Environment China
Environment China is a bilingual podcast from the Beijing Energy Network. The show features conversations with advocates, entrepreneurs, and experts working in the environmental field in China.
Today's podcast looks in detail at the market's expectations for carbon pricing in China, based on the results of the China Carbon Pricing Survey 2020, at http://www.chinacarbon.info/. The survey has been around for long enough to provide a view of how market expectations have changed over time and what types of companies are seeing the most changes. We get into a lot of discussion that goes beyond the actual findings in the report, like how asset values are likely to change, what it means that so few respondents view the ETS as having modified investment practices, and how the results would compare if the same survey was done in Europe.
Our guests:
Huw Slater is the Lead Climate Specialist at ICF’s Beijing office and supports the EU-China ETS Platform. He is the lead author of the China Carbon Pricing Survey report.
Dimitri DeBoer leads the china office of Client Earth, a European NGO focused on environmental law, which works with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. He is also special advisor to the CCICED, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
Wang Shu is lead management consultant at ICF. He is a former director in the Climate Change Department in the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission and has over ten years of experience working on climate change and clean energy, especially related to regional and national carbon markets.
Special note: Due to technical difficulties, we had to re-record parts of the podcast. As a result some (but not all!) portions refer to "this year" as 2020 and "next year" as 2021. The miracle of time travel! If something seems confusing, just mentally modify to the year that seems correct, given that we knew then and still know that trading will begin in 2021, not "next year" as is stated in several spots!
Two weeks into the Biden administration, and we’ve arrived at the fourth and final episode of our short series talking about US-China cooperation on energy and climate. Today, we host special guest Lili Pike, past organizer and host of the BEN podcast and now journalist at Vox.com, where she has written about U.S. China cooperation. She was previously at China Dialogue in Beijing.
Lili and Anders review the recent comments from John Kerry and Zhao Lijian about US-China climate negotiations, discuss technologies where the two countries lead, and talk about whether the Biden administration's turn towards multilateralism might help or hinder climate discussions with China. We also touch on green finance, the Green Climate Fund, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
We’ve arrived at Episode 3 of our series talking about the Biden administration and what it means for US-China cooperation on energy and climate, with a special emphasis today on subnational cooperation, with Dr Fan Dai. We hone in on how the countries could work together on developing pathways for low-carbon energy transitions and potentially coordinate on areas where the focus is now on scale up, and no longer on the now discarded concept of "burden sharing."
Dr Fan Dai is the Director of the California-China Climate Institute at University of California, Berkeley. has played a significant role leading California’s collaboration with China on climate, energy and environment. She was appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr as Special Advisor on China. Under Brown, Dr. Dai chaired the state’s China Interagency Working Group, and acted as the state’s liaison on its critical economic and environmental initiatives on China. Previously, Dr. Dai served as senior advisor at California Environmental Protection Agency. Dai is a graduate of Berkeley Law, University of California, and holds a doctoral degree on Environmental Policy and Economics from State University of New York.
Welcome to Part 2 of our podcast series about the Biden administration and what it means for US-China cooperation on energy and climate.
On this episode, we have four energy and climate experts from the U.S. and China. Li Xiang of Peking University, Alvin Lin of the Natural resources defense council, Li Shuo of Greenpeace East Asia, and Ma Li of the US-China Energy Cooperation Program. We did the interviews on the same day, but separately and using different software, so the sound is slightly different at the transitions.
Bios:
Li Xiang is an adjunct research professor at Peking University Energy Institute, and previously served at the Rocky Mountain Institute and prior to that at the International Energy Agency and China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute. He has a PhD and bachelor’s of engineering from Tsinghua.
Alvin Lin is China climate and energy policy director in the Natural Resource Defense Council's Beijing office. His areas of expertise include the environmental impacts of coal and shale gas development, energy efficiency technologies, nuclear power safety regulations, and air pollution law and policy. Prior to joining NRDC, Lin worked as a litigator and a judicial clerk in New York City. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a JD from New York University.
Li Shuo is the Senior Climate & Energy Policy Officer for Greenpeace East Asia. He oversees Greenpeace's work on air pollution, water, and renewable energy. Internationally, he coordinates the organization's engagement with the United Nations climate negotiation (UNFCCC). Li Shuo studied International Law and US-China relations at Nanjing University and the Hopkins Nanjing Center.
Ma Li is the executive director of US-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP), a private sector-led non-profit public-private-partnership platform created in 2009 as a result of an official dialogue between then US president Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2009. Li holds a master degree in Public Service Administration and a BA degree of International Business from the DePaul University.
Stay tuned next week for Part 3!
Today we are beginning a new series of podcasts on the hot topic of US-China energy and climate cooperation, starting with Professor Joanna Lewis of Georgetown University.
Dr Joanna Lewis is Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Energy and Environment and Director of the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program (STIA) at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She is also a faculty affiliate in the China Energy Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Lewis leads Georgetown’s US-China Climate Research Dialogue and US-China Energy and Climate Working Group. Lewis holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Duke University.
In this episode, we touch on:
- Lessons from past U.S.-China climate and energy cooperation, a topic Prof Lewis addressed in a recent paper here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/766400;
- Which areas of climate cooperation the Biden administration is likely to focus on;
- Whether Trump tariffs on solar and other clean energy technologies will be removed;
- Whether the U.S. can still cooperate with China on technology innovation;
- And whether the two countries still believe they can learn from each other on climate policy.
Methane is responsible for an astonishing one-quarter of today's global warming, and that makes it an urgent issue, right alongside CO2. But most analysts focus mainly on CO2 and the energy mix, not other greenhouse gases, and those who do look at methane mainly focus on the U.S. or other major gas producing countries. So today, we’re going to talk about a couple of recent EDF reports and scientific articles about methane related policies in China.
Our guest today is Zhang Jianyu. Dr Zhang is Chief Representative of the China Office of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and he is also Vice President and member of the Executive Team at EDF. He helped found the China program of EDF and helped it become the first international NGO registered with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2017. Dr Zhang has contributed to the establishment of China’s Carbon Trading System, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, as well as columns, and book chapters.
Methane, like CO2, is a greenhouse gas. Pure methane has the chemical formula CH4. Most comes from oil and gas wells or from coal mines. It’s more efficient and less CO2 intensive than coal or oil, but direct methane emissions have a far larger global warming effect per molecule than CO2, with a global warming effect over 80 times higher per molecule (when measured over a 20-year period). About 25% of today's global warming is caused by methane emissions.
The IEA estimates that the world’s oil and gas industry can feasibly cut methane emissions by 75%, and of that, 2/3 would be at no cost.
China has committed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and to peak carbon emissions before 2030. Currently (as of this recording on Dec. 18, 2020), it is unclear if that includes all greenhouse gases or just CO2.
For further reading:
Ramon Alvarez et al., “Assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas supply chain,” Science, July 2018: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398/186.full?ijkey=42lcrJ/vdyyZA&keytype=ref&siteid=sci.
Scot M. Miller at al., “China’s coal mine methane regulations have not curbed growing emissions,” Nature Communications, February 2019, at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07891-7.
“Measuring Methane,” EDF, 2020: https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/EDF-Methane-Science-Brochure.pdf.
“Methane: A Global Challenge, A Global Opportunity,” EDF, 2020: https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/methane-a_global_challenge_a_global_opportunity.pdf.
“China Signals Methane is a New Climate Focus for Curtailing Energy Emissions,” EDF, June 2019, https://www.edf.org/media/china-signals-methane-new-climate-focus-curtailing-energy-emissions.
“Challenge, opportunity as China begins to tackle fossil fuel methane emissions,” EDF, March 2019, at http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/03/08/challenge-opportunity-as-china-begins-to-tackle-fossil-fuel-methane-emissions/.
Today, we’re going to be discussing a new report, Green Development Guidance for BRI Projects Baseline Study, published by the BRI International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) and backed by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
The BRIGC is a joint Chinese and international coalition, and in December last year the coalition began work on the current study, which formulates a classification framework and positive and negative lists for BRI investments. With the team leaders Mr. Erik Solheim, Special Advisor World Resources Institute (WRI) and Ms. Zhou Guomei, Executive Director-General, Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center, Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), the report was written by a team of Chinese and international scholars and experts.
Our first guest is Dr. Christoph Nedopil Wang, the Founding Director of the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Green Finance (IIGF) of the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing, China. Christoph is a member of the Belt and Road Initiative Green Coalition (BRIGC) of the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Christoph holds a master of engineering from the Technical University Berlin, a master of public administration from Harvard Kennedy School, as well as a PhD in Economics.
Our second guest is Wang Ye, Research Analyst in WRI Finance Center. She works to coordinate the work and engage in researches related to promoting sustainability in the financial system in China. Ye holds an Erasmus Mundus Master in Sustainable Territorial Development from the consortium of University of Padova, K.U. Leuven, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) and Dom Bosco Catholic University (Brazil), specializing in Applied Economics. She also holds dual Bachelor degrees in Journalism and International Finance from Beijing Foreign Studies University in China.
For further reading:
“Green Development Guidance for BRI Projects Baseline Study Report,” BRI International Green Development Coalition, December 2020, at http://en.brigc.net/Reports/Report_Download/202012/P020201201717466274510.pdf.
Ma Tianjie, “Advisors propose new system to regulate China’s overseas investments,” China Dialogue, December 4, 2020, at https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/advisors-propose-new-system-to-regulate-chinas-overseas-investments/.
Lihuan Zhou, Sean Gilbert, Ye Wang, Miquel Muñoz Cabré and Kevin P. Gallagher, “Moving the Green Belt and Road Initiative: From Words to Actions,” World Resources Institute, November 2018, at https://www.wri.org/publication/moving-green-belt-and-road-initiative-from-words-to-actions
In this episode, we’re going to take a deep dive on modeling China’s long-term, carbon-neutral energy future with Yu Sha and Ryna Cui of the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability. Dr. Yu and Dr. Cui co-lead the China Program at CGS.
Dr. Ryna Cui is an expert in global coal transition and climate and energy policies in China. Her research focuses on climate change mitigation, and sustainable energy transition, and she is experienced in global and national integrated assessment modeling of China, India and the United States. She is currently serving as a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report on the topic of global coal transition.
Dr. Sha Yu is an expert in clean energy, finance, and economic modeling. She leads the development of GCAM-China and engagement on China’s long-term strategies and transition pathways. She has over 10 years of experience working on policy development and implementation in China at the national, provincial, and local levels. Dr. Yu is also a leading expert on China integrated assessment modeling and analysis. She also leads projects in other developing countries, such as India and Vietnam.
This is a pretty data-intensive episode. Here are some time stamps and quick notes:
2:30 About the GCAM model, it's main advantages and uses.
3:50 Using the GCAM model to identify and prioritize which coal plants should be closed early.
6:10 Which regions would see the most early retirements under the model.
6:46 The history and flaws in China's Risk Alert system (traffic light system) for provinces approving new coal plants.
10:25 The Five Strategies, which are: (1) Promoting sustainable demand while restructuring the economy. (2) Decarbonizing electricity generation and shifting electricity system to a more diverse system, based mainly on renewables but supplemented by nuclear and CCS (carbon capture and storage). (3) Electrification of major energy consuming sectors such as transport and buildings. (4) For hard-to-electrify sectors or technologies, switch to low-carbon biofuels or other low-carbon fuels. (5) Negative emissions including carbon capture and land use changes to cover emissions from hard-to-decarbonize fields.
