Environment China

Today, we're looking at the topic of environmental standards for different industries in China, and in particular talking to Prof. Yixian Sun of the University of Bath in the U.K. about the findings of his new book published by MIT Press: Certifying China: The Rise and Limits of Transnational Sustainability Governance in Emerging Economies The book explores the potential and limits of transnational eco-certification in moving the world's most populous country toward sustainable consumption and production. Dr Sun identifies the forces that drive companies from three sectors—seafood, palm oil, and tea—to embrace eco-certification. The success of eco-certification, Dr Sun writes, will depend on the extent to which it wins the support of domestic actors in fast-growing emerging economies. Yixian Sun is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Development at the University of Bath, UK. He has a Ph.D. and Master's degree in International Relations / Political Science, from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva. He's a Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project and a co-convener of the ESG taskforce on SDGs. He studies transnational governance, environmental politics, and sustainable consumption, and his research seeks to explain the changing role of China in global environmental governance, including sustainability transitions within China as well as sustainability impacts of China's overseas engagement. For further reading: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/certifying-china https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5271/Certifying-ChinaThe-Rise-and-Limits-of

Today, we're looking at the issue of phasing out coal power in China, looking at a report issued recently by scholars at the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability and the California-China Climate Initiative at UC Berkeley. Our guest is Dr. Ryna Cui, who 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 a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report on the topic of global coal transition. And notably, she joined us on Podcast 84 in November 2019! The report we're discussing today is: "A Decade of Action: A Strategic Approach to Coal Phase-Down for China." It discusses a strategic plan to retire China's old or outdated capacity even as the country builds new coal plants. This is in line with government strategies, which posit that new coal should help meet peak loads and ensure stable electricity supplies even as clean energy should supply most incremental energy or electricity overall. The report has three recommendations: 1. Conduct a plant-level review to identify an early retirement schedule and strategy. 2. Combine this strategy with an analysis of renewable energy, grid, storage and transmission investment to fund these investments and to replace any lost tax revenues. 3. Evaluate the job losses and their composition at the county level, and provide support for job training. Questions we cover: How does this study build on the work we discussed two years ago, with the five criteria for prioritizing retirements? How do carbon prices and water come into the calculation? How do you quantify/assess the benefits of the retirements, especially those related to human health? How are the retirements distributed across provinces? Are flexibility retrofits really necessary and economical? Are you assuming that provinces will do a lot more trading of electricity? How do you think the present push for energy security will affect coal plant retirements? What types of jobs are lost when coal plants retire? What types of jobs would they qualify for retraining on? Or do they mostly end up taking buy-outs and just moving to completely different industries? Do coal industry workers generally move in search of new work? What's new in the latest IPCC chapter you co-authored on energy systems? For further reading: Ryna Cui et al., "A Decade of Action: A Strategic Approach to Coal Phase-Down for China," Center for Global Sustainability, 2022, at https://cgs.umd.edu/research-impact/publications/decade-act-policy-opportunities-china-begin-coal-phase-down-while. Jiang Lin et al., "Large balancing areas and dispersed renewable investment enhance grid flexibility in a renewable-dominant power system in China," Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, February 2022, DOI:10.1016/j.isci.2022.103749, at https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/publications/large-balancing-areas-and-dispersed. IPCC AR6 Chapter 6 (Energy Systems): https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_Chapter06.pdf.

In today's Chinese language Environment China podcast episode, we turn to the topic of women working in environmental and sustainability fields. We join two professionals to talk about their unique and interesting experiences and stories, and explore what's new in their particular fields. Today's guests are Si Jialing, who works on green finance at the British Embassy, and Zhang Miao, founder of R Cubic, who is sometimes known as the Walking Wastepedia. In terms of career paths, the two represent the extremes of having entered the field by chance, or having cultivated a topic on a straight line from academic study to professional career. We ask what challenges they face in their respective fields, and what advice they have for newcomers to the workplace. 实在是听过到太多次"环保和可持续圈还是女生多"（也确实是事实），我们萌生了一个想法：那为什么不干脆做一系列在"可持续议题工作的女性"播客，一起来聊一聊她们独特又好玩的经历和故事，探一探她们所在行业的新鲜事呢？ 于是「环境中国」便有了个这期节目，在这次初尝试中，我们请到了在英国大使馆做绿色金融的佳灵和行走的"垃圾百科"张淼。她们或误打误撞入了圈，或从读书到工作一直在这个领域深耕，都逐渐在可持续议题的工作中找到了自己所关注和热爱的地方。她们在各自领域都有着什么样的挑战？对初入职场的小伙伴又有着什么样的建议呢？欢迎收听本期「环境中国」播客。

