A new climate game. The absence of the US and the growing position of China are changing the balance of power
The year 2025 for the EU and Poland was a time to redefine their internal climate and industrial policies, as well as to change their roles at the global negotiating table.
The best measuring tool for the temperature of global climate negotiations is the Climate Summits. This year's COP30 in Belém, celebrated on the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, became above all a test of survival: the multilateral process once again withstood the test, but its limitations were clearly revealed.
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Despite the very difficult geopolitical context, negotiators agreed to triple financing for adaptation, established a mechanism for a just transition and opened space for discussion on the intersection of climate policy and trade policy. These are important achievements from the perspective of developing countries.
However, the Brazilian COP30 was a fiasco: the decision did not include any reference to moving away from fossil fuels globally. The organized axis of Arab states, India and Russia, encouraged by the absence of the US, blocked talk about a joint global effort to reduce emissions. It sought to return to the reality before 2015, when only developed countries had reduction obligations. It was a cold shower for European ministers: they realized that merely “leading by example” was no longer enough to motivate faster global transformation. The game has become tougher and tactics need to be changed.
Marcin Korolec
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IZG / IZG
Climate without the USA
The progress of climate efforts is overshadowed by the fact that the Trump administration has withdrawn the US from ambitious climate policy – both domestic and international. Washington rolled back internal regulations and blocked global agreements.
This includes: therefore, 2025 brought two spectacular failures of sectoral processes. The global plastics treaty has diluted into a version without firm commitments to reduce plastic production or phase out toxic additives. In turn, the global shipping emissions fee is stuck in the International Maritime Organization (IMO), blocked by the US and oil countries. The talks were postponed until 2026, much to the disappointment of small island states and the EU.
Catherine Snyder
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IZG / IZG
The leadership void created by the change in the US position is clearly felt. In many forums, the EU is unable to create a sufficient counterweight to China, India, OPEC and their friendly Russia. Despite this, it is the European Union that has remained the most consistent defender of high ambitions in the UNFCCC process.
At the same time, 2025 brought a European “awakening”: the awareness that we need to act more assertively, using trade, security, foreign and development policy as climate policy tools. CBAM (a carbon border tax for importers to the EU, intended to improve competitiveness against more emission-intensive producers and encourage them to reduce emissions in their production) has become a central instrument of influence.
At home, Europe invested in hydrogen, batteries, critical raw materials and network modernization. It has also made efforts to improve the competitiveness of its own industry and economy. At the same time, it created pressure and restrictions on trading partners, which led to tensions with developing countries.
A new vision of climate policy in the EU
On the continent, 2025 clearly highlighted the weaknesses of the current legal architecture of European climate policy, created by Franz Timmermans. For the final assessment of its effectiveness, we will have to wait for the summary, which will provide us with knowledge whether and by how much greenhouse gas emissions in the EU have decreased in 2025. However, we already expect that the rate of emission reduction has decreased or even that emissions have stabilized.
Why this slowdown? The transformation model based on the concept of creating a market in Europe for clean technology industries assumed that the “invisible hand of the market” – or rather European entrepreneurs – would fill it with their products.
However, this has not happened, partly due to the resistance of European industrial giants to the transformation towards zero-emission technologies, and partly due to the lack of a dedicated, real European industrial policy.
At the same time, China's consistently pursued economic policy for many years – part of which includes subsidizing the development of modern, zero-emission technologies – has led to the technological dominance of Chinese enterprises in key technologies, such as batteries for electric cars. The growing export of Chinese automotive brands to Europe has exposed the technological weaknesses of domestic producers.
Climate and competitiveness go hand in hand
At the top of the European hierarchy, there is concern about the threats to European industry. There are also more and more responses to this challenge: the draft Multiannual European Budget for 2028-2034 presented in July is as much as one third of the European Competitiveness Fund, and the announced EU Economic Security Strategy is intended to improve the resilience of the community's economy to crises and challenges.
More and more often, we hear slogans calling for regulations supporting the “Made in Europe” policy or obliging us to produce at least a certain percentage of a given product in Europe. The “Local content requirement” is good news for both the economy and the climate.
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In September, on the anniversary of the publication of his report “The future of European competitiveness”, Mario Draghi called for common European debt that could be used to finance support for necessary economic reforms. Interestingly, in the absence of consensus in the EU, Super-Mario suggests the possibility of creating a “coalition of the willing”, i.e. the so-called mechanism of enhanced cooperation.
Why is it also important for European climate policy? If, as Europeans, we want to continue setting labor, environmental and climate protection standards, we must at least try to compete on the global economic map and equalize the level of competitiveness of the European economy.
This will only be possible if we do everything to reduce energy costs, especially for industry. In this aspect, we have a lot to do in Poland, where the price of energy for industry is much higher than the European average. Decarbonization of the energy sector and industry is one of the key ways to meet this challenge.
What politics fails to achieve, the market will do?
At the turn of 2025 and 2026, global climate governance is shifting from a universal consensus towards a mosaic of coalitions, sectoral agreements, trade, financial and security instruments. This provides flexibility, but risks marginalizing the weakest countries and those who care about global ambition and the survival of the framework of the Paris Agreement, which obliges all parties to act.
Throughout 2025, the market did its job. The costs of green technologies have fallen to record lows, and investments in renewable energy, batteries and green industries have increased. Companies continued to net-zero and decarbonize supply chains. More and more investors began to treat fossil assets as risky and green infrastructure as the future.
Despite the lack of progress in the global climate negotiation process, the role of voluntary coalitions and market solutions, e.g. industry decarbonization clubs, development of coal markets or implementation of methane agreements, is constantly growing.
This can be proven by the example of China, which has increased the pace of transformation. They have developed renewable energy, electromobility, batteries and green industry on an unprecedented scale, strengthening their position as a key global supplier of low-emission technologies. Although the transition away from coal remains slow, Beijing has consistently presented itself as a stable, long-term actor that treats climate policy as an industrial, competitive and national security strategy.
The European Union is also pragmatically reviewing its internal and external climate policy, seeing more and more clearly that it must be – following the Chinese example – integrated with industrial policy.
Doomed to take a new position in the global climate process and a multi-crisis caused by war and polarization, the Community hesitates between maintaining its climate ambition or taking a populist step back. However, only the strategic development of industry based on its decarbonization, as well as innovations and development in the area of cleantech, are the only way to maintain Europe's competitiveness in the conditions of the new global order.
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The year 2025 may be remembered as the moment of transition from a single global climate regime to a competitive, fragmented order in which outcomes are determined as much by economic and industrial policy as by climate ambition. Much depends on how the European Union approaches this conversation internally and whether it will fight hard to maintain the integrity and strength of the global climate agreement.