12:25 The key graph (page 2 of this PDF: https://cgs.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2020-09/5%20Strategies_China%202060_english.pdf). Renewables accounts for 70% of primary energy in 2050, remainder comes from nuclear and CCS. Similarly, over 70% of electricity comes from RE.
14:00 Estimated installed solar in 2050 of 2500-3500 GW and for wind 1500-2500 GW, so around 10x present installation figures. Wide range depends on economics of alternatives as well as demand growth, which in turn depends on efficiency measures and other changes.
16:10 Carbon storage - which regions have potential storage sites (oil and gas reservoirs, aquifers, offshore) and what variables determine storage economics? Which sectors best for capture? The importance of transportation distance as a variable in CCS economics.
18:05 Transport: Harder to decarbonize because it is heterogeneous. Light-duty vehicles can be electrified fairly quickly. Other transport subsectors may peak emissions later.
19:04 Buildings sector - not hard to decarbonize based on technology, but faces implementation challenges, especially for retrofit. Needs more policy incentives.
20:10 Nuclear: Model assumes nuclear restricted to coastal locations, but still finds quite significant growth of nuclear.
20:40 How are various models used by policy makers? Models provide evidence to base policy decisions on, but it should be a two-way conversation. Models can also help financial players evaluate risks given trends and policies.
22:37 Top recommendations: (1) No new coal. (2) Power market reform / economic dispatch. (3) Cross-sectoral planning instead of just looking within sectors, like just planning EVs. (4) Including non-CO2 in carbon neutrality target, since otherwise difficult to control emissions in methane and agriculture. (5) New growth model for coal-dependent regions. (6) Integrate fiscal policies at provincial and national level, and within financial sector, with low-carbon transition.
25:48 How you got started in energy modeling.
For further reading:
Today, we’re talking about a new book, China Goes Green, by Judith Shapiro and Yifei Li.
The book explores the promise and drawbacks of Chinese environmental governance in light of the urgency of climate change and other issues. It examines Chinese environmental governance through examination of specific cases of environmental programs such as the war on air pollution, waste sorting, tree planting campaigns, dam building, the best and road, and overall energy and environmental planning.
Judith Shapiro is Director of the Masters in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development for the School of International Service at American University and Chair of the Global Environmental Politics program. She was one of the first Americans to live in China after U.S.-China relations were normalized in 1979, and taught English at the Hunan Teachers’ College in Changsha, China. Professor Shapiro’s research and teaching focus on global environmental politics and policy, the environmental politics of Asia, and Chinese politics under Mao. She is the author, co-author or editor of nine books including including China’s Environmental Challenges (Polity 2016), Mao’s War against Nature (Cambridge University Press 2001). Dr. Shapiro earned her Ph.D. from American University’s School of International Service. She holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and another M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her B.A. from Princeton University is in Anthropology and East Asian Studies.
Our second guest is Yifei Li. Yifei Li is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Shanghai and Global Network Assistant Professor at NYU. In the 2020-2021 academic year, he is also Residential Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. His recent work appears in Current Sociology, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environmental Sociology, and the Journal of Environmental Management. He received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Bachelor’s from Fudan University.
Further reading:
https://www.amazon.com/China-Goes-Green-Coercive-Environmentalism/dp/1509543120/
https://chinadialogue.net/en/cities/as-china-goes-green-should-the-world-celebrate-its-model/
In today's podcast, we’re talking about why it’s been so difficult to get financing for renewable energy in the Belt and Road, also known as the Belt-Road-Initiative or BRI. (Note the podcast was recorded prior to the announcement that China would pursue carbon neutrality by 2060.)
Our first guest is Ma Tianjie, Tianjie is managing editor of China Dialogue and several times past guest of Environment China. Before joining China Dialogue, he was Greenpeace's Program Director for Mainland China. He holds a master’s degree in environmental policy from American University, Washington D.C.
Our second guest is Bai Yunwen. Yunwen is the director of Greenovation Hub. Founded in 2012, Greenovation Hub is, an independent Chinese NGO advancing sound climate and environment governance. Over the years, Yunwen has worked on climate diplomacy, energy policy, and international financial flows. Recently, she and her colleagues have worked with financial regulators to strengthen environmental and social practices on belt-and-road investments.
The Belt-and-Road Initiative, aka One Belt One Road, was launched in 2013, and though membership is unofficial it is said to include between 70 countries (Wikipedia) to over 130 countries (according to the BRI website). It’s stated goal is to “promote the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas, establish and strengthen partnerships among the countries … and realize diversified, independent, balanced and sustainable development in these countries.”
An analysis by MERICS showed that of US$ 75 billion in completed investments, two-thirds was energy related, most of which was in coal, oil, and gas projects.
https://merics.org/en/analysis/powering-belt-and-road
The vast majority of coal plants outside of China are funded by investment from China. https://qz.com/1760615/china-quits-coal-at-home-but-promotes-the-fossil-fuel-in-developing-countries/
According to a Greenpeace analysis in 2019, China’s BRI investments have supported 67 GW of coal plants and just 12 GW of wind and solar plants. https://www.power-technology.com/news/china-belt-and-road-wind-solar/
The genesis of today’s podcast is a report by Greenovation Hub, which discussed some of the reasons why it is difficult for Chinese wind and solar companies to invest and do business abroad. https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/11952-chinese-firms-struggle-to-fund-renewables-projects-overseas/
We don't do this often, but in today's podcast we address some breaking news: President Xi Jinping's announcement that China will peak carbon emissions before 2030 and set a new goal of net-neutral carbon emissions by 2060. The speech, delivered remotely to the United Nations during Climate Week, caught energy and climate watchers by surprise.
In this mini-podcast, recorded less than 24 hours after the announcement, host Anders Hove gathered three top energy and climate experts (and long-time Beijing Energy Network speakers) for a short and rapid-fire panel discussion:
Li Shuo is senior global policy analyst at Greenpeace East Asia.
Lauri Myllyvirta is lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Kaare Sandholt is chief expert at the China National Renewable Energy Centre, at the NDRC Energy Research Institute.
To keep the show notes brief, here are the items mentioned or referenced by the guests:
The China National Renewable Energy Centre's China Renewable Energy Outlook (full version, may not work in certain browsers: http://boostre.cnrec.org.cn/index.php/2020/03/30/china-renewable-energy-outlook-2019-2/?lang=en; executive summary: https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Publikationen/PDFs/2019/CREO2019_-_Executive_Summary_2019.pdf) CREO's 2050 Below 2 Degree scenario anticipates non-fossil energy reaching 65% of primary energy (26% wind, 18% solar, 8% nuclear, 6% hydro, 8% other RE). Under this scenario, China would ramp up from installing around 40 GW of solar and 35 GW wind in recent years to 60 GW of solar and 55 GW wind in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), eventually peaking annual installations at 150 GW each wind and solar in 2031-2035), and finally reaching around 2,000 GW of wind and solar in the late 2030s. (China currently has over 200 GW each of wind and solar installed.)
See also various publications using the China-SWITCH model, such as Enabling a Rapid and Just Transition Away from Coal," One Earth, 2020 at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442150/ and "Rapid cost decrease of renewables and storage accelerates the decarbonization of China’s power system," Nature, 2020, at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16184-x.
Lauri mentions his recent article on China's covid recovery investments and how they break down by high-carbon versus low-carbon: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-covid-stimulus-plans-for-fossil-fuels-three-times-larger-than-low-carbon
Kaare mentions Document #9 on Deepening Reform of the Power Sector. You can read more about that 2015 policy here: https://www.raponline.org/blog/a-new-framework-for-chinas-power-sector/
This episode was produced by Anders Hove and edited by Veronica Spurna.
Renewable energy is the key to reducing China's carbon emissions, and for many years experts have seen electricity markets as essential to the promotion of clean energy.
In this episode, we check in with a leading U.S. expert on China's power sector, Michael Davidson, to discuss two recent papers he has published on the topic of power markets and renewable energy in China.
Michael Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego. His research and teaching center on the engineering implications and institutional conflicts inherent in deploying low-carbon energy at scale, with a particular focus on China, India, and the U.S. He holds a PhD in engineering systems from MIT and was previously a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
For further reading:
Hongye Guo Michael R. Davidson, Qixin Chen. Da Zhang, Nan Jiang, Qing Xia, Chongqing Kang, Xiliang Zhang, Power market reform in China: Motivations, progress, and recommendations, Energy Policy, October 2020, at https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0301421520304444.
Pre-publication version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jya_iJmW-YqKZqqNg9552LNc-3EYGNY7/view
Davidson, M. R. and Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, Avoiding Pitfalls in China’s Electricity Sector Reforms, The Energy Journal, 2020, at http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3504.
Pre-publication version: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cx330qg
Some useful definitions:
Electricity spot market: For most commodities, a spot market refers to buying and selling of a commodity for immediate delivery. For electricity, the spot market usually consists of two markets with different lead times: the day-ahead and intraday markets. Market players on the day-ahead market trade in electricity for the following day. For intraday markets, the hour-ahead market is most common.
Dispatch: Since electricity cannot be stored in power lines, the entity operating the power grid must continuously adjust the output of its power plants (or energy storage units) to meet fluctuations in electricity demand. This process is called the dispatch of power plants.
Economic dispatch: Economic dispatch is the short-term determination of the optimal output of a number of electricity generation facilities, to meet the system load, at the lowest possible cost, subject to transmission and operational constraints. The main idea is that, in order to satisfy the load at a minimum total cost, the set of generators with the lowest marginal costs must be used first, with the marginal cost of the final generator needed to meet load setting the system marginal cost.
Curtailment: Curtailment is the percentage reduction (usually by the grid operator) of output of a renewable power plant below what it could have otherwise produced. It is calculated by subtracting the electricity that was actually produced from the amount of electricity the plant could have produced given available wind or solar resources.
Capacity factor: Also known as the capacity utilization factor, this is the ratio of the actual output from a power plant over the year (kWh) to the maximum possible output from it for a year (kWh) under ideal conditions. If a power plant has a maximum output (capacity) of 1,000,000 kW, and it operates at a capacity factor of 100% of the year, it would produce 1,000,000 kWh x 24 days x 365 hours = 8,760 GWh. In China, capacity factor is usually mentioned in terms of the number of operating hours per year, but the concept is the same (just divide operating hours by the number of hours in one year and the resulting percentage is the capacity factor). A higher capacity factor generally translates to a lower cost of electricity, since capital costs will be spread across more operating hours.
Wholesale vs retail power markets: A wholesale market allows trading between generators, retailers and other financial intermediaries both for short-term delivery of electricity (see spot market) and for future delivery periods. A retail electricity market exists when end-use customers can choose their supplier from competing electricity retailers. In China, this retail market would typically exist mainly for large industrial consumers.
Acronyms:
SERC: State Electricity Regulatory Commission (defunct)
NDRC: National Development and Reform Commission (responsible for all aspects of economic planning and regulation)
NEA: National Energy Administration
Background on the California 2000 electricity crisis:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/107th-congress-2001-2002/reports/californiaenergy.pdf
In 2001, the Congressional Budget Office analysis stated that: "Long-term solutions to California’s electricity problems will most likely require three changes: removing barriers to the addition of generating capacity, eliminating bottlenecks in the electricity transmission system, and removing regulatory restrictions on the sale of power throughout the broad western market... On the demand side, the prospects for successful restructuring would also improve if consumers faced the full costs of electricity and were better able to adjust their use of power in response to changing prices." The report went on to recommend real-time metering (mostly implemented), devices in homes to monitor power use and automatically schedule or interrupt consumption when prices are high.
