Charles Perrow’s theory of normal accidents was devised for systems in which complexity and tight coupling allow a small failure to spread before operators can understand it. The green transition is not a nuclear plant or a chemical reactor. Yet it increasingly has the same structural weakness. Its parts are tightly linked, while governments still treat them as separate markets.
Public debate counts renewable capacity, electric vehicles and net-zero commitments. The physical transition runs through mines, refineries, acids, machine tools, magnets, semiconductors and specialised components. A country may install millions of solar panels and still control little of the industrial system that makes them possible.
READ | AI and sustainability: The cost behind the green promise
The hidden chemistry of the green transition
Sulphuric acid rarely enters climate speeches. Copper production does. That distinction is misleading. Hydrometallurgical extraction of copper, especially from lower-grade ores, consumes large quantities of sulphuric acid. Electrification will require much more copper for vehicles, grids, charging stations, storage and wind power. The International Copper Association estimates that a battery electric vehicle can use about 83 kg of copper, against roughly 9–23 kg in a conventional car. The International Energy Agency calls copper the cornerstone of electricity-related technologies.
This makes China’s 2026 halt to sulphuric acid exports more than an obscure commodity measure. Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, obtained about 37 per cent of its imported acid from China. The restriction threatened the leaching operations that account for more than half of Chile’s refined copper output. A chemical by-product of Chinese smelters became a constraint on copper production in Latin America and, by extension, on electrification elsewhere.
Climate policy is often presented as a test of political will, finance and consumer adoption. Those matter. None can compensate quickly for a missing chemical input, refinery or precision component. The transition depends first on material capability.
READ | India’s green energy transition runs into grid constraints
China’s patient industrial bet
China grasped this earlier than most advanced economies. Its lead in clean technology did not come only from cheap labour, subsidies or final assembly. Beijing invested across the production chain: materials science, refining, process engineering, batteries, solar equipment, rare earths, robotics and machine tools.
The results are visible. China accounted for 54 per cent of global industrial robot installations in 2024. It controls more than 80 per cent of manufacturing capacity at every major stage of the solar-panel supply chain. The IEA estimates that China refines 60–70 per cent of the world’s lithium and cobalt and about 90 per cent of rare earth elements.
These figures matter because substitution becomes harder as one moves upstream. A government can subsidise a module factory. It cannot conjure a supplier cluster, processing knowledge or a trained engineering workforce with the same ease. Moving assembly out of China changes the label on the final product. It may leave the decisive inputs, machinery and technical knowledge where they were.
The green economy is concentrated in China because Beijing treated industrial capability as strategic infrastructure. The United States and Europe treated many of the same capabilities as tradable inputs that global markets would reliably supply. That assumption worked while trade was cheap and geopolitics was calm. It is less convincing now.
READ | Green hydrogen and India’s new dependency risk
The industrial blind spot
Climate politics has concentrated on fossil-fuel companies, emissions targets and renewable deployment. Clean technology supply chains require a different ledger.
Solar modules sold in Europe and the United States are still overwhelmingly tied to Chinese manufacturing. Cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries passes through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the US Department of Labor continues to report child labour in artisanal mining. Polysilicon and other solar inputs from Xinjiang face US import restrictions under laws directed at forced labour.
This does not make solar panels or electric cars undesirable. It changes how their costs should be counted. Pollution, labour abuse, chemical intensity and strategic dependence do not vanish when the final product produces fewer emissions. They may simply occur beyond the consumer’s view and outside the jurisdiction claiming the environmental gain.
A European rooftop panel can therefore be clean in use and compromised in production. An American electric vehicle can cut oil consumption while depending on minerals and processing systems controlled elsewhere. Carbon accounting captures one part of the transition. It does not capture the whole industrial bargain.
Why the alternatives remain limited
Governments and firms are trying to reduce this dependence. They are funding mines and refineries, signing long-term offtake agreements, backing new battery chemistries and encouraging vertical integration. The United States, Europe and India have begun treating critical minerals and domestic manufacturing as matters of economic security. India’s National Critical Mineral Mission covers exploration, mining, processing and recovery, while production-linked incentives support solar modules and advanced battery cells.
Progress remains uneven because a supply chain is more than a row of factories. It includes suppliers, testing laboratories, engineers, logistics providers, process knowledge and patient capital. Mining permits take years. Refining plants are expensive and politically contentious. New chemical processes often remain at pilot scale or cost more than established Chinese production.
The IEA’s recent work shows that concentration is still rising in several critical-mineral markets. In rare earths, refining and magnet capacity outside the dominant supplier continue to lag mine development. Announcing mines without building processing and downstream capacity merely moves the bottleneck.
Countries must decide which capabilities require domestic control, which can be shared with trusted partners and which dependencies are tolerable because substitutes are readily available. Treating every input as strategic would be ruinously expensive. Treating none as strategic would leave the transition exposed at its narrowest points.
Lessons for India’s renewable targets
India’s renewable targets, electric-mobility plans and manufacturing incentives will expand the visible green economy. They will not by themselves create strategic autonomy. A solar module assembled in India may still depend on imported wafers, polysilicon, machinery and chemicals. A domestically produced battery pack may still rely on cells, processed minerals or equipment sourced from abroad.
Installed capacity is therefore an incomplete measure of climate strength. It shows what India has deployed, not what it can build, repair, adapt or replace during a disruption. The same distinction applies to electric vehicles, grid equipment and storage.
India does not need autarky. No large economy can efficiently produce every mineral, component and machine. But dependence is not equally dangerous at every stage. An imported input is manageable when several suppliers exist and switching is cheap. It becomes a strategic weakness when one country dominates processing, replacement takes years and political relations can interrupt trade.
Policy should start with a map of these choke points. The government must identify where India lacks refining capacity, processing chemistry, machine tools, testing systems, skilled workers and dependable suppliers. Incentives should follow that map rather than reward final assembly simply because it produces visible output.
The green transition will be sustained by industrial capabilities that rarely appear in climate pledges. Without a map of those capabilities, subsidies may buy Indian assembly while leaving foreign leverage intact.
Rizwan Manzoor is Assistant Professor in operations management at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad. Kiran J Mahasuar is Assistant Professor of strategy at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research.