Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, regarding a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and he signed with China in March 2025 during a visit to Beijing.

This was a UK-China Clean Energy Partnership agreement aimed at enhancing cooperation on clean energy technologies, including offshore wind, electricity grids, battery storage, carbon capture, hydrogen, and potentially leaving room for areas like civil nuclear power. The goal, per official descriptions, was to accelerate clean energy development and deployment in both countries.

For months (from mid-2025 into early 2026), opposition figures—particularly Conservative MPs like Claire Coutinho (shadow energy secretary) and others—pressed for full public disclosure of the deal’s text.

It was unusual for such agreements to remain unpublished (unlike similar deals with countries like Korea, Germany, or Ireland).

It raised national security concerns, given China’s dominance in supply chains for renewables (e.g., solar panels, batteries, wind components) and intelligence warnings about potential disruptions to UK energy infrastructure.

Greater Chinese involvement could increase dependence on Beijing in strategic sectors, potentially undermining energy security.

Miliband faced repeated questions in Parliament and committees, at one point dodging or refusing to answer 17 times and dismissing concerns as a “wacky conspiracy theory.”

The MoU is no longer secret. Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published the full text of the UK–China Memorandum of Understanding for a UK-China Clean Energy Partnership 2025 on GOV.UK on 27 February 2026.

From The Department for Energy Security & Net Zero

UK–China memorandum of understanding, 2025 – GOV.UK

Memorandum of Understanding for a UK-China Clean Energy Partnership (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Partnership’) between The Department of Energy and Climate Change, of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and The National Energy Administration of The People’s Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Participants’)

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1. Background

1.1 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) and the People’s Republic of China (China) have established longstanding and deep collaboration in the field of clean energy, with respect to our respective emissions reductions and carbon neutrality or net zero targets committed by respective Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This collaboration covers academic, research, regulatory, policy, standards, industrial, and commercial partnerships. Both countries are implementing policies to ensure energy affordability, security and sustainability, and to meet respective energy transition commitments.

1.2 In the areas of climate change and energy, the Participants recognise the urgency and significance of climate change, and agree that transitioning to net zero / carbon neutrality as quickly as possible, on the premise of ensuring energy security, will require an economy-wide effort.

1.3 The 10 years since the signing of the UK-China Clean Energy Partnership have demonstrated the importance of UK-China clean energy collaboration in green manufacturing, market reform, investment, and ministerial exchanges, in support of both countries’ efforts to reach net zero / carbon neutrality.

1.4 Building on the last 10 years of collaboration, and each country’s significant experience and expertise, the Participants believe that this new, updated Partnership has the potential to unlock the barriers to emissions reductions through further promoting the use of clean energy and the continued development of green technologies, supporting high-quality economic growth, facilitating mutual investment and regulatory engagement, and allowing trade in green goods and services.

2. Objectives

2.1 The objective of the Partnership is to increase the pace of the development and deployment of clean energy in the UK and China, to promote emissions reductions, energy security and economic growth in both countries. The Partnership will allow officials to continue to work together through existing tracks and through new activities to provide strategic direction for UK-China clean energy collaboration in research and development, innovation, policy, standards, academic, industrial, regulatory, multilateral and commercial areas. The Participants recognise that given their respective strengths in policy, markets, and research and innovation, an expanded Partnership will allow them to address the growing urgency of the energy transition and the importance of supporting continued economic growth while reducing emissions.

3. Areas of cooperation

1. 3.1 To further enhance cooperation between China and the UK on energy, the 2 participants have identified areas of cooperation:
   1. 3.1.1 Power market reform and electricity grids
   2. 3.1.2 Battery storage
   3. 3.1.3 Offshore wind
   4. 3.1.4 Carbon capture, usage and storage
   5. 3.1.5 Clean, low carbon and renewable hydrogen
2. 3.2 While prioritising the sectors outlined above, the Participants will also continue to discuss cooperation on a wider range of sectors of shared interest, including but not limited to civil nuclear, charging infrastructure, green electricity certificates and green power, and pathways to coal power transition, both within the framework of this Partnership and through other forums and dialogues, including through other ministries and departments where appropriate. The Participants may also explore opportunities to work together internationally, including in third markets, to support the global energy transition, where appropriate and jointly decided.