Here's a blog from leading California expert and California Independent System Operator board of governors member Severin Borenstein, of the University of California Berkeley, that offers specific criticisms of the present state of the California market with respect to consumer participation and utility/ISO communication with consumers: "Why don't we do it with demand?" https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2020/08/24/why-dont-we-do-it-with-demand/
Lastly, here is a fascinating summary from David Roberts of Vox discussing the need for more solar (not less), microgrids, and islanding capability to deal with blackouts and fires in California: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/10/28/20926446/california-grid-distributed-energy
In today's podcast, we talk to two private sector experts working on the topic of corporate ESG - which refers to corporate policies and performance on the environment, sustainability, and governance. In the first part of the episode, we focus on the policies that have driven companies in China towards greater emphasis of ESG, and which companies are working most seriously on the topic of ESG. We discuss the process of certifying the first project in China under a new international ESG standard for infrastructure. And we close by examining what's next for ESG in China.
Our first guest is Dang Anqi. Anqi is an ESG and sustainable investment analyst at Allianz France. She is leading the climate-related financial disclosure and the Sciences Based Targets Initiative at Allianz Investment Management. Her report on sustainable investment won the International Climate Reporting Awards in 2019. (Link: https://www.allianz.fr/content/dam/onemarketing/azfr/common/marque/pdf/BROCH_AZ_AIM_REPORT-2020-EXE_1507.pdf.)
Our second guest is Tracy Li, senior manager at SGS Certification and Business Enhancement. SGS is a multinational company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland which provides inspection, verification, testing and certification services. SGS China was established in 1991 with its head office in Beijing, and now has 78 branches in China, and over 15,000 employees.
This episode could almost serve as a reference document to the topic of ESG in China, and at points there are a lot of laws and acronyms mentioned in the episode. Here are a few of the key resources you may want to have in front of you to keep up.
2019 Climate Bonds Initiative report on China's green bond market: https://www.climatebonds.net/resources/reports/china-green-bond-market-2019-research-report
Major regulator milestones mentioned:
In 2016, the People's Bank of China and other ministries issued the Guidelines on Establishing a Green Financial System: https://greenfinanceplatform.org/financial-measures-database/chinas-guidelines-establishing-green-financial-system
In 2018, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued a directive concerning ESG disclosure: https://www.globalelr.com/2018/02/china-mandates-esg-disclosures-for-listed-companies-and-bond-issuers/
In 2018, the Asset Management Association of China issued the Green Investment Guidelines: https://greenfinanceplatform.org/financial-measures-database/chinas-green-investment-guidelines
International ESG standards mentioned:
Aluminum Stewardship Initiative (ASI): https://aluminium-stewardship.org/
Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS): https://a4ws.org/
The Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure (SuRe) standard: https://www.sure-standard.org/
GIB stands for Global Infrastructure Basel (https://gib-foundation.org/), which manages the SuRe standard.
(Disclosure: In his day-job with GIZ, Anders Hove has worked with SGS China in completing the first SuRe project certification, under the Sustainable Infrastructure Alliance.)
You have probably heard China's carbon market described as the largest carbon market in the world. That's only proper, since China is the largest carbon emitting country and the carbon market will cover the coal power sector, which accounts for around half of the country's emissions.
2020 was originally billed as a major year for climate policy, both globally and in China. Where does China's carbon market policy stand and how is it likely to evolve during the 14th Five-Year Plan period? What announcements should we expect this year?
Our first guest is Stian Reklev, co-founder and reporter with Carbon Pulse, which provides news and intelligence on global carbon markets. He is based in Beijing, where he has covered emissions trading markets and climate policy across the Asia-Pacific region since 2009, first for Point Carbon and then for Reuters, before setting up Carbon Pulse in 2015.
Our second guest is Yan Qin of Refinitiv, who is based in Oslo. Yan Qin is a power and carbon analyst with extensive experience in energy market analysis and quantitative modelling. Her work focus on the short-term outlook for power and carbon trading, supply-demand forecasting, and energy policy insights, mainly for clients at utilities and energy companies. She was power market consultant before joining the Point Carbon team in 2011. Yan holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Oslo.
For further reading:
IEA report on China's carbon ETS: https://www.iea.org/reports/chinas-emissions-trading-scheme
Carbon Pulse: https://carbon-pulse.com/category/china-national-ets/
Refinitiv's annual global carbon market report and survey: https://www.refinitiv.com/en/resources/special-report/global-carbon-market-report#form
It's been a busy year for energy policy in China, and we're only in the beginning of July. This summer and fall are crucial periods in the design of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and many listeners are already aware that there are big issues at stake for climate and the environment. In today's podcast, we're releasing the audio of a Beijing Energy Network webinar held in mid-June. Recent Environment China podcast host Anders Hove and China Dialogue's Wu Yixiu delivered a joint presentation covering a lot of important details of this process. Topics touched on include:
- Recent renewable energy trends in China.
- Why China is seeing a wave of new coal plant approvals.
- Whether wind and solar are likely to grow in 2020, and how much.
- Whether China will enhance its climate ambition or adopt a carbon cap.
- What the new energy law and clean energy consumption mechanism drafts are all about.
Some reading:
The 14th Five-Year Plan: What Ideas are on the Table?
https://chinadialogue.net/climate/11434-the-14th-five-year-plan-what-ideas-are-on-the-table/
Current Direction for Renewable Energy in China:
https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/current-direction-for-renewable-energy-in-china/
In this week's podcast, we sit down with Chloe Dempsey to talk about meat, alternative protein, and the environment in China. Chloe is a research fellow at the Cellular Agriculture Society and Yenching scholar at Peking University, where she is completing a Master’s of Economics. Chloe’s thesis focuses on the market for cultured meat in China, with a focus on consumers. Chloe also has an interest in alternative protein, sustainable food solutions and agriculture across Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Chloe comes from both Australia and Ireland, both countries whose key exports to China are agricultural and food related.
Chloe has previously lived in Brazil and has supplementary qualifications in philanthropy and social impact design. Chloe’s undergraduate studies were in Law and International relations, and over the last four years she has studied, worked and volunteered across Greater China and the Asia Pacific in commercial law and for environmental and social causes.
Since 2016, Chloe has been predominantly resident in Beijing and in her spare time enjoys long distance running and tracking down Beijing’s best jianbing.
Asia is the world's top region for infrastructure investment, and these investments need to be sustainable in order to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A fair number of standards now exist to help investors assess the sustainability of infrastructure, and one of those specific to the debt market is green bonds.
In today's episode, we sit down with Xie Wenhong, China Program Manager at the Climate Bonds Initiative. Wenhong has experience working on development and energy in Southeast Asia, and previously worked under Dr. Ma Jun at the Center for Finance and Development of Tsinghua University. He holds an MA in International Policy Studies from Stanford University.
Show notes:
Greening China's Bond Market, by Sean Kidney:
Introduction to China's green bond market in China Dialogue (2018): https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10387-International-investors-eye-China-s-green-bonds
Energy security was already a hot issue in China well before the global oil price collapse and Covid crisis. Now, as the country listens to the government list its coming priorities during the long-delayed Two Sessions of the National People's Congress, energy security is topic Number One.
In this episode, we sit down with Dr Michal Meidan, Director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES), to talk about China, energy security, and oil and gas markets. Before joining OIES in July 2019, she headed cross-commodity China research at Energy Aspects. Prior to that, she headed China Matters, an independent research consultancy providing analysis on the politics of energy in China. She is the author of numerous academic papers, articles, and books related to China, energy, and political economy.
Dr Meidan is also a past speaker at the Beijing Energy Network and has memories of BEN going back over a decade.
Show notes:
China Key Themes for Energy in 2020 (written in January): https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/China-Key-Themes-for-2020.pdf
Geopolitical Shifts and China’s Energy Priorities, March 2020: https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Geopolitical-shifts-and-Chinas-energy-policy-priorities.pdf
Dr Meidan’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/michalmei
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies podcast: China’s Rocky Road to Recovery: https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/chinas-rocky-road-to-recovery-2/
This is the second part of a two-part episode featuring Lauri Myllyvirta, an air pollution and climate expert from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Lauri has over 10 years of experience as an air pollution and climate expert. He has led numerous research projects on air pollution, assessing air quality and health impacts of energy policies, including more than a dozen modeling studies of the air quality and health impacts of coal-fired power plants. Lauri has also contributed to numerous publications around energy solutions and air pollution. He served as a member of the Technical Working Group on regulating emissions from large combustion plants in the EU. He lived in Beijing for many years and was previously a senior member of the Greenpeace East Asia team based in Beijing.
In this segment, Lauri and Environment China host Anders Hove discuss some of the issues and questions raised by Lauri's presentation and his other research.
This is the first part of a two-part episode featuring Lauri Myllyvirta, an air pollution and climate expert from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Lauri has over 10 years of experience as an air pollution and climate expert. He has led numerous research projects on air pollution, assessing air quality and health impacts of energy policies, including more than a dozen modeling studies of the air quality and health impacts of coal-fired power plants. Lauri has also contributed to numerous publications around energy solutions and air pollution. He served as a member of the Technical Working Group on regulating emissions from large combustion plants in the EU. He lived in Beijing for many years and was previously a senior member of the Greenpeace East Asia team based in Beijing.
In this segment, Lauri has recorded a video of a presentation he made recently on the impact of Covid-19 on air pollution worldwide as well as the potential for a green stimulus to make this economic recovery focus on more high quality growth. In the second part, we engage in a short Q&A. If you want to view the presentation and video, Lauri is planning to upload the presentation to YouTube, and we’ll have that link in the show notes when it’s up.
You can find more content from CREA on their website at: https://energyandcleanair.org/.
China, like other major countries, is actively working on measures to stimulate the economy and recover from the coronavirus. The question is, how can China make its stimulus measures as green and beneficial for the economy as possible?
In this episode, we cover what types of stimulus have been done in the past, what the principles should be for green stimulus, and what ideas each of us have for how green stimulus could be done this time in China. Finally, we talk about whether it’s likely to actually happen.
Guests are:
Dimitri DeBoer, who started and leads the china office of Client Earth, a European NGO focused on environmental law, which works with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as well as the Supreme People’s Court helping with training of environmental judges. Dimitri is also special advisor to the CCICED, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
Wu Yixiu, who leads the Climate communications team with China Dialogue. She has been following and writing about China’s low carbon transition pathway, annual emissions, and other climate related topics for several years. Recently, Yixiu and frequent Environment China co-host Yao Zhe published a piece in China Dialogue, "Stimulating the economy sustainably after coronavirus," at https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/11896-Stimulating-the-economy-sustainably-after-coronavirus.
Other items referenced in the episode include:
Statement of European leaders on green stimulus: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eu-leaders-back-green-transition-in-pandemic-recovery-plan/
Various ideas from the U.S. on green stimulus: https://medium.com/@green_stimulus_now/a-green-stimulus-to-rebuild-our-economy-1e7030a1d9ee
In this special mini-episode of Environment China, we again talk to Li Shuo of Greenpeace, following up on his earlier interview on the Biodiversity COP, as well as discussing how the recent crisis in China could affect the country's policies and efforts on the broader topics of biodiversity, wildlife protection, and climate change.
