East Asia’s Ambitious Green Energy Shift Explained

Why has East Asia emerged as the global leader in green energy industries but - until recently - lagged on carbon emission reduction? What is new and distinctive about East Asia's approach to the green energy transition? In this episode, Lindsay Whitfield and Cornel Ban of Copenhagen Business School discuss these questions with Elizabeth Thurbon, co-author of Developmental Environmentalism. East Asia's greening strategies are not mere exercises in 'greenwashing' or fossil-fuelled 'business as usual'. Rather, there is something fundamentally transformative underway in the region at the level of elite ideation, strategic ambition, and policy action. State actors in East Asia are engaging in a sophisticated kind of economic statecraft, strategically harnessing the capitalist market dynamics of 'creative-destruction' to advance their transformative green ambitions through green growth. The episode participants discuss the lessons that can be learned in Europe from East Asia and the future of the global green shift in an era of geostrategic rivalry.