Cooperation mechanisms

1. 3.3 The Participants have significant policy expertise and experience to share in order to better promote the generation, deployment, and utilisation of clean energy, to reduce emissions, and to support green economic growth. This experience exists in respective governmental, regulatory, industrial, commercial, non-governmental, research, finance and academic organisations. Topics for policy collaboration, research, lessons and information exchange may include, among others, the following areas:
   1. 3.3.1 Market reform and investment incentives, including power, and renewable energy markets
   2. 3.3.2 ‘Green’ public and private financing to embed clean energy and sustainability in domestic and third country finance and multilateral investment funds
   3. 3.3.3 Effective legislation
   4. 3.3.4 Domestic and international regulation and standards
   5. 3.3.5 Policy approaches and industry incentives
   6. 3.3.6 Public engagement
   7. 3.3.7 Energy security
   8. 3.3.8 Supply chains
2. 3.4 Industrial strategy. In order to stimulate clean energy cooperation, the Participants will consider ways to share experiences on policies and approaches to creating clean energy industries and pathways to a clean energy transition, and to develop collaboration between their respective industries in relevant fields. This will help partner industry, government and academia to focus on how best to promote new technologies.
   
3. 3.5 Commercial partnerships and investment. The Participants recognise that significant expertise exists in their respective businesses and public sector finance and investment bodies. The Partnership will aim to facilitate opportunities for British and Chinese companies and financial bodies to collaborate to create mutual trade and investment opportunities and arrangements in the green manufacturing, goods, and services and clean energy sectors. Activities carried out should be for the mutual benefit of both nations. The creation of economic growth and jobs in both markets is an important consideration.

4. Implementation

4.1 The Participants will provide strategic direction to and review cooperation under this Partnership in a special session of the annual UK-China Energy Dialogue, alongside platforms and side events focused on areas of mutual interest for both countries in each of the areas outlined above.

4.2 Between these annual meetings the Participants are encouraged to meet by a joint decision at a ministerial and working level to deepen collaboration. The Participants may also consider running projects to support development of the Partnership and the establishment of other mechanisms, for example joint centres of expertise, working groups, supporting Memoranda of Understanding, capacity building, commercial or public-private arrangements, or teams of independent experts, to implement and advise on the objectives set out in this Partnership. Funding for such activities will be decided between the Participants on a case-by-case basis and may include commercial funding.

4.3 The Participants may encourage the establishment of direct relationships between businesses of both countries to promote enhanced trade and investment opportunities.

4.4 This Partnership will also consider and, where appropriate, conduct joint activities, working groups, or initiatives with other UK-China groupings, including but not limited to the JETCO (and any associated working groups), the Investment Working Group, and the Economic and Financial Dialogue.

5. Representation

5.1 The implementation of this Partnership will be led for the UK by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and for China by the National Energy Administration (NEA).

5.2 Each Participant will provide a contact person to co-ordinate with all interested parties in their respective countries and with the contact person of the other Participant. After each meeting the contact persons will jointly decide an action plan in consultation with their principals and each other.

6. Resources

6.1 Each Participant will be responsible for the costs they incur under this Partnership and will provide resources to support activity and projects under this Partnership in accordance with their respective national procedures and funding arrangements. Where both Participants decide, activities linked to this Partnership may be jointly funded. This might include, but is not limited to, funding from central and local governments, businesses, research organisations, academic institutions etc.

7. Commencement, duration and termination

7.1 This Partnership will come into effect on the date of its signature by both Participants and will continue in effect until terminated by either Participant giving 6 months written notice to the other. Unless jointly decided by the Participants, the termination of this Partnership will not prejudice the completion of any activities/programmes which have been decided upon prior to the date of termination. Amendments to this Partnership may be jointly determined in writing by the Participants at any time and will come into effect upon signature by both Participants.

7.2 The foregoing record represents the understandings reached between the Participants. This Partnership does not constitute a legally binding agreement or create any rights of obligations under domestic or international law. It does not affect the Participants’ rights and obligations derived from international agreements and conventions to which they are parties or their obligations under domestic law.

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Signed in Beijing, China on 17 March 2025, in 2 original copies in English and Mandarin Chinese.

For the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:

Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP,
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

For the People’s Republic of China:

Wang Hongzhi,
Administrator,
National Energy Administration

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Miliband must publish his secret China energy deal

From The Net Zero Watch

This week, Ed Miliband had two clear opportunities to explain why he will not publish the UK’s energy cooperation agreement with China from March 2025. First, in the House of Commons, when challenged by the Shadow Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho, he dismissed the concern as a “wacky conspiracy theory that she gets on the internet”. Then again before the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, where he was asked repeatedly why the agreement has not been disclosed and refused to answer the question seventeen times. 

But this is not a conspiracy theory. Energy security is national security.

This is an agreement that concerns critical infrastructure. It has been signed with a state that NATO describes as a “systemic challenge”. Last year, China and Russia described their partnership as having “no limits”. As such, Parliament and the public are entitled to know what ministers are signing in the country’s name.