Li Shuo references a column by recent podcast guest Lauri Myllyvirta, of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, available here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-has-temporarily-reduced-chinas-co2-emissions-by-a-quarter
Here is another article illustrating graphically how the reduction in industrial activity has influenced emissions, as observed by satellites. The question is, will additional stimulus lead emissions to rebound even more strongly?
Although Beijing still frequently suffers from stretches of heavy air pollution, the city has made astonishing improvements since the Airpocalypse of 2013, when for several days readings of PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter, the most dangerous type of pollution in regional air pollution) literally went off the charts of the U.S. Embassy air quality monitor, which tops out at the U.S. EPA Air Quality Index value of 500. Today, Beijing averages around 40-50 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter over the course of a year. That's still worse than international standards (the World Health Organization guideline is 10 micrograms/m3 on an annual basis for PM2.5), but showing steady improvement since 2013, when the annual average was well above 100. Progress elsewhere in China has been less dramatic.
In this episode, we sit down to discuss air quality in Beijing and China with Lauri Myllyvirta, Lead Analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). Lauri has over 10 years of experience as an air pollution and climate expert, and has led numerous research projects on air pollution, assessing air quality and health impacts of energy policies, including more than a dozen modeling studies of the air quality and health impacts of coal-fired power plants. This research has been published and utilized in numerous countries in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Europe, Turkey, South Africa and others. Lauri has also contributed to numerous publications around energy solutions and air pollution and is asked frequently to attend seminars and conferences as an expert speaker. He served as a member of the Technical Working Group on regulating emissions from large combustion plants in the EU and currently serves as a member of the expert panel on regulating SO2 emissions in South Africa.
For a more visual look at the improvement and other changes in Beijing air quality, see this table of monthly Beijing air quality average readings derived from U.S. Embassy data: https://twitter.com/derznovich/status/1215877238094061569
CREA recently published data on the pollution trend in cities across China, showing how SO2 has seen the greatest improvement, along with PM2.5, while ozone has worsened: https://twitter.com/CREACleanAir/status/1217620620730609666/photo/1
The full report is available from CREA here: https://energyandcleanair.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CREA-brief-China2019.pdf.
Finally, CREA has also analyzed which Chinese cities are on track to meet the most recent air quality targets for this winter: https://twitter.com/CREACleanAir/status/1217620635398156295/photo/2.
In this episode, our panel sits down with Edmund Downie to discuss China’s vision for a Global Energy Interconnection, or 全球能源互联网 in Chinese. Downie is an energy analyst with the Analysis Group in Boston, and former Fulbright Scholar at Yunnan University in Southwest China. In past roles with Yale and the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, Downie has written extensively on South and Southeast Asia political and social issues, including for Foreign Policy magazine.
While many Western analysts are skeptical about the Global Energy Interconnection plan, and its fantastical map of a world crossed by ultra-high voltage transmission lines stretching from New Zealand to Greenland and everywhere in between, Downie takes a nuanced view: “There are many things that GEI can achieve reflecting the interests driving GEI… The key is to think of [GEIDCO, the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization] as a planning and research body that’s occupying a niche between global energy governance debates and more on-the-ground work [with countries] to figure out how they want to do their energy planning.”
Various versions of the Global Energy Interconnection world map can be found online. Here is one from a 2019 GEIDCO slide showing the 9 horizontal and 9 vertical grids proposed under the plan: https://twitter.com/damienernst1/status/1136574555995148289.
Ultra-high voltage (UHV) refers to alternating-current lines over 1,000 kV or over 800 kV for direct-current lines, under a Chinese definition. A summary of UHV development in China can be found here: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-11-06/china-to-speed-up-construction-of-ultrahigh-voltage-power-lines-101343605.html. A typical high-voltage transmission line in the U.S. would be 360 kV AC, and the U.S. operates a handful of high-voltage (+/- 500 kV) DC lines such as the Pacific DC Intertie, built in 1982, that connects California to the hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest.
Edmund Downie, “Sparks fly over ultra-high voltage power lines,” China Dialogue, January 29, 2018, at https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10376-Sparks-fly-over-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines.
Edmund Downie, “China’s Vision for a Global Grid: The Politics of Global Energy Interconnection,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 3, 2019, at https://reconnectingasia.csis.org/analysis/entries/global-energy-interconnection/.
Biography of Liu Zhenya via Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Zhenya
Ned references Michael Skelly of Clean Line Energy. Here is a recent article about the company’s recent demise: Ros Davidson, “Ambitious Clean Line Energy ‘wrapping up’,” Windpower Monthly, February 1, 2019, at https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1523646/ambitious-clean-line-energy-wrapping-up.
The scenario analysis game this time features a report from the Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science research agency. The report is P. Graham et al., “Modelling the Future Grid Forum scenarios,” CSIRO and Roam Consulting, 2013, at https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=csiro:EP1311347&dsid=DS3. Note that the scenarios are highly simplified and the summaries we read out are not direct quotations from the CSIRO report.
Biodiversity loss and climate change have may of the same causes: ecosystem destruction both releases carbon into the atmosphere and shrinks the area available for threatened species to survive. Nature-based solutions are emerging as a framework to address these challenges together. Most recently, China and New Zealand were named co-chairs of the Nature-Based Solutions Track for the Climate Action Summit, one of nine areas the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is focusing on for solutions to the climate crisis.
In this podcast, we sit down with Xi Xie from the Nature Conservancy to discuss Nature-Based Solutions in China and China's role in promoting NBS worldwide.
Xi Xie is the Climate Change and Energy Director for TNC China. She has 12 years of experience working on international climate efforts, both in government and NGO roles. She holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University.
In the show, participants discuss a paper written in part by authors from TNC, , "Natural climate solutions," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), September 5, 2017, at https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2017/10/11/1710465114.full.pdf.
Other terms discussed in the show are:
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_Conservation_of_Nature
The World Resources Institute (WRI): https://www.wri.org/.
This week we join past guest and recent host, Anders Hove, for a journey to Inner Mongolia, Northern California, and Central Europe, where he recently tested the charging infrastructure on three long-distance electric vehicle road trips. We examine how EVs compare on fueling cost, emissions, and convenience, and discuss how the experience compared across the three regions, along with potential recommendations for policy-makers.
Anders is a non-resident fellow with Columbia University's Center for Global Energy Policy as well as Project Director at GIZ China.
He is the co-author with Prof David Sandalow of Columbia University of the recent paper "Electric Vehicle Charging in China and the United States":
https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/electric-vehicle-charging-china-and-united-states
Yiyang Chenzi and Cynthia Wang serve as co-hosts this week. We hope you enjoy the program!
Li Shuo, Senior Global Policy Advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, gives a preview of the biggest issues on the table at the climate COP (Conference of the Parties) this year in Madrid, and what role China will likely play in the proceedings.
Li Shuo's official bio: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/li-shuo
Li Shuo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lishuo_gp?lang=en
Link to COP 25 official web page: https://unfccc.int/cop25
(Note: episode republished due to sound issues.)
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a carbon trading mechanism that has enabled developed countries to offset their own emissions by investing in or purchasing credits from carbon reduction projects in developing countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Development_Mechanism.
China's data centers currently consume over 2% of China's electricity production and that share is growing quickly. In today's episode, we sit down with Greenpeace East Asia's Ye Ruiqi to discuss how some companies are turning to renewable energy to meet the growing need for clean energy to power data centers.
A link to the report Powering the Cloud: How China's Internet Industry Can Shift to Renewable Energy, from September 2019, can be found here: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/24112/electricity-consumption-from-chinas-internet-industry-to-increase-by-two-thirds-by-2023-greenpeace/
Ruiqi is a climate and energy campaigner from Greenpeace East Asia, and covers topics like China’s renewable energy development, power market reform, and IT sector sustainability. Before joining Greenpeace, Ruiqi worked as a grassroots organizer at the US Public Interest Network after graduated from University of California Santa Barbara.
In the episode, we reference Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). You can find an explanation of different types of PPAs (physical and virtual) from the Rocky Mountain Institute here: Physical PPA https://rmi.org/insight/virtual-power-purchase-agreement/
Ruiqi also mentions the career of Li Junfeng. An older bio can be found here ( http://www.thejei.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/205-697-1-PB.pdf ), but we note that Li is now retired from the positions mentioned here, though he is still very active on issues of renewable energy and climate change policy.
Professor David Sandalow is the Inaugural Fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Prior to Columbia, David served in senior positions in the US government – at the White House, State Department and US Department of Energy. He’s also served in various roles at the Brookings Institution, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the World Wildlife Fund. In this episode we discuss developments in China climate policy over the past year, as well as the most recent news concerning China’s carbon trading system as well as a prominent speech on energy security by the Premier of China, Li Keqiang.
David Sandalow, Guide to China Climate Policy 2019, Columbia University
https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/explore-guide-chinese-climate-policy-2019-david-sandalow
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Chinese-Climate-Policy-Sandalow/dp/1726184307
Yao Zhe and Tom Baxter, The 14th Five Year Plan: what ideas are on the table? China Dialogue, August 2019
We sit down to talk about the recent history and far future of urban planning and design in China and worldwide with Sebastian Ibold, Project Director for the project Sino-German Cooperation on Low Carbon Transport, GIZ. Sebastian has a rich past life as a consultant on urban planning issues and consulting in Asia, and his current work relates to rethinking urban mobility, shaping the city around an integration of the needs of users, technology, and sustainability.
At the end of the episode, we play a scenario analysis betting game based on a report, "The Politics and Practices of
Low-Carbon Urban Mobility in China," from the Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, and the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University. The report is available at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/42416653.pdf.
The episode's title is from a poem by William Cowper: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/god-made-country.
Sebastian references Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen. Her biography, bibliography, and various links can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskia_Sassen.
As the way China eats transforms, food activism and education are rising to address these changes. This week’s episode of Environment China collaborates with Erwin Li of Chewing the Fat, a podcast from Yale’s sustainable food program, to interview Zhou Wanqing about her research and grassroots organizing in China. Starting with an overview of the country’s food system, we then discuss the ways Chinese people have historically eaten, and what this means for a trend like a plant-forward diet. In other words, in what ways should place and culture inform or complicate our approaches to food and agriculture, even ones sometimes seen as universal? How do collaborations then emerge to transform the relationships between people, food, farming, and the environment?
With the U.S. announcing its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and China now embracing the concept of global climate governance, it’s easy to forget that 20 years ago, discussion of climate change in China was almost nonexistent. One person particularly well-placed to reflect on China’s transformation into a purported environmental hero is Barbara Finamore, founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China Program and author of the book Will China Save the Planet?. Although China has certainly come a long way from the days when NRDC first started sharing its experience on energy efficiency and “negawatts” in the 1990’s, it is still a land of contradictions. We sat down with Barbara to explore China’s ongoing battle to fundamentally transform its economy in order to protect public health and reduce emissions, and the challenges it faces both domestically and globally.
You can check out Barbara’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Ch
Environment China is back from hibernation with a series of new interviews! First up, today’s episode was recorded live at the Beijing Bookworm International Literary Festival. It was an honor to be invited back for the second year in a row to host a panel about the biggest stories coming out of China’s energy and environmental field over the past year. Our producer and host Lili Pike moderates a panel with three expert guests: Ma Tianjie, Managing Editor of chinadialogue Beijing; Alvin Lin, Climate and Energy Policy Director at Natural Resources Defense Council China; and Lijing, a freelance environmental journalist based in Beijing. They discuss the top environmental news stories from the past year from how the trade war has impacted environmental governance to the evolution of the Belt and Road Initiative. Tune in for a riveting conversation, and we’ll be back in two weeks with our next episode!
Also be sure to check out our new website, created by our producer Erin Wong! https://www.environmentchinapodcast.com/
http://bookwormfestival.com/events/blf-2019-environmental-panel/
马天杰，中外对话北京运营副主编。加入中外对话之前，他担任绿色和平中国大陆项目总监。他于2009年取得美利坚大学国际环境政策硕士学位。他的英文博客Panda Paw, Dragon Claw (中文名：萌猛哒) 致力于从主流媒体以外的视角去记录和分析中国海外投资的足迹。
如果您有兴趣关注中外对话，请登录中外对话官网 https://www.chinadialogue.net/
如果您有兴趣阅读Panda Paw, Dragon Claw 博客, 请点击 https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/
Ma Tianjie is Beijing Managing Editor of chinadialogue. Before joining chinadialogue, he was Greenpeace's Program Director for Mainland China. He holds a master’s degree in environmental policy from American University, Washington D.C. His English blogPanda Paw, Dragon Claw, is a conversation about China‘s footprint beyond its border.
If you are interested in learning more about chinadialogue, please visit https://www.chinadialogue.net/
If you are interested in reading Panda Paw, Dragon Claw, please go to https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/
This week, we have a special episode that was recorded LIVE in Beijing at an event on July 5th. Environment China hosted an evening panel discussion on the growing trend of podcasting and podcasters in Beijing. We were joined by hosts and producers from four relatively new Beijing-produced podcasts, including: Zhang Ya Jun from the Wo Men podcast, John Artman from the China Tech Talk podcast, Brendan Davis from the Big Fish in the Middle Kingdom podcast, and our own Noah Lerner from Environment China.
The evening was moderated by another of our hosts and producers, Kate Logan. As you'll hear, Kate led an interesting discussion on the origin stories and motivations behind each of the shows, as well as on some technical talk and tips on how each of the guests sets up, records, and produces their show.
“十三五”煤控目标如何实现，“一带一路”建设如何促进绿色发展，是目前中国能源环境问题的两个重要焦点。华北电力大学袁家海教授作为电力经济和电力低碳转型的专家，从电力发展的角度就以上问题开展了深度研究。在这期节目中，袁教授将通过实地调研案例，与我们分享他在 “十三五”电力行业控煤政策研究以及“一带一路”绿色电力合作研究中的发现。如果希望进一步阅读相关研究成果，可以在网络上搜索《持续推进电力改革 提高可再生能源消纳》，下载这份报告。
Our guest this episode is Professor Yuan Jiahai from North China Electric Power University, an expert in electric power development and its low carbon transition. During the past few years, Prof. Yuan has done extensive research on how China's electric power development is meeting coal cap goals. He also travelled to a number of countries to research on China's green electric power cooperation with Belt and Road Initiative countries. He is very excited to share his findings with us.
In today’s episode, we check the millennial box and take a look at blockchain -- and its energy implications. Alarming headlines came out earlier this year charting the rising energy consumption of Bitcoin and tracing the majority of its mining operations back to China. We are joined by Sophie Lu, head of China Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, who has written a report on the topic. She describes why Bitcoin mining consumes so much electricity, why it is taking place in China, and what future power consumption might be as demand for Bitcoin rises but its manufacture also becomes more efficient. Sophie also discusses the broader potential environmental benefits of the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin – particularly its use in making supply chains more transparent and facilitating distributed energy grids.
在国际NGO“野生动植物保护国际”负责具体的研究项目几年之后，木兰科植物研究者赵兴峰和灵长类动物研究者宋晴川认为对动植物的保护比起研究更加紧迫。随着中国生态文明建设的不断深入，兴峰和晴川与几个志同道合的朋友共同创立了社会企业“大戟自然”，希望利用自己的科研背景、国际NGO的工作经验以及商业化的模式，为中国大大小小的自然保护地提供管理运营的解决方案。如果希望进一步了解大戟自然，可以关注“大戟自然”的微信公众号。
Our guests for this episode are Song Qingchuan and Zhao Xingfeng, who are both researcher-turned-social entrepreneurs in ecological protection. After working in international NGOs on special research projects for a few years, Song and Zhao decided to make the change and be the change in their ways to protect the ecological environment they are passionate about. By combining their technical expertise and business minds, Song, Zhao and a few like-minded friends established Daji Nature, a social enterprise that offers business solutions to the management of protected areas in China, which they believe is practical and replicable.
What if we could turn smog into diamonds? This seemingly far-fetched idea is actually not so far from reality: a Dutch designer recently installed a tower in one of Beijing's most well-known art districts which does exactly that. While the installation is more art than long-term pollution solution, what if the growing movement of pollution-focused art in China could influence policy and the way that environmental issues are regulated, thus posing scalable impacts?
We sit down with Dr. Kathinka Fürst, assistant adjunct professor of environmental policy at Duke Kunshan University, to discuss her recent research on smog art in China. Dr. Fürst sheds light on how artists are confronting pollution challenges with creativity and innovation, as well as the role that art could potentially play by impacting policy. She also touches on her previous research on environmental civil society in China as a pollution regulator. You can read more about Dr. Fürst's work on her webpage: https://dukekunshan.edu.cn/en/environment/faculty/kathinka-f%C3%BCrst-phd.
在良好的环境中工作、生活，是我们每个人都应当享有的权利。当环境污染侵害到了我们正常工作和生活的权益，我们可以通过法律途径要求污染者停止污染，向他们获取赔偿，维护自己的权益。然而，不具备环境法律权益知识的污染受害弱势群体，是否会被剥夺通过法律维护自身权益的权利？今天做客环境中国播客的嘉宾，中国政法大学王灿发教授，几十年来除了在环境法领域不断深耕，也致力于用自己的知识服务于社会大众，提高公众的环境维权意识，维护污染受害者的环境权益。他于1998年创立了全国第一家免费向污染受害者提供法律帮助的民间环保组织，并于1999年开通了污染受害者法律帮助热线，目前已经帮助700多起污染案件受害者向法院提起诉讼。希望了解更多污染受害者法律帮助中心，可以微信搜索“环境法律帮助”，关注他们的公众号。
We all have a right to work and live in a healthy environment. When pollution impedes this right, legal measures can be taken on behalf of victims. What happens to those who do not know their legal rights? How do victims that are not aware of environmental rights advocate for pollution compensation?
Our guest on Environment China today is Professor Wang Canfa, a veteran environment law expert who is a vehement advocate of spreading legal knowledge to all members of society. In 1998, he established the first grassroots environmental NGO, China Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, to provide legal help to pollution victims and opened a telephone hotline to serve as many people as possible. So far, he and his organization have successfully helped victims to file over 700 law suits on pollution cases. Professor Wang Canfa is devoted to improving public awareness on environmental rights and dedicated to providing safeguards to victims of pollution. Please visit www.clapv.org to find out more about China Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims.
Meet Joe and Carrie, the couple spreading the zero waste gospel in China. The dynamic duo opened the first zero waste store, “The Bulk House”, in China this year, selling products to help others live the zero waste lifestyle they adhere to. In today’s episode, they walk us through a day in the life of a zero waster - guiding us through everything from how to eat without waste to the world of eco-friendly toothbrushes and toilet paper. They also reflect on their choice to start a business rather than a non-profit in order to have a wider impact. For more information on their shop and movement, search “The Bulk House” on WeChat.
过去几年来越来越多的人讨论或参与生态旅行，但什么才是真正的负责任旅行呢？罗鹏是倡导负责任旅行企业生地行的创始人。过去五年来，她坚持自然教育，认为保护自然在于行动和育人。她为在城市生活的小朋友提供亲近自然、深入动植物保护地的机会，同时还为偏远保护区的少数民族文化保护与传承、农村经济发展等提供了良性循环、多方受益的解决方案。如果想了解更多有关生地行的故事，可以关注微信公众号ecoaction。
Our guest for this episode is LUO Peng, founder of EcoAction, a responsible travel advocate. Peng has shared with us many of her stories of bring young Chinese urban dwellers to protected areas in rural and remote China, not only exposing them to nature and animals, but more importantly planting the seed of eco-education. At the same time, she has engaged and enabled the local children and community to connect with the “outside world” and preserving the local (and often ethnic minority) culture as well as developing the local economy. You can find out more about EcoAction at ecoactionnow.com.
水质问题尤其是农村地区的水质问题一直都是大家关注的焦点，然而这些问题到底是什么，是什么引起的，带来了什么影响，如何去解决是千村千面，各不相同的。任晓媛和她创立的MyH2O水信息平台希望倡导公民科学意识，通过在地大学生、环保社团、返乡青年和当地居民等进行实地调研，了解问题，搭建水质信息平台，为农村对接饮水安全资源，至今已集结各地团队走入近千村庄收集水安全信息。如果希望进一步了解晓媛的水信息平台，可以关注微信公众号MyH2O。
Our guest for this episode is Xiaoyuan “Charlene” Ren, founder of MyH2O - Water Information Network, a platform that collects information on drinking water status in rural areas across China. Charlene believes that citizen science is the way to go, so her team, together with college students, local communities and young people that returned to their hometown, is building a network of water information across close to 1000 villages, with the hope to help increase access to clean and safe water resources in regions that are most in need.
Over 600 million Chinese people live in water-stressed regions. And perhaps nowhere are China's water challenges more acute than in the dusty farm-town regions of Xinjiang, along China's old Silk Road. This episode follows a 2000-year journey to hear the water conservation story of one town, Turpan, from an ancient underground canal system ("karez"), to a paradoxical modern irrigation effort that only exacerbated water table depletion, to a complete rethink of how communities can conserve their water.
We sit down with Jiang Liping, a Senior Irrigation Engineer at the World Bank who recently completed a six-year water conservation project in Turpan. The episode explores how satellite data, a switch from growing wheat to grapes, and a revamp of water conservation accounting were able to help restore water back to Turpan's rivers, lakes, and ecosystems.
南太平洋的巴布亚新几内亚拥有亚太地区尚存最大的热带雨林。现代史上规模最大的土地掠夺也在这片土地上发生。2014年至2016年间，全球见证追踪了一条从巴新森林到美国零售店的供应链，总计约九千英里（1.4万公里）。全球木材贸易导致了古老的巴新雨林被非法砍伐、环境遭受破坏、原住民的生活受到侵犯。全球见证的亚太森林项目负责人殷贝贝做客环境中国，追寻着雨林木的足迹，为大家讲述巴新非法木材贸易的故事。
Papua New Guinea has the largest rain forestry in Asia Pacific. It is also where the largest land grabbing is happening in modern history. From 2014 to 2016, Global Witness has tracked a supply chain of 9,000 miles from rain forestry in PNG to retail stores in the United States. Global wood trade has caused illegal deforestation, environmental degradation and invasion to the life of indigenous people in PNG. Our guest for this episode is Yin Beibei from Global Witness, who is in charge of the NGO’s forestry program in Asia Pacific region. She traced the footprint of woods from rain forestry and shared her story in tracking illegal wood trade in PNG.