In today's episode of Environment China, we bring you up to date on recent climate and energy developments in China, especially how the renewed quest for energy security affects clean energy and carbon goals. We also address how coal price reforms affect renewables, and the situation of green power trading and corporate renewable energy procurement. We'll also briefly touch on the results of the Two Sessions of the National People's Congress. Today our guests are Liu Yujing, China Power Manager at RMI China, and Caroline Zhu, Senior Low Carbon Electricity Analyst at S&P Global, and a past colleague of Yujing's at RMI.

Today we're speaking to Andy Klump, the CEO and Founder of Clean Energy Associates, a company that provides services in the field of solar PV and battery storage quality assurance, supply chain management, and engineering. He founded the company in 2008 after working for several years at Trina, in an era before China was even a leader in solar manufacturing. Andy is an expert in world solar supply chains who is frequently quoted in publications such as PV Tech / PV Magazine, as well as in mainstream media. In today's episode, we cover: The scale of the largest solar players The upcoming solar and battery technologies and whether China is a tech leader The overall health of the Chinese solar industry The main challenges in the industry right now Whether other countries have the chance to compete with China on solar given its leading position now The relative complexity of he solar supply chain compared to the battery supply chain The extent to which materials supply bottlenecks will continue in both industries How clean energy will evolve—will it still be central plants, or will distributed RE plus storage play more of a role in China than it has so far?

In today's episode of Environment China, host Anders Hove hosts a special, work-related talk with Ye Ruiqi (Angel) of Greenpeace East Asia, Prof Zhang Sufang of North China Electric Power University, and Katerina Simou of the German Energy Agency (dena) about the topic of data centers, which are having an increasing effect on the environment and climate due to their rapidly rising energy consumption. In this episode, we talk not only about how data center operators are trying to go green (a topic we discussed with Angel on Environment China back in November 2019), but also the related topic of flexibility. Data center flexibility is potentially important because it enables data centers to modulate their load to better meet the needs of the grid, which in turn would enable greater uptake of renewable energy such as wind and solar. Since data centers in China are now considered one of the energy-intensive industries subject to the Dual Control policies—which limit energy consumption and energy intensity of production—data centers are already facing pressure to become more efficient. In the future, China's carbon neutrality policies will undoubtedly push data centers to adopt renewable energy to support their growing energy loads—which, in turn, will require more flexible operations. In this podcast, Anders and his guests discuss their joint research of data center flexibility in China and Europe. The research was performed under the Sino-German Energy Transition Project, which is implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, in partnership with the China National Energy Administration, and German and Chinese implementation partners including the report's lead author, dena. The research includes interviews with industry experts and companies on topics such as time-shifting of data and cooling loads, real-time geographic shifting of loads, the pros and cons of relocating data centers to colder climates for greater cooling efficiency, and using on-site energy storage to participate in power markets. They also discuss whether the many obstacles data center operators currently see to becoming more flexible are likely to be overcome—and what policies would help. Links: "China 5G and Data Center Carbon Emissions Outlook 2035," Greenpeace East Asia, 2021, at https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/6608/electricity-consumption-from-chinas-digital-sector-on-track-to-increase/. "Clean Cloud 2021, Greenpeace East Asia, 2021, at https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-eastasia-stateless/2021/04/03a3ce1a-clean-cloud-english-briefing.pdf.

