The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into financing Chinese wind energy firms‘ expansion across Europe, laying the groundwork for a market dominance now under investigation by the EU for unfair subsidies.
Confidential bank records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveal that, long before European regulators launched their probe, the bank was quietly financing Beijing’s economic foothold in Europe’s wind sector. Between 2016 and 2024, ICBC’s London branch approved over $140 million in loans to help Chinese state-owned companies acquire shares in at least 16 U.K. wind farms, while also facilitating more than $450 million in financing for Chinese energy firms’ operations across the continent, ICIJ reported.
ICBC’s Strategic Engine for China’s Green Ambitions
The bank’s internal memos show a deliberate strategy to align its lending with the Chinese government’s top priorities, including the Belt and Road Initiative and the Made in China 2025 industrial policy. “ICBC tops the chart of the commercial banks in providing financing to the Chinese solar and wind renewables energy market,” ICBC London officers wrote in a 2021 memo, showing the bank’s central role in funding China’s technological rise.
One of the bank’s most significant clients was Goldwind, which is currently the main target of the EU investigation for obtaining grants, tax and preferential bank loans that allegedly helped it outpace its European peers. European officials suspected those firms could offer cheaper prices thanks to Beijing’s generous state subsidies.
Billions in State-Backed Financing
The financial backing for Goldwind extends far beyond the $110 million loan from ICBC London and two other ICBC branches in 2018. A confidential brief for potential lenders, obtained by ICIJ, reveals that the company had received loans totaling about $11.5 billion from five Chinese state banks at favorable rates, along with at least $135 million in government grants for research on advanced turbine models.
The brief touted Goldwind’s insulation from market headwinds. This support has enabled the company, sometimes called “the Huawei of green energy,” to install thousands of turbines across six continents, including in Australia, North America and Europe. Its global revenue topped $10 billion in 2025, ICIJ noted.
A European Dilemma: Clean Energy vs. Strategic Dependence
The EU’s pivot away from Russian natural gas following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine created an opening for Chinese firms to expand in the European wind market. While European manufacturers remain the leading turbine providers in the region, Chinese companies are expanding, according to the trade organization Global Wind Energy Council, raising alarms about supply chain vulnerabilities. Experts warn that increasing dependence on China for critical energy infrastructure could expose Europe to disruption, outages, and cybersecurity risks if geopolitical tensions escalate.
“That is a reality of this new era that we’re in,” said Thilo Hanemann, an economist and global trade expert at Rhodium Group. He noted that the shift has led many governments to reconsider their approach to China to ensure “no individual Chinese investor or bank or company can get to a market position where they could dominate a specific sector area.”
Victor Shih, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego, said that while there are fiscal subsidies from the government budget, a lot of the investment is financed by bank loans. Shih added that the EU is worried about subsidies and that banks are a big part of the puzzle.
The EU’s investigation, part of its broader crackdown on foreign subsidies, has also targeted other industries like electric vehicles and railroad construction. Chinese officials have condemned the probe as “discriminatory and restrictive,” while Beijing urges the EU to halt the investigation. The European Commission has not elaborated on the timeline but confirmed it is “still looking into the rest of the market,” according to an emailed statement.
The Future of Europe’s Wind Market
For the wind industry, the stakes are clear. “We are a continent that is not very rich in resources,” said Zipf, a WindEurope spokesperson. “So for the time being, solar and wind are the two big mechanisms that we can use to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. But now the European Union is also clear that they don’t want to swap a dependency on Russian fossil fuel with a dependency on Chinese turbines.”
The growing scrutiny of Chinese firms in Europe’s wind market reflects a broader global realignment.