Solar panels and wind turbines are probably the first things that come to mind when you think of solutions to climate change. A less prominent but equally critical solution is adopting a plant-based diet. Studies show that the meat industry contributes 15% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Our guest today, Peggy Liu, is the founder of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE), a Shanghai-based environmental non-profit. She also serves on the board of Project Drawdown, a global research project that ranks the top solutions to climate change. Through her work on the project, she realized that what we put on our plate is key to solving climate change – adopting plant-based diets ranks as Drawdown’s #4 solution and eight of the top 20 solutions are food-related. As we previously discussed on our Green [Soy] Bean episode, beef consumption in China is rising. Peggy set out to address this source of emissions by launching Food Heroes, a JUCCCE program that teaches kids and their families how to eat a diet that is healthy for the body and planet. Food Heroes employs games and characters to make eating this diet fun. A broader lesson from Peggy’s work: sometimes the best solutions to climate change are not packaged as such climate solutions per se. Peggy has found that health benefits are strong motivators for families to adopt a meat-free diet in China. If emissions drop because families want to eat healthier, that’s a win-win according to Food Heroes. For more about Food Heroes, JUCCCE, and Peggy Liu, you can explore their website here: https://www.juccce.org/about
在中国，野生动物保护和生物多样性保护越来越引起人们的重视。然而在开展动物保护的同时，我们更需要做的是保护动物的栖息地，只有保护动物赖以生存的生态环境系统不被破坏，野生动物才能得以持续繁衍和生存。这意味着野生动物保护和生物多样性保护的工作需要各个环节的参与，包括专家学者、当地政府、志愿者团体以及当地社区，甚至还有远在城市的我们。今天做客环境中国播客的嘉宾是中国科学院动物研究所的解焱副研究员。她是中国生物多样性保护领域的知名专家，于2013年提出保护地友好的概念，并创立保护地友好体系，致力于探索一种将自然保护地、当地社区、各类组织机构和公众紧密联系起来的自然保护和经济发展相结合的模式，希望能在全国推广对保护地友好的生活、生产方式，有效保护自然资源和生物多样性，并在保证生态效益的前提下，使得经济、社会效益最大化。听众朋友可以关注www.baohudi.org，或者微信公众号baohudi了解更多相关信息。
Our guest for this episode is Xie Yan, associate research professor in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is a leading expert on biodiversity in China and has initiated the development of Protected Area Friendly System. Prof. Xie believes that the Protected Area Friendly System provides an effective way to preserve natural resources and biodiversity by increasing income of local communities and mitigating conflicts between nature conservation and economic development.
Doctors abide by a millennia-old Hippocratic oath to “do no harm.” This oath usually refers to patient care, but today’s guest thinks the motto should extend to the environmental standards of the healthcare industry as well. Zhao Ang is the co-founder of Rock Energy and Environment Institute (REEI), a Chinese think tank that researches environment and climate issues. In the episode, he walks us through the impacts of healthcare on the environment from disposing the mercury thermometers Chinese hospitals still use to the supply chain of pharmaceuticals. As for climate impacts, the organization estimates that healthcare contributes 3-5% of China’s emissions and rising as the industry booms. REEI works with the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals alliance to introduce best practices in resiliency, low-carbon policies, and eco-friendly products to China, including facilitating a partnership with three Chinese hospitals. For more information on best practices, see the World Bank report “Climate-smart Healthcare” (English), which REEI translated into Chinese and recently launched in China.
Have you ever crossed frozen rivers to climb 4,000-meter ridges in search of snow leopards? This is a normal day "in the office" for Dr Justine Shanti Alexander. As a Regional Ecologist for the Snow Leopard Trust, Justine supports snow leopard research and conservation efforts in China and Mongolia to further safeguard the species. The cats live in the border regions of Central Asia, spanning 12 countries; the home range of males has been estimated to cover up to 200 km squared - that is half the size of Barbados. Due to the sheer expanse of their range in high remote mountain areas, it is difficult to quantify the population size, but it is guestimated that less than 10,000 individuals remain. Justine tells us how she tracked snow leopards during her PhD and now works with Shanshui (featured in our episode "Nature Conservation: There's an app for that"), training herders working in snow leopard habitats to help protect them. Our guest discusses how saving snow leopards can have trickle down effects, protecting their prey, grasslands, and the local people who coexist with them. China holds 60% of the global snow leopard habitat and therefore plays a key role in its conservation. For more information on Justine's work with the Snow Leopard Trust, visit: www.snowleopard.org
Since Environment China launched in early 2017, there has already been significant change in China’s energy, environment, and climate landscape. In this episode, recorded as a live panel as part of the Bookworm International Literary Festival, we focus on the idea of “transformation,” and have our three guests walk through the backstories behind the China’s biggest environmental and climate headlines, including the latest from China's environmental governance reshuffling, its war on air pollution and with it the growing pains of switching from coal to gas heating, and the evolving debate over when China will be able to peak its carbon emissions.
Joining us is Sophie Lu, Head of China Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Huw Slater, Project and Research Manager at China Carbon Forum, and Dr. Xu Shengnian, Project Officer of the Climate and Energy Team at Global Environmental Institute.
Please note: as this was our first time doing a live podcast recording, there were some slight technical issues with the sound quality that we were unable to fix. Apologies, and thank you for your understanding!
Beijing's smoggy air has sparked a wave of creativity, giving rise to a range of products that aim to protect the public and their health. One innovative start-up, Kaiterra (formerly known as Origins), creates portable, high-accuracy monitors that measure and map the world’s air. Kaiterra's "laser eggs" have shed light on pollution data that was previously hard to come by for consumers in China and worldwide.
We sit down with Liam Bates, co-founder and CEO of Kaiterra, to hear about how Kaiterra got its start, learn how laser eggs actually work, and explore the potential for a small start-up to help solve global air pollution challenges. Sneak preview: Turns out that being a Chinese TV-star DOES prepare one to become CEO of a tech company!
Check out more about Kaiterra on their website: www.kaiterra.com.
Jade Gray set out with a mission to create the “Patagonia of Pizza.” Originally from New Zealand, today’s guest has pioneered sustainable entrepreneurship in Beijing over the past two decades. He is the co-founder of Gung Ho! Ventures, which includes the Gung Ho! Pizza restaurants in Beijing. To become the “Patagonia of Pizza,” Jade’s company has turned their operations inside out looking for ways to achieve holistic sustainability from using upcycled construction materials to cutting power use. In recent years, the company became the third “B Corp” in China. “B Corp” is a designation awarded to businesses that demonstrate excellence in their environmental, community, labor, and governance practices. We talked with Jade about how he has managed to take on sustainability in his relatively small company and how the ideas his company espouses are beginning to take root more widely in China.
You can find Gung Ho! Pizza’s B Corp evaluation here: https://www.bcorporation.net/community/gung-ho-pizza
环保和记者是天然的盟友。环境记者这个行当在中国存在的时间还不是特别久，近年来，在越来越多的记者的见证和记录下，环境问题的曝光率和关注度越来越高。今天的环境中国播客，让我们来听听环境记者的故事。在中国做环境记者是一种什么样的体验呢？石毅是澎湃新闻的一名记者。她从2014年开始关注环境议题，报道涉及生物多样性保护、气候变化、野生物犯罪调查等。她对新疆卡拉麦里违规调减保护区面积的报道推动了保护区的整改；过去2年，她关注中国人和中国企业在非洲投资所引起的环境问题，报道了中国人在纳米比亚涉及象牙贸易，在刚果金涉嫌非法伐木。 2016年，她获得中外对话年度最佳环境记者奖。
In recent years, more and more environmental issues were exposed to the public through the documentation by environmental journalist, a profession that’s relatively new in China. In today’s Environment China Podcast, let’s hear the stories from a Chinese environmental journalist. Shi Yi works for 澎湃新闻 (www.thepaper.cn). Since 2014, she broke the news on topics such as biodiversity, climate change, wild animal poaching, etc. Her investigation has pushed forward the protection of Xinjiang Kalamaili Mountain Ungulate Nature Reserve, which won her the 2016 Best Environmental Journalist Award by China Dialogue. In the last 2 years, she has also investigated the environmental issues caused by Chinese and Chinese enterprises in Africa, such as ivory trade in Namibia and illegal lumbering in Congo.
China has a lot of dams – about 87,000 of them — and has almost one half of the world’s large dams, including the largest, the Three Gorges Dam. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that China’s hydro companies were among the first wave of Chinese companies to zou chu qu -- to "go out” from China in the early 2000s. But while hydroelectric plants represent a source of non-fossil energy, they are also often associated with ecological and social disruption.
In this episode, we chat with Stephanie Jensen-Cormier, China Program Director at International Rivers, about the progress being made by Chinese hydropower companies to minimize environmental impacts domestically and abroad. She has almost ten years of experience working on and researching environmental and China-related issues and is also a long-time member of the Beijing Energy Network. You can read more about Stephanie’s reflections on Chinese overseas hydropower investment in a recent blog post she authored here.
And exciting news — Stephanie’s team is hiring for consultant and intern positions! Please visit the International Rivers website to access the JDs and contact Stephanie if you’re interested in joining the International Rivers team.
近些年来食品安全问题常常见诸报端。人们在思考其背后的原因的同时，也在试图寻找解决方案。今天参与我们对话的嘉宾是绿色和平东亚办公室食品与农业项目组的王婧。过去几年来，王婧和她同事们活跃在环保与生态农业圈，从事食品安全问题研究，倡导现代生态农业在中国的发展。本期节目中，她从政府、企业、农业生产者和普通消费者的不同角度分析了如何推动食品安全体系的建立，同时结合自身的经历介绍了生态农业在中国的发展现状和面临的问题。王婧亦是一名资深生态美食达人，是“吃货拯救世界”微信公众号的主要撰稿人，通过微信平台定期向大家推荐生态食材，推广生态农业和环境保护的理念。搜索chihuozhengjiushijie即可关注。
We are delighted to have Wang Jing from Greenpeace East Asia to share her work experience in the field of food and agriculture in this episode. We have learned the reasons behind food safety incidents and discussed the role of central and local government, business, farmers and consumers can play in addressing the issue. Jing has also shared some of her most exciting and interesting stories on organic farming. She also runs a WeChat public account (吃货拯救世界) on great organic food. Please search chihuozhengjiushijie to follow her.
During the recent international climate talks in Bonn, Environment China partnered with chinadialogue to produce an episode on China’s Belt and Road in the context of the climate conference.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an overseas investment and development framework that has grown to include 68 countries, has taken centre stage in the discussion about how to direct investments away from carbon-intensive industries to clean and sustainable technologies. In this episode, representatives from non-governmental organisations and government officials from the Philippines, Pakistan, and Zambia, weigh in on what the Belt and Road means for climate action overseas.
