We’re now in a fascinating, and probably unprecedented, situation where the world’s two greatest superpowers - China and the US - are actively building two entirely different visions of what the world's energy future should look like.

This was fantastically illustrated by this recent comparison chart in the NYT  which might prove to be the most important geopolitical visualization of the 21st century.

As you can see the picture couldn’t be clearer: while China has positioned itself as the world's clean energy arsenal, America is doubling down on being the world's gas station.

As the saying goes “the economy is energy-transformed” so it’s easy to understand how immensely consequential this moment may prove to be. Whichever energy paradigm proves more effective at powering the economy of the future - renewable electricity or fossil fuel extraction - will likely determine which superpower dominates the global economy for decades to come.

This applies for everything, even disruptive technologies like AI. OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently said in a testimony to Congress that “eventually the cost of intelligence, the cost of AI, will converge to the cost of energy” and “how much you can have, the abundance of it, will be limited by the abundance of energy, so in terms of long-term strategic investments to make… I can’t think of anything more important than energy.”

Very concretely this means that there is no “winning” in AI without first winning in energy - nations that can't generate abundant, cheap electricity will simply be unable to compete effectively. Energy is truly the master key to technological supremacy - whoever controls the cheapest, most scalable energy infrastructure will unlock advantages in every sector that matters.

Now of course this leads us to the obvious question: in this unprecedented energy strategy divergence between the US and China, which approach may ultimately prove superior?

Arnaud Bertrand is an entrepreneur and China analyst. Can be found on X @RnaudBertrand. Bertrand founded HouseTrip, a leading European vacation rental marketplace, and is founder and CEO of Me & Qi, a premier English-language platforms for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also a graduate and honorary professor of Founder & CEO of Me & Qi, one of the premier English-language platforms for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also a graduate and honorary professor of Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland.