BRUSSELS — The European Commission is launching a new anti-subsidy probe into Chinese wind turbines.
The news is expected to be announced by European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager at 3 p.m. CET, in a speech in Princeton that was previewed by POLITICO’s China Watcher.
Chinese wind turbine operations in five EU countries — Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria — will be placed under scrutiny, Vestager is expected to say. She will also call on the EU to make full use of the trade tools at its disposal to defend its industrial interests before it is too late.
China overtook the EU in 2020 as the largest maker of wind power installations, and now accounts for over half of the world’s wind turbines in operation. More broadly, Beijing is seeking to establish itself as the global leader in the kind of clean tech that the EU will rely on to achieve its transition to green energy.
Vestager will say that, with Beijing’s roles as an economic competitor and systemic rival increasingly converging, the EU cannot afford to see China’s dominance in solar panels be repeated in other crucial fields, such as wind energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors.
The EU investigation will be based on a new tool, called the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, which has already been deployed against Chinese state-run train giant, CRRC, leading it to withdraw from a Bulgarian tender last month after its bid — which undercut rivals by 50 percent — was questioned by the Commission.