The episode then turns to Sam Geall, executive editor at chinadialogue, to learn how China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as well as South-South Climate Cooperation, fit into its emerging role on the international climate stage. Sam discusses how China can improve its approach to overseas finance to bring investments in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
网购和外卖极大地便利了我们的生活，但快递包装所消耗的资源和带来的垃圾却是一场生态浩劫。本期环境中国的嘉宾余元过着一种没有网购和外卖的“原始”生活，今天她来给大家讲讲她“不剁手”的极简生活方式。
余元 (Carrie) 是一位在北京创业的武汉女孩。她酷爱户外活动，崇尚极简主义。在践行极简生活方式的旅程中，她认识到了零浪费（zero waste)的生活方式，并创办了自己的社会企业The Bulk House/好思。在北京，余元主办了大大小小的工作坊和分享活动来倡导零浪费的生活方式，如果您对她的活动感兴趣，请关注“ TheBulkHouse好思出品”公众号。
The booming e-commerce is great news for China, but less so when it comes to the impact of waste packaging on the environment. In today’s environment China, our guest speaker Carrie will share the experience of her “old fashioned” lifestyle without any online shopping or food delivery.
Carrie Yu (余元) is the founder of The Bulk House, a brand dedicated to making “zero waste” convenient for everyone through content, events and providing environmentally friendly products. Her minimalism life style was triggered after being fed up of seeing piles of trash dotted around the streets of Beijing. Carrie hosts various workshops and sharing events in Beijing to promote zero waste lifestyle. If you are interested in learning more about Carrie’s events, please subscribe to her wechat channel “TheBulkHouse好思出品”.
Episode 2 of 3 of our miniseries on COP23 in Bonn, Germany. Our Chinese-language episodes will be returning in the following week.
Maybe you’ve heard of the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, or even the ignominious Copenhagen summit. But only the most selfless, committed among us stay tuned-in to the UN climate negotiations through the thrice-a-year intersessional meetings.
During the final days of COP23 in Bonn, Germany, we chat with Li Shuo, an international climate negotiation expert at Greenpeace East Asia, to hear about the inglorious work of parsing through the fine print of UN negotiation text. Li Shuo explains the state of the UN climate negotiations in the post-Paris Agreement, post-Trump era, and describes the full-body, pound-shedding, caffeine-fueled commitment needed to engage in UN climate advocacy, running from meeting to meeting.
One last note: we had a hard time finding a quiet place to record at the COP23 conference; apologies to our audience for the technical difficulties and "ghost-like" sounds in this episode.
BONUS Episode from Environment China!
How many cops does it take to screw in a climate lightbulb? At least 23? This last week, Bonn, Germany, hosted the 23rd "Conference of the Parties" (COP23) -- the latest iteration of the UN climate negotiations that have dragged on since the early 1990s.
Over two weeks, as national delegations from around the world try to hammer down the technical details of the Paris Agreement, tens of thousands of people -- researchers, activists, politicians, journalists, celebrities -- flock to Bonn to take part in the biggest climate event of the year.
But what exactly is all this COP fuss about? In this COP miniseries, we'll be taking a dive into the weeds of the negotiations and the role of China on the international climate stage. But first, we're taking you behind the scenes at the UN climate talks, to hear a cross-section of voices, some young, some old, calling for urgent climate action.
垃圾是人们生产和生活消费的必然产物。近年来，中国城市和农村人们生活水平的提高对垃圾处理容量带来了巨大的挑战。垃圾处理系统就好比是家庭的卫生间，直接决定着我们的健康、卫生和生活质量。 从垃圾处理水平最高的国家和地区的经验来看，无论使用多么先进的技术来焚烧、填埋或者堆肥，源头的垃圾减量和有效回收才是处理垃圾问题的关键。我们的嘉宾陈立雯是一名一线的环保工作者，她从国外留学归来之后扎根在中国农村，帮助村民建立起了垃圾分类的生态管理系统。今天的节目中她会为大家分享她在南峪村实施垃圾分类项目的故事、感悟以及她对中国垃圾问题的洞见。如果您有兴趣进一步了解立雯的实地项目，您可以关注“东西异同”微信公众号。以下链接是CCTV新闻周刊对立雯项目的报道http://tv.cctv.com/2017/09/09/VIDEmAgmEInNAzkwABSZ3uzW170909.shtml
Waste is an inevitable result of human consumption. In recent years, both municipal and rural waste management are challenged by the sheer volume of waste that is still rapidly growing. The waste disposal system directly affects the hygiene, health, and well-being of our lives. Based on international experiences, no matter how advanced the incineration, landfill, or composting technologies would be, it is crucial to manage the waste generation and recycling. Our guest today is CHEN Liwen, an environmental practitioner from China. After studying abroad, she returned to China and started her waste management project in Chinese villages, where she helped to build the sustainable waste management systems. In today’s podcast, Liwen will share her stories and insights based on her experience from the Nanyu village, Hebei Province of China. If you are interested in Liwen’s projects, please subscribe to her Wechat channel “东西异同” (in Chinese). Here is another report on Liwen’s project by CCTV (in Chinese). http://tv.cctv.com/2017/09/09/VIDEmAgmEInNAzkwABSZ3uzW170909.shtml
IPCC指出，全球49%的温室气体排放与城市有关，与此同时，我们正在经历大规模快速的城市化浪潮，预计2030年全球将有60%的人口生活在城市中，而2050年这个数字将增长至70%。这既是机遇又是挑战，城市化过程需要从传统模式向低碳模式转变，而城市的经济发展模式也需要经历转型的阵痛。可以说，城市转型的成败关乎全球2℃目标的实现与否。中国自2010年开始进行低碳试点工作，截至目前已确定了29个省区81个城市进行低碳试点。如何评价中国城市的低碳发展进程？独立智库绿色创新发展中心联合美国劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室，在能源基金会的支持下开展了一项名为“中国城市绿色低碳发展指数”的研究，通过构建一套多维度综合指标体系，选择115个样本城市，收集数据，基于指标体系和城市分类对中国城市重点领域的绿色低碳发展行动和政策的实施效果进行量化分析，追踪和比较城市绿色低碳发展状态和程度。本次中国环境播客请到这项研究的主要负责人绿色创新发展中心的杨鹂博士为我们详细解读这项研究及其主要发现。 The guest of this episode is Dr. Yang Li, the Program Head of innovative Green Development Program (iGDP). Recently, iGDP, Energy Foundation (China), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) China Energy Group launched the China Low-carbon Green Index of City (China Logic) to track green low-carbon development in China’s cities to explore future development models. It is a multi-dimensional comprehensive index, which selects 115 cities as samples, collects data, quantifies green low-carbon development policy implementation and actions, and tracks and compares cities’ green low-carbon development. Yang Li shared the details of this research and key findings.
Most of China’s youth are being raised in urban jungles, with little chance to experience and understand the earth’s tremendous ecosystems. But one intrepid environmentalist from Shandong wanted to see Antarctica so badly she started a crowdfunding campaign to support her expedition — and has been finding ways to teach the next generation about everything from penguins to polar melting ever since.
In this episode, we sit down with Songqiao Yao, an environmental explorer and serial entrepreneur. Songqiao is the founder of WildBound, "a nature-inspired school situated in classroom earth and taught by teacher ecosystems.” Songqiao shares her own story of growing up yearning to explore the world’s environments, and how she is currently leveraging her background in environmental policy, geography and business strategy to instill that same drive for environmental protection in China’s youth. You can follow WildBound on WeChat @野声WildBound.
Note: WildBound is hiring for various positions! If you are interested and have relevant experience in environmental education, conservation, science, sustainable consulting and/or communication, get in touch! They are a growing team with presence all over the world, so you don’t even have to be based in China. Write to Songqiao or send your CV directly to yaosongqiao@gmail.com.
过去几年来，中国深受雾霾困扰，无论是政府还是专家都在积极寻求成因和良策。在北京深圳这样的大城市，基本达成的共识是机动车是PM2.5的主要污染源。于是，在政府大力治理大气污染的同时，具有零排放或低排放的新能源汽车在中国的迅猛发展也就不难理解了。今天做客环境中国播客的嘉宾是来自国际清洁交通委员会的中国团队研究员崔洪阳。洪阳和大家分享了中国新能源汽车的推广概况和经验，也介绍了不同城市的新能源汽车推广的共性和个性，同时还介绍了国内外遇到的共同难题。如果听众朋友希望了解更多内容，可以登录国际清洁交通委员会的网站www.theicct.org或者关注icct微信公众号（搜索国际清洁交通委员会即可）
Our guest for this episode is Cui Hongyang, Researcher in China team of International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), who joins us to discuss the rapid development of electric vehicles in China. Hongyang shares his insights on China's national and local policies and also domestic and international experience. He also discusses the problems we face in the promotion of electric vehicles.
To curb climate change, we need not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to actively suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That's where bamboo comes in. It turns out that bamboo is more than a snack for pandas; it's also an excellent carbon straw, sequestering carbon better than almost any other plant in the world. And given that bamboo grows incredibly fast, and is both strong and light-weight, it also has thousands of potential commercial applications .
In this episode, we sit down with Charlotte King, a Communications Specialist at the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), to learn about the global efforts to scale up bamboo agriculture. Charlotte explains some of the biology behind this super grass. We also learn about other environmental applications of bamboo, including erosion control and a replacement for traditional firewood.
近年来，气候变化毋庸置疑已经成为了全球热点话题。此前中美两国在应对气候变化方面的双边合作以及各自国内政策吸引了广泛的关注。然而随着不久前美国总统特朗普宣布退出《巴黎协定》，局面又有了新的发展。同时另一方面，中国设立气候变化南南合作基金，积极开展合作项目。无论是中美对话还是南南合作，中国本土NGO都在其中发挥了重要作用。
今天做客环境中国播客的嘉宾是来自全球环境研究所GEI的常务秘书季琳。季琳所在的GEI是一家成立于2004年的中国本土非营利性组织，曾积极参与并推动中美两国气候变化的二轨对话，同时帮助中国政府推进落实气候变化南南合作项目，特别是中国对缅甸的气候援助。
We're excited to bring you our first Chinese-language pilot episode: “The Role of Local Chinese NGOs in the Fight Against Climate Change."
Our guest for this episode is Ji Lin, the Executive Secretary at the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), who joins us to discuss China's emergent climate leadership in the aftermath of President Trump's decision to leave the Paris Agreement. We learn about the progress of China's South-South Cooperation Fund and about GEI's work to bring Chinese climate aid to Myanmar.
The California-China climate relationship has been thrust into the spotlight since Governor Jerry Brown of California visited China following President Trump’s Paris withdrawal announcement, and also recently extended the state's cap and trade program to 2030. This relationship could soon be taken to new heights as China prepares to launch the world’s largest carbon market next year and aims to learn from California's cap and trade experience.
We’re excited to invite Chris Busch, Research Director at Energy Innovation and head of the firm’s California policy program, onto our show to walk us through the basics of carbon markets, including California’s revamped carbon market and what China may be able to take away from California's experience thus far as China builds a carbon market of its own. You can read more from Chris in a recent editorial he published in China Daily on how carbon markets enable sustainable growth.
Cities are microcosms of the world’s environmental issues. By 2030, one billion people are expected to be urban residents in China, and some three quarters of global emissions to come from cities. The issues impacting a urban sustainability are numerous: land use layout, public transit, and resource usage, to name a few. With over a hundred cities hosting a population of 1 million or more, China has to consider these issues on an unprecedented scale.
Our guest, Chenzi Yiyang, helps show us the path forward for how cities can become sustainable – by balancing development and environmental protection. Chenzi has worked on addressing urban issues with several international NGOs and development agencies. She tours us through what an ideal city would look like (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist, yet). However, Chinese cities are making strong efforts to develop various eco-city and low-carbon city programs to create scalable solutions to urban sustainability issues. Chenzi breaks down this complicated problem and guides us through the key elements of greening Chinese cities.
