In the 21st century, energy is empire. But whose empire is better built for the storms ahead: America’s new Alaska LNG venture or China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative?
This article contrasts the US’s Alaska LNG project against China’s BRI energy strategy, revealing that while both seek to secure economic and geopolitical leverage through energy, China’s broader, greener, and deeper investments may position it for superior long-term dominance.
Current state of play
China’s BRI Energy Footprint
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has markedly shifted towards greener energy investments in recent years. In 2024, China’s energy-related engagement under the BRI reached US$11.8 billion, marking a 60 per cent increase compared to 2023. This surge represents the highest level of green energy engagement since the BRI’s inception, with significant investments in solar, wind, and hydropower projects across various regions, including Southeast Asia and Africa.
This continued from 2023, where 56 per cent of China’s US$8.61 billion energy engagements were in renewable energy projects, and underscores China’s commitment to promoting sustainable energy infrastructure globally.
US energy initiatives
Beyond the Alaska LNG project, the United States has been actively expanding its energy infrastructure, focusing on enhancing connectivity with neighbouring countries to bolster energy security and economic growth.
Canada-US pipelines: The US and Canada share an extensive network of pipelines facilitating the transport of oil and natural gas. The Keystone Pipeline System, for instance, delivers Canadian crude oil to US refineries, although its expansion, Keystone XL, was canceled in 2021. Additionally, the Alliance Pipeline transports natural gas from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin to the Chicago market hub, enhancing energy integration between the two countries.
Mexico-US pipelines: The North Baja Pipeline is a bidirectional natural gas pipeline connecting Arizona to California and into Mexico. It plays a crucial role in facilitating energy trade between the US and Mexico, with plans to reverse its flow direction to accommodate LNG exports from Mexico to the US.
These cross-border energy projects signify the US’s strategic efforts to strengthen its energy infrastructure, ensuring a diversified and secure energy supply while fostering economic ties with neighbouring countries.
Energy as proxy for growth potential
China: Building infinite growth engines
China’s BRI has strategically shifted towards renewable energy investments, positioning itself as a global leader in sustainable infrastructure development. In 2024, clean energy sectors—including renewables, nuclear power, electricity grids, energy storage, electric vehicles (EVs), and railways—contributed over 10 per cent to China’s GDP, amounting to approximately US$1.9 trillion. These sectors accounted for 26 per cent of all GDP growth in 2024, underscoring their pivotal role in China’s economic expansion.
The BRI’s clean energy pivot is not accidental. It is deeply tied to the fundamental truth that a country’s economic development is inextricably linked to energy. Energy serves as the foundation of industrial production, digital economies, logistics, and even agriculture. Historically, every major growth spurt—from the British industrial revolution to the US postwar boom—has been accompanied by a surge in energy availability.
However, hydrocarbon-based development is finite: oil and gas are exhaustible resources, subject to depletion curves, rising extraction costs, and geopolitical choke points. In contrast, renewables (solar, wind, hydro) offer near-infinite scalability. The sun shines, the wind blows, and rivers flow — regardless of market cycles or depletion risks. Once renewable infrastructure is deployed, the marginal cost of additional energy approaches zero, enabling continuous, compounding economic growth with minimal incremental input.
Through the BRI, China is systematically exporting this model. By the end of 2023, Chinese overseas energy engagements tilted significantly toward solar, wind, and hydropower, making up nearly 42 per cent of total energy investments, while new coal projects dropped to virtually zero.
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Beyond financing, China embeds its technological standards (e.g. grid technology, battery systems) and supply chain dominance into host countries. This locks in both economic influence and strategic interdependence over the long term — all while fuelling local economies with theoretically infinite energy supplies.
Thus, China’s energy strategy under the BRI is not merely about diplomacy; it is about engineering self-sustaining zones of infinite economic potential anchored to Chinese-built infrastructure and governance norms.
US: Finite hydrocarbon leverage
In contrast, the US remains anchored to its traditional strength in hydrocarbons. As of 2024, the US was still the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), shipping approximately 11.9 billion cubic feet per day.
While LNG exports grant the US considerable short-term economic and diplomatic leverage — particularly with energy-hungry allies like Japan, South Korea, and Europe — they also bind America’s energy diplomacy to a finite resource base. Hydrocarbons face physical limits (reservoir depletion), price volatility (subject to OPEC+ decisions and wars), and growing policy headwinds from global climate change commitments.
Moreover, hydrocarbon dependency inherently caps economic expansion: the more one grows, the more one consumes, eventually hitting physical, environmental, and geopolitical limits. Unlike renewables, hydrocarbons cannot infinitely power continuous GDP expansion without severe resource stress or climate consequences.
This fundamental asymmetry suggests that US fossil fuel diplomacy is transactional and time-bound, whereas China’s renewable-based model is strategic and perpetually regenerative.
Additionally, the US‘s outbound energy strategy lacks a coherent green investment counterpart: while the domestic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has boosted internal renewable investment, US outbound energy projects largely remain hydrocarbon-centric, missing the opportunity to shape emerging energy markets abroad.
