The Global Axis of Climate Leadership Has Shifted

Just hours after President Trump signed his budget reconciliation bill on July 4 gutting U.S. climate policy, leaders of emerging market countries were gathering in Rio de Janeiro for the BRICS summit. Advancing climate efforts ranked high among their priorities. Days earlier, the European Union’s executive body had announced a new 2040 emissions reduction target with greater ambition than earlier goals. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

This triptych underscores a new dynamic. For all intents and purposes, the U.S. has ceded its place at the center of the climate ecosystem—a position that would be difficult to regain as it makes long-term decisions that prioritize fossil fuels. It stands alone as the rest of the world continues working to decarbonize. 

Purely from an emissions perspective, the persistence of other major global players—from China to the E.U.—is encouraging. But it’s about more than just cutting emissions. The U.S. pullback from climate efforts—now solidified into federal law—is creating new geopolitical dynamics, the consequences of which aren’t fully understood. And these dynamics will shape energy and clean technology markets for decades to come.

Read more: Smaller Nations Push for Climate Progress—Without the U.S.

Before addressing anything else, it’s worth evaluating the impact of the budget law—formally known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—on U.S. emissions. The new law largely dismantles the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s landmark budget bill, phasing out tax credits for wind and solar power much sooner than planned. It also adds restrictions on foreign ownership and involvement in supply chains that will limit the number of projects that qualify for tax credits.

Unsurprisingly, this is bad news for U.S. emissions: rapid analysis suggests a flatlining in emissions in the years to come. That’s in sharp contrast to a steep decline that would have happened if policies enacted under Biden had stayed in place. The U.S. will continue to deploy renewable energy—particularly solar power combined with storage—but not at the same speed and scale as before. New solar capacity will likely be cut in half compared to Biden policies as a result of the law, according to an analysis from Princeton University’s Repeat Project. Wind power fares even worse. From a global emissions perspective, this isn’t good, but it also isn’t the end of the world. The U.S. makes up 12% of global emissions. And the biggest challenge for emissions will be to tackle rising energy demand in emerging markets—what the IEA describes as “the largest source of emissions growth in the coming decades.”

Years ago, climate advocates feared that any pullback from the U.S. might lead to collapse in global climate efforts. If the U.S. wasn’t invested in climate action, why should anyone else be, the logic went. But the U.S. isn’t really trying to lead anymore. And, in this case, other countries don’t want to follow the U.S. anyway. If anything, the fractured geopolitical landscape, which began before Trump’s second term but has only worsened since January, is also a tailwind to global clean energy development. As countries look to rely less on oil and gas imports, renewable energy increasingly provides an affordable source of domestic energy production.

Indeed, in abandoning global climate efforts the U.S. has given a lane to others—including and especially China. The country has developed a world-leading electric vehicle manufacturing industry and in a short time period become the world’s leading auto exporter—building good cars at a cost that American and European competitors can’t match. And China remains the undisputed leader in renewable technology manufacturing. China controls at least 60% of global manufacturing capacity for solar panels, wind turbine systems and batteries, according to 2023 data from the IEA. Critically, the cost of battery technology continues to decline in the country. 

With this manufacturing dominance, as well as overcapacity, the country will look to sell those products in a growing number of markets around the globe. And given their low costs we should expect good uptake. This means tighter economic ties between China and countries in virtually every corner of the globe, from Europe to Asia. 

Some technologies fared better than others in Trump’s budget law. Incentives survived for companies that capture carbon dioxide released during their operations and sequester it away from the atmosphere—with the per ton value of some credits actually increasing. Carbon capture is highly debated, and I won’t get into the nuances of that debate here. But the success of carbon capture in the budget bill further highlights the divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world. As others move to renewable technology, one of the few ways that the U.S. promotes decarbonization will be anchored in fossil fuels.

All of this means that the U.S. is now fully speaking from a different book than the rest of the world on energy and climate. And, as markets shift, it will be difficult for the U.S. to get back on the same page, even with a different future administration.

When I asked Brazil’s foreign minister Fernando Haddad, an outspoken voice on climate, about how coordination will occur between like-minded countries at this moment, he suggested that existing institutions will not suffice. “The environmental agenda will emerge through other arrangements,” he told me in May. It’s safe to assume the U.S. will not be included.

To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here.

This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.