Environment China is on summer break this week!
We will be back in two weeks' time, with our regular schedule of episodes and interviews with environmental professionals in China.
Plus, listen in this week for a special announcement about our soon-to-launch series of Chinese-language episodes!
In the meantime... we hope that you are enjoying your summer, too!
Our planet is warming; our ice caps and glaciers are melting. By pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the air, humankind is effectively tinkering with the atmosphere, putting ourselves on a path to dangerous levels of climate change. But what if we could tinker in the other direction, to keep global temperatures at safe levels?
To find out more about the so-called idea of geoengineering and China's related research efforts, we sit down with British expat John Moore, who is Chief Scientist heading China's leading research program on the topic housed at Beijing Normal University. You can read more on John's personal website (http://kaares.ulapland.fi/home/hkunta/jmoore/johnpage.htm), including a recent article he co-authored on whether China will be the first to initiate geoengineering, or by checking out this recent article in MIT Technology Review. John also recommends a recent editorial in Science, entitled, "How to govern geoengineering?".
Lawsuits. If you've seen the films Erin Brockovich or A Civil Action, you're probably familiar with the concept of environmental public interest litigation. In the U.S. and other countries, the birth of environmental laws barely preceded the advent of environmental NGOs, who began suing to make sure those laws were enforced. Because of differences in China's laws and legal system, though, public interest suits have traditionally played little role in environmental enforcement in China.
But this situation is starting to change: recent amendments to China's Environmental Protection Law grant standing to NGOs meeting certain qualifications to raise environmental public interest suits. We’re thrilled to have sat down with Ma Rongzhen, a public interest lawyer at China’s oldest grassroots environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, to discuss the progress and potential for public interest suits to play a greater role in protecting China’s environment. If you're interested in reading more, check out FON's website (Chinese), where you can subscribe to their regular e-newsletter updates on the latest progress for environmental public interest suits raised by FON.
China is the world's largest importer of soy, with more of that soy coming from Brazil than any other country in the world. But what does the journey of a soybean look like? And what is the environmental impact of this massive trade? Luckily, more is being done to transform soybeans into "green beans" than you might realize -- and China is playing a key role in these efforts.
Join us as we interview Isabel Nepstad, programme manager at Solidaridad, a Dutch NGO that promotes sustainable production and consumption of the world's commodities. Isabel's previous experiences working with environmental NGOs in both Brazil and China inform her current work advocating for China to green its massive share of the world's trade in soy and other commodities. You can learn more about Isabel's and Solidaridad's work by checking out the Sustainable Soy Trade Platform (http://sustainablesoytrade.org/) and Solidaridad's website (http://www.solidaridadnetwork.org/), or by following Solidaridad's public WeChat account (search "禾众可持续发展中心").
In recent years, "citizen science" has spread across the globe, allowing people from all walks of life to contribute to scientific studies. For all-encompassing issues such as climate change, this approach has been instrumental in gathering new kinds of data from hard-to-access front lines.
Dr. Peng Kui, Program Manager at the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), has spearheaded a number of citizen science projects in China's Sanjiangyuan region in the west of the country, which hosts the headwaters of China's largest rivers. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Tyson, an expert on global citizen science initiatives at the Wilson Center, has been exploring citizen science initiatives in China and working with partners such as Peng Kui to help design innovative win-win projects wherein local people gather data on the health of these rivers and receive job training in sustainable industries.
On our show, Peng Kui and Elizabeth discuss the prospects for the nascent citizen science movement in China. You can find more on Peng Kui's work on the GEI website (http://new.geichina.org/en/about-us/gei-people-staff-steering-committee-etc/staff/pengkui/) and Elizabeth's work he(https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/elizabeth-tyson), or on the New Security Beat blog of the Wilson Center (https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/).
Just two decades ago, wind and solar only accounted for a fraction of our global energy supply. Now, thanks to the rapid expansion of large wind and solar plants, especially in places like China, the conversation has changed from "whether" we can power our global economy with renewable energy, to "how" and "when".
Joining us is Eric Martinot, founder of the REN21 Renewables Global Status Reports. Eric shares with us about his conviction that the key to a clean energy future will lie in "distributed energy resources" -- things like small scale rooftop solar, microgrids, heat storage, and electric vehicles that can store and sell electricity back to the grid at off-peak hours.
Eric is now based again in Beijing, to launch his Global Initiative for Distributed and Locale Energy (DALE). To learn more or get even get involved in Eric's new initiative, check out http://www.martinot.info/dale
The power grid. Most of us don't think too much about what's behind the switches and the wires and the circuits. Will the lights come on when you flip on a light switch at home or will you be left in the dark? Will those electrons come from a solar farm or from an aging coal power plant? Well, some among us do think a lot about these questions, and more: how can we make our power sector run more efficiently and cleanly? How can we reduce the carbon and pollution footprint of the power sector?
In the second episode in our Green Power mini-series, we chat with Christopher James, a Principal with the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), about China's latest round of power sector reform. We learn why "regional balancing," "economic/green dispatch," and a shift in the utility business-model paradigm are key to decarbonizing China's power sector. Chris joins us with over 30 years' experience working on implementing environmental regulations, and has been in and out of China for over a decade helping to translate this experience into practical improvements in China's power sector management system. To learn more about RAP and Chris' work, check out the RAP website at raponline.org.
In the first episode of our Green Power mini-series, we travel to the winter wonderland of Zhangjiakou in 2022—the year the city, along with Beijing, will host the Winter Olympics. Alongside this ambition, Zhangjiakou has set strong targets for renewable energy growth to combat the air pollution dogging the region. However, the city has been beset with a problem facing China’s renewable energy rollout across the board: its wind and solar energy is being wasted because the power grid continues to favor the existing fossil fuel fired power plants over new sources.
We chat with Anders Hove, Associate Director of Research at the Paulson Institute in Beijing, to learn how Zhangjiakou can overcome this problem of “curtailment” through integration in the broader Jing-jin-ji region—sending its excess green electrons to power electric vehicles in neighboring Beijing, for example. The solutions he describes extend beyond the Zhangjiakou predicament to all of China. Listen to find out what it will take for China to fully utilize its unmatched renewable energy resources before the 2022 Olympics. You can find the the Paulson Institute’s report Going for Gold: Championing Renewable Integration in Jing-Jin-Ji on this topic here.
The financial system is the lifeblood of the global economy, channeling capital to businesses to fuel economic growth -- but this economic growth has often come at the expense of our environment and climate. "Green Finance," then, describes a financial system or a set of financial tools that will help to allocate resources towards a green and low-carbon economy. China has emerged as a key leader of green finance, establishing a high-level G20 green finance study group. But green finance can take on many different forms and involve a host of different actors. So what exactly is green finance, and what's been happening in and around China to promote sustainable investment?
In this episode, we invite Calvin Quek, Head of Sustainable Finance at Greenpeace East Asia, to share his perspectives on what's driving the buzz behind green bonds and green finance in China and what makes an investment a sustainable one. Be sure to keep an eye out for Greenpeace's upcoming work on green finance in the prelude to the One Belt, One Road summit in May of this year.
China's smoggy skies dominate international headlines and threaten public health, spurring China's top policy-makers to declare a "war on pollution." But where does PM 2.5 pollution come from? And what pollution control solutions have actually been working?
We sit down with Tonny Xie, Director of the Secretariat for the Clean Air Alliance of China (CAAC), to explore how local governments implement air pollution control targets, how cities like Shenzhen and Taiyuan are adapting air pollution control strategies to local conditions, and how CAAC is helping connect cities with technologies that may help clean up China's hazy skies. Read more about CAAC on their website: http://en.cleanairchina.org/.
Growing public awareness of environmental issues in China has prompted the rise of media outlets dedicated specifically to environmental topics. Among these, Kedao Media (可道), a new media platform, provides an outlet for Chinese youth to spur awareness and action among their peers on pressing environmental issues -- thus providing a pathway to "sustain the future" for the millennial generation.
We sit down with the president and founder of Kedao, Wu Yanyang, to discuss why he founded Kedao, how the platform became a reality, and how he gets Chinese millennials to care about things like carbon taxes and overseas wildlife protection. You can follow Kedao on WeChat at "kedaogreenpath" or online at www.kedao.info.
Fossil fuel subsidies lower the price we pay for gasoline, heating, and other commodities, but they also incentivize greater consumption of coal and oil – which pollute the environment and threaten the global climate. A recent peer review of China’s fossil fuel subsides found that China spends over 13 billion USD a year on fossil fuel subsidies – and that may be a conservative estimate.
In this episode, we interview Liu Shuang, a Program Officer at Energy Foundation China, to learn about the progress China is making in reforming its fossil fuel subsidies, and about the work Energy Foundation is doing to help China develop more efficient and low-carbon economic policies.
Read more about fossil fuel subsidies in Liu Shuang's piece for chinadialogue here.
Health concerns from food safety scares have compelled some Beijingers to buy imported food. Erica Huang wants to buck that trend by making safe, sustainable food and other products accessible to urban residents of Beijing.
This episode features our conversation with Erica, the founder of Farm to Neighbors, a weekly market that brings together local farmers and other entrepreneurs to sell goods produced using sustainable and eco-friendly practices. We learn about the challenges of organic certification in China and about a wave of “new farmers” – young, educated entrepreneurs who want to ditch cities for farmland.
The Farm to Neighbors market operates on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Grand Summit in Liangmaqiao. You can learn more about F2N by following their WeChat account: farm2neighbors.
We apologize that the audio quality is still not 100% perfect. The problem has since been fixed.
"Renewable energy" typically conjures up images of rooftops decked out in solar panels or wind turbines twirling on a hillside. But there are also less “picturesque” forms of clean energy— including sludge, a byproduct of wastewater treatment. Did you know that an increasing number of U.S. cities are turning sewage into renewable low-carbon electricity? Maybe "poo power" has a future in China, too.
In this episode, we interview Jennifer Turner, director of the Wilson Center's China Environment Forum and manager of the Global Choke Point Initiative, as she relays stories of a "forgotten renewable" and how new applications such as wastewater sludge to energy may transform city systems in the USA and China. Jennifer also explains why we should pay more attention to the art of storytelling.
Find out more about the China Environment Forum here: https://www.
*We apologize for the sound quality in this pilot episode. We've identified the equipment problem, and subsequent episodes will not have this issue.
Local pollution, climate change, and increasing demand all pose significant strains on the availability of clean and reliable water supplies for China's homes, farms, and industries. And all of this translates to real financial risks for companies and investors who rely on water resources in their assets.
In this episode, we interview Hubert Thieriot of China Water Risk about his work to improve valuation methodologies of water risks and his recent case study on ten listed companies in China, "Toward Water Risk Valuation in China."
Find more about China Water Risk here: http://chinawaterrisk.org/.
Download the report "Toward Water Risk Valuation in China" here: http://chinawaterrisk.org/notices/new-cwr-report-toward-water-risk-valuation/.
Tune in to learn about Environment China, a brand-new podcast from the Beijing Energy Network (BEN). We hope you'll join us in listening to our first series of podcasts as we chat with advocates, entrepreneurs, and experts in the environmental field in China and explore why now is the right time for real and positive change for China's environment.
See you next time -- smog or shine!
