pilloried for his efforts at the national anthem – but when a Japanese ambassador gives it a good go, he’s a hero.

So, is there guile behind the blarney?

Meeting at his Kensington residence with views of a delightful garden in the full glories of spring, Ambassador Suzuki is as rhapsodic in person as online. Wearing a perfectly tailored three-piece suit, he says he struggles to pick out the favourite moment of his tour to date.

 “I have many favourite moments, but, you know, I love going to pubs. Enjoying a good local ale or bitter is always a huge joy to me.”

Born in Kyoto in 1961, Suzuki is approaching his 65th birthday, an unlikely age for a new social media star. In 1985, he joined the Japanese diplomatic service after a period of studying in the US.

On his mantelpiece sits a number of photos and keepsakes – one of Suzuki with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a black-and-white picture of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, and a signed rugby ball.

A close friend and political ally of Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, Suzuki worked closely with him for a number of years. The prime minister’s outlook clearly had a strong impact on his work.

Unlike most ambassadors, Suzuki has become a very recognisable presence in Westminster. Catapulted into fame from sharing videos of himself enjoying traditional British pubs, his spirited but far-from-pitch-perfect rendition of the Welsh national anthem endeared him to locals, given how few domestic politicians would dare try.

“I have been so fortunate to have become popular on [social media]. But the starting point for me is that the Japanese people love British culture and British people – Shakespeare, Beatles, Queen, or James Bond, Harry Potter, or the Premier League Football, or even having afternoon tea.”

“Japanese people just love the UK and British culture,” he says. “So, as an ambassador, as their representative, I want to express and convey my love and affection towards the British people and towards British culture. Fortunately, that has been picked up. And I have been so fortunate to be popular… and I’m helped by Paddington so much,” he adds, pointing to his stuffed Paddington Bear companion. Suzuki was described as “the Paddington Bear of ambassadors” in one newspaper column.

When we meet, he is looking forward to the Badminton Horse trials the following day; sure enough, afterwards he posts a picture of himself and his toy Paddington mascot standing by a fence on the course.

For his summer break last year, Suzuki hired a boat and sailed around the Sussex coast, which he described as an “amazing” experience. More recently, he spent his time off travelling around the Lake District and visited the Beatrix Potter museum in Windermere.

Despite the novel approach to his job, Suzuki has a traditional background. He’s been a member of the Japanese diplomatic service for over 40 years, having previously served in Tehran and Kabul – a far cry from the cosy and cultural work he currently finds himself doing. He speaks of how lucky he was to be able to join the diplomatic service, at a time when Japan was undergoing profound change.

Despite a short stint in the UK so far, Ambassador Suzuki has already proved influential. He says he’s often collared by MPs and peers when walking around Westminster off the back of his social media, which helps a great deal when making introductions – whether that’s on cherry blossom trees or global defence treaties.

British diplomats are already trying to emulate him, and he seems to have moved the wider Japanese diplomatic service too. International press have cited his social media strategy as part of a wider move in the Japanese diplomatic corps, with the new ambassador for France employing a similar strategy.

Hideo Suzuki – no relation – brings copies of Asterix instead of travel guides with him when travelling across France, poses as Tintin in pictures and professes his love of regional coin and stamp collecting. While he doesn’t seem to be as fond of a French red as the British ambassador is of a pint of bitter, he has posted his love of patisseries. Topical French magazine Paris Match described him as “the Japanese ambassador who makes us love… France”. We, Brits, clearly are not the only ones.

Suzuki’s face twinkles at the mention of the French ambassador. “He’s my best friend in the service, so I wish him all the best. He just took up his post in Paris recently. And he’s doing a great job.”

Suzuki is an adept diplomat. He quotes music and philosophers as easily as foreign trade statistics and investment numbers, always with a smile and always linking back to whatever message he’s trying to hammer home.

Japan tries to punch above its weight, and we want to learn from the UK because it is known to punch above its weight

On defence policy, an area becoming increasingly tense between Japan and the UK, he subtly encourages the government to push ahead with the shared Global Combat Air Programme between the MoD, Italy and Japan.

“I am hoping that in the near future, a long-term contract could be signed… Our plan is for the first fighter jet to take to the sky to defend our free skies in 2035, nine years from now.”

He reinforces the point moments later, after I press on apparent tensions between the parties over Britain’s delayed Defence Investment Plan holding up the deal. 

“We are fully committed to our original plan of 2035. Nothing will delay our original schedule.”

Later, he outlines his manifesto for the UK-Japanese relationship. Suzuki highlights the UK’s soft power as a unique skill.

“I’ve met a number of [Japanese footballers in the UK] and they all say the same thing in different words, which is ever since they were little they’ve dreamt of playing in the Premier League. The pitch for them is the pitch of their dreams. And it’s not just football – last year, the Japanese national ballet came. 

“And again, it’s the same thing – ever since they were little, it was their dream to perform at the Royal Ballet. If some Premier League teams could tour Japan, it would be a phenomenal success. Likewise, a potential tour of the Royal Ballet to Japan would be success guaranteed.”

He says that while the UK isn’t a superpower, he doesn’t believe it’s a middle power either.

“In my view, the UK is a global power… Japan tries to punch above its weight, and we want to learn from the UK because it is known to punch above its weight. The UK is an opinion-making leader. You have the BBC, you have the Financial Times, you have the Economist, just to name a few. The UK has the capability and the capacity to set the international agenda and rally countries across the world to achieve that goal. That’s the UK I see.”

Together, Suzuki believes the UK and Japan should push for a more free and open society.

“I want to see both the UK and Japan play a leadership role in making sure that our children and grandchildren’s generation will live in a free and open society, where they can pursue their own dreams and realise their full potential. [My generation] were given that chance. I wanted to become a diplomat and I was given a chance and, luckily, I succeeded in becoming a diplomat.

“That’s why we are extending so much assistance to Ukraine, because we want to make sure that fundamental principles would endure, principles like freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights. 

“So, if our generation, if we do not stand up to defend those fundamental values, then our children and grandchildren in 50 years or a century later will ask us: ‘Where have you been, when all of this was happening?’”

He ends by quoting John Locke, the 17th-century philosopher whose liberalism clearly had a significant impact on Suzuki: “Wherever the rule of law ends, tyranny begins.”