The debate so far has centred on human rights. It is suspected that publication could expose the companies embedded in Britain’s green supply chains, potentially triggering strategic litigation and even delaying key Net Zero targets. That would be politically awkward for a government that presents itself as legally scrupulous and morally exacting.

Yet the uncomfortable reality is that without Chinese manufacturing dominance in turbines, batteries and grid equipment, Clean Power 2030 becomes far harder to deliver. And as one of America’s Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, once observed: “Necessity never made a good bargain.”

Human rights concerns are serious and legitimate. But when the subject is energy systems and supply chains, the central issue is strategic.

Anyone concerned with Britain’s hard power capabilities – and the independence of our democratic institutions – in the face of revisionist powers such as China and Russia should be concerned about an agreement that deepens structural dependence in sectors Beijing openly treats as instruments of strategic leverage and as foundations of its military-industrial strength.

This is not paranoia or alarmism. Let’s just take what China’s President Xi Jinping said in 2020. 

During the Covid pandemic, Xi described the crisis as a “stress test [for China’s great power status] under actual combat conditions”. He then set out, with unusual frankness, how Beijing understands supply chains as leverage. China, he said, must “build on our advantages” and forge “assassin’s mace” technologies – capabilities designed to offset stronger powers by exploiting points of dependence. It must “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China”, forming “powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities” based on the ability to cut off supply to foreigners. He then singled out sectors such as electric power equipment, communications equipment and “new energy”.

Industrial supply chains have always carried strategic weight. Even nineteenth-century Britain understood that industrial capacity underpinned power. What has changed in today’s multipolar order is the degree of concentration, the speed of digitised interconnection, and the willingness of states to weaponise dependency. Control over manufacturing ecosystems now generates leverage at a global scale. The Covid years demonstrated that with uncomfortable clarity.

And what British policymakers too often fail to confront is how deeply those industrial ecosystems are entangled with geopolitics. A Bloomberg analysis published this week estimated that a war over Taiwan between the United States and China would wipe $10 trillion – roughly 10 per cent of global GDP – off the map. Beyond the principal actors, the European Union could see output fall by 10.9 per cent, and the UK by 6.1 per cent. Dependency can be activated – and exploited – very quickly.

But there is no need to speculate about future conflicts. Chinese-dominated supply chains are already shaping the battlefield in Europe. Consider the war in Ukraine. Kyiv’s sanctions adviser, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, has said that when the foreign-made components in Russian weapons such as drones are counted, roughly 60 per cent originate in China. Other European officials place the figure closer to 80 per cent, describing Chinese supply as the single greatest obstacle to effective sanctions enforcement against Russia.

For all the rhetoric about ending dependence on Russian oil and gas – revenues that fund Putin’s war machine – there has been little scrutiny by Miliband of how the renewable technologies we now rely on are tied to Chinese supply chains that continue to enable Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine. In seeking to escape one strategic dependency, Britain is now entrenching another because China dominates the world’s green industrial base. 

Defenders of the deal may counter criticism by insisting that the agreement is merely a memorandum of understanding and that security agencies would intervene if anything genuinely dangerous were contemplated. Perhaps. Yet even innocuous sounding agreements can become politically and economically costly to unwind.

As the master of geoeconomics, China’s industrial diplomacy is often structured to embed long-term ecosystems of technology, standards and commercial dependency. Disentanglement is rarely painless. Nottingham City Council, for example, has been warned that severing its “sister city” relationship with Ningbo could cost the local economy up to £100 million a year, according to documents released under pressure. Exit, once entanglement has deepened, carries a heavy price.

Given how this Government – and the Conservatives before it – have used Contracts for Difference and poison pill clauses to lock in long-term renewable energy commitments, it is not unreasonable to ask whether international agreements with China could similarly entrench supply-chain dependencies that a future government with a mandate to end Net Zero would struggle to unwind after the next election. Until the agreement is published in full, we do not know.   

Miliband is not a malevolent figure. He clearly believes Net Zero will help to create a better world. He may also believe that engagement and cooperation with China are marks of political maturity. But he is increasingly reminiscent of the late Victorian and Edwardian romantic idealists – before 1914 – who convinced themselves that commerce and interdependence would soften the rivalry with Imperial Germany. 

After the Mandelson–Epstein affair, not to mention the shady Chagos Islands deal and the Chinese mega-embassy scandal, secrecy and partial disclosure will not wash with voters. In a climate of eroded trust, the only way to determine whether this government is acting in the national interest is through full transparency. As such, Miliband must publish his deal. 

Maurice Cousins

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