Thus, while the US can temporarily secure influence through LNG and cross-border pipelines, its long-term ability to dominate the future energy economy — and by extension, the future global economy — is structurally weaker compared to China’s renewable-centred vision.
Geopolitical leverage: Strategic stakes
China’s long-term diplomacy
China’s BRI energy strategy is not simply about constructing assets — it is about rewiring the economic sovereignty of partner countries. By exporting renewable energy capacity (solar farms, hydropower dams, wind grids) and building out national transmission networks, China is helping BRI countries achieve greater energy independence from traditional hydrocarbon-importing vulnerabilities.
Take examples like:
In these cases, once the renewable projects are up and running, the host nations gain:
- Lower long-term energy costs (after infrastructure payoff).
- Reduced reliance on imported fuels (like oil and gas from US).
- Stronger national grid resilience.
- Ownership stakes (in some cases), allowing partial or full transfer of control over time.
Thus, China’s model, while embedding some debt and dependency risks (e.g., debt-for-equity swaps), at least offers a pathway to localised energy sovereignty. This model effectively locks in Chinese diplomatic goodwill and long-term geopolitical influence, without enforcing perpetual raw material dependence.
US seeking fast gains
The United States’ energy push — centred largely around LNG exports and oil pipelines — follows a fundamentally different logic. It is a model built on dependency.
By promoting projects like:
- The Alaska LNG pipeline (targeting Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia).
- Cross-border oil and gas pipelines linking Canada, Mexico, and US markets.
The US essentially offers “energy security by purchase” — a steady but external flow of hydrocarbons that client states must continuously import and pay for.
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This model benefits US energy companies and supports immediate alliances in the Indo-Pacific, particularly for Japan and South Korea, who are seeking to diversify away from Russian, Middle Eastern, and even Chinese sources.
However, it does not build energy independence for these countries.
In effect:
- The customer nations become dependent on US infrastructure, shipping lanes, and pricing power.
- Energy becomes a geopolitical weapon — one that the US can use to enforce loyalty, but also one that can breed resentment over time (as seen historically with OPEC or Russia’s gas weaponisation).
Moreover, because LNG and oil are commodity flows, disruptions due to war, sanctions, or political decisions can immediately endanger national energy security for customer states.
In contrast, China’s renewable BRI assets are fixed, sovereign, and produce domestic energy — making them less vulnerable to external shocks once operational.
While both are forms of strategic leverage, energy empowerment may create deeper, more sustainable alliances, whereas energy dependence risks eventual backlash as nationalistic and sovereign sentiments rise across the developing world.
What does this mean for business leaders and startups?
As the US and China reshape the energy order, business leaders must navigate a shifting landscape marked by both volatility and opportunity.
On the risk side, startups in countries heavily reliant on US LNG imports exposes itself to global commodity price swings and supply chain disruptions — from Red Sea attacks to Panama Canal droughts.
Perhaps most critically, energy supply chains rooted in US hydrocarbon exports heighten political vulnerability. As geopolitical realignments occur, businesses in such countries could find themselves exposed to policy shifts, trade disruptions, or sanctions.
Companies dependent on stable energy inputs, such as manufacturers, data centres, and logistics hubs, will face increasing operational vulnerabilities. It may be useful to consider investing in backup power systems and stockpiles to ensure continuity in times of geopolitical turmoil.
In parallel, China’s BRI projects often come embedded with Chinese technology standards — from grid systems to battery platforms. This creates potential interoperability risks for startups and infrastructure providers if future global tech ecosystems diverge from China-centric models.
On the opportunity side, the expansion of BRI renewable projects creates a rising demand for local service providers — in grid maintenance, solar and wind farm servicing, and battery storage optimisation. Startups focused on green energy technology, predictive maintenance AI, and resilient local supply chains will find defensible, high-growth niches.
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As energy volatility increases, governments will also prioritise resilient infrastructure — opening the door for firms offering microgrids, off-grid renewable solutions, and energy storage innovations. Companies positioned to deliver hybrid and diversified energy models will have a strategic advantage.
The proliferation of Chinese standards through BRI projects creates another opening: the urgent need for cross-standard integration solutions. Startups that can bridge different grids, offer cross-border energy trading platforms, smart grid integration tools, and cybersecurity services will become vital players.
Finally, with China’s BRI and Western climate finance initiatives both pouring capital into renewable energy projects, startups facilitating access to green finance — such as carbon credit platforms and ESG certification services — stand to tap into massive new funding flows.
Conclusion
In the next decade, energy will define economic winners and losers across Southeast Asia and the world. Startups and business leaders who align early with the structural shifts toward renewable sovereignty, technology standardisation battles, and resilience-first infrastructure will dominate. Those who bet blindly on existing hydrocarbon supply chains risk being stranded as the new energy architecture locks into place.
One way to stay ahead of the curve is to follow geopolitical developments closely, and with a net assessment lens, discern signals from noise as we follow this increasingly geopolitically fractured world. See you on the other side.
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