Today, for the BEN 2021 Year-in-Review Podcast, the core Beijing Energy Network team discusses the most exciting events and learnings from 2021. The Beijing Gang includes Alice, Cale, Cecilia, Florent, Hailey, Helena, Joyce, Li, Nick, Nina, Richard, Sally, and Xi Xi. In this podcast we discussed: - What brought each of us to the Beijing Energy Network - Our picks for most informative 2021 BEN events - Interesting people we met at BEN - The biggest change BEN brought to our life in 2021

By popular request, the podcast turns to the topic of electric vehicles and trying to look at this from a market perspective instead of a policy perspective, and really examine how the market works and how it breaks down in terms of EV characteristics and market shares. Today we are speakng to two EV experts: Tu Le of Sino Auto Insights, a mobility consultancy, and of China Evs and More podcast; and James Gao (Gao Tianjian) of Mercedes and the Beijing Energy Network. In this podcast we discuss: Why EV sales in China are surging What types of vehicles are seeing the most growth, and how similar Chinese vehicles are to EVs abroad How the market breaks down in terms of foreign vs domestic How China is able to scale up manufacturing of potentially globally competitive products, and which EVs have the most export potential The situation with battery swap, which is now expanding from NIO and BAIC to new players The charging situation for China's apartment dwellers We end the podcast with a game of buy-sell-or-hold, where we challenge our guests to identify the probability of different future EV scenarios, such as whether a Chinese EV will be a top seller worldwide (outside of China) in 2025. China EVs and More is available on all the finest podcasting platforms. You can follow Sino Auto Insights and listen to their live podcasts on Twitter Spaces here: https://twitter.com/SinoAutoInsight

https://twitter.com/derznovich Access our Live event on the link above!! Just a short teaser to tell you about an experiment we are planning to try on Monday morning BJ time, Sunday night U.S. time. Joyce and I will be hosting a Twitter Live interview with James Gao of BEN and Tu Le of Sino Auto Insights and the China EVs and More podcast. If we manage to figure out the technical stuff, it will start at 8:00 am Monday China time, and that's 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific on Sunday. In this upcoming episode, we are going to talk about the China EV market, which is poised to surpass 3 million vehicles this year and 5 million next year. We're going to talk about China's EV startups, international brands, and what makes China so disruptive in the EV space. We'll touch on some issues like range, design, battery size, and charging. We'll bring it back to the issue of emissions and the environment, and take your questions. If all goes well, we'll play a game of buy-sell-or-hold with our esteemed guests, and our audience will get to play too! So looking forward to seeing you there with us, LIVE, on the Environment China podcast on Twitter Spaces, Sunday night US time, Monday morning China time! You can access the Live event on the link above.

The food industry has a major ecological and climate impact. A wide variety of efforts are underway to reduce that impact, including regenerative 'agriculture, development and promotion of new or existing plant-based foods, and organic agriculture. In the EU and UK, for example, 40% of agricultural land use is influenced by the top 10 food brands and supermarkets. While many are currently part of the problem, given their size and influence, they can be, and need to be part of the solution. Our guests today are Jinqi Yu of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation and Yifan Yang of Oatly. Jinqi currently works as consultant for Food Program at the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. She is dedecated to accerlerate the transition towards a circular economy and has been working with the foundation since 2016. Yifan is the sustainability manager at Oatly. She is responsible for the holistic sustainability in the value chain of Oatly. Founded in the 1990s, Oatly is a Swedish food company that produces alternatives to dairy products from oats. Oatly has boomed in Shanghai since entering the China market in 2018. The Swedish oat-based drink is one of the fastest growing milk alternatives in the market and has a devoted fan base worldwide. "The Big Food Redesign," Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2021, at https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/resources/food-redesign/overview. Oatly Sustainability Report 2021: https://a.storyblok.com/f/107921/x/5f77aca2c2/oatly-sustainability-report-2021-web.pdf "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Dairy Sector A Life Cycle Assessment," United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on Dairy Carbon Emissions, 2010, at https://www.fao.org/3/k7930e/k7930e00.pdf