Trump wrongly claims China doesn’t use wind powerpublished at 16:45 GMT 17 November
Marco Silva
BBC Verify senior journalist
US President Donald Trump has wrongly claimed that, despite selling the most wind turbines, China is not using wind power.
Speaking to UK broadcaster GB News, Trump suggested that China – which he called a “very smart” country – has been using fossil fuels while selling wind turbines to “suckers” and “stupid people”.
“They use oil and gas, they use coal, but they don’t use the wind,” he claimed.
But China has become a global leader in wind power.
Image source, EPAImage caption,
A wind and solar farm at Dongtai near Yancheng in China’s Jiangsu province
“China is the country with the highest wind power generation and highest growth rate of wind power generation in recent years,” says Biqing Zhu, a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
The Global Energy Monitor, a US-based research group, estimates China accounts for about 44% of the world’s operating wind farm capacity, external. And the International Energy Agency (IEA) also says, external that in 2023 China built about two-thirds of all the new wind power capacity added worldwide.
Despite this progress it is true that China’s energy mix is still dominated by fossil fuels — coal in particular. In fact, according to the IEA, one of every four tonnes of coal used globally is burned to produce electricity in China.
The Chinese Wind Energy Association says that, in 2023, only around 9.5% of the electricity China generated came from wind.
In recent years, Trump has consistently called on the UK and other nations to stop building “ugly“ wind turbines, arguing they are “ruining” Europe’s fields and valleys.
