Environment China

Building on our 2022 series of Beijing Energy Network roundtables on young professionals in the field of sustainability and sustainable energy, Environment China has been interviewing various sustainable energy young professionals about their experiences and outlooks. In this episode of the series, we talk to Lai Shengling of Vestas. Shengling is a wind resources and micro-site selection engineer for the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas in the Asia-Pacific region. He is mainly responsible for the pre-sales technical support of Vestas, including wind resource and climate condition assessment of the wind farm, calculation of power generation, load verification and safety. In this episode of our podcast we'll explore:

• A day in the life of a renewable energy engineer
• Differences between the Australian and New Zealand markets and the Chinese market
• The dilemmas Vestas faces in the Chinese market
• Renewable energy and renewable engineering jobs

In the third episode of our Women in Sustainability podcast series, we speak to Yang Yifan, the sustainability manager of Oatly. Yang Yifan is concerned about the sustainable development of Oatly's entire value chain in the Asia-Pacific region, meaning she is responsible for the company's sustainable procurement, operations and carbon emission management.

In this Chinese language program we will explore:

• The Sustainability Department of Oatly Global and China
• A day at work in Oatly's sustainable sector
• Oatly's factory in Ma'anshan, Anhui
• Oatly's recent big moves
• Sustainable job hunting tips

第三期播客系列我们邀请到了"Oatly"的可持续经理人一帆——她是Oatly中国区可持续发展经理，关注Oatly亚太区全价值链的可持续发展。一帆主要负责公司的可持续采购、运营和碳排放管理等。我们在节目中将探讨：

• Otaly在中国区的第六个年头
• Otaly全球和中国区的可持续部门
• 在Otaly可持续部门工作的一天
• 可持续打工人内卷吗？
• Otaly在安徽马鞍山的工厂
• Otaly近期大动作剧透
• 可持续求职tips

Today, we're talking about China's low-carbon energy transition and the unique role of State Owned Enterprises, or SOEs.

Our guest is Erlend Ek, Lead Analyst for Energy at China Policy. From 2018-2022 Erlend served as advisor for energy affairs at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in BJ. Prior to that role, he served in various consulting roles at China Policy. He has degrees from the University of Oslo, he studied Chinese at Xiamen University, and he is now at Stavanger University. You can find his content at China Policy.

As sometimes happens, Erlend and I ended up having a longer conversation after I shut off the recording, and I took a few notes from that conversation and I'm inserting it here as an intro to our talk:

• First, Erlend is optimistic on SOEs being able to lead the energy transition, because he sees the central govt moving away from "project economy" (where the key performance indicator is how many projects are completed) to a performance evaluation system based on contribution to low-carbon, tax revenue, innovation.
• In terms of its low-carbon policy, Erlend considers that China is more transparent than the West, and more consistent. He thinks carbon peaking / neutrality is a clear path, the purpose of the 1+n docs is to get everyone aligned, not to make new policy. Nothing about energy security is against that, it's more of a short-term push for coal ... which he says is also mainly about substituting gas and China moving away from gas, to collect the revenue from reselling gas to Europe right now.
• Erlend is paying close attention to the new policy on Sci-Tech innovation, the list of 12 sectors. He thinks digital innovation is going to be big in the energy space, and there are all sorts of companies, including private ones, being subsidized to do digital energy transition projects.
• Finally, Erlend thinks the speech by the NEA head on making the demand side the main focus (and energy efficiency as the main fuel) was significant, though it's unclear if NEA has much influence on the demand side.

In this episode, we're continuing on the theme of food sustainability, this time looking at the huge topic of the food system and climate change. It's a topic that gets a lot less attention than emissions from industry and the energy sector, but, as we shall see, food system emissions are significant, and the task of addressing those emissions quite challenging.

We're speaking with Sally Qiu and David Sandalow, and again starting with the Guide to Chinese Climate Policy, which we also covered in episode 116. This time, we're narrowing in on one chapter in the Guide: Chapter 22 on the food system.

Sally Qiu is a research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University. Most recently, she is the co-author of the 2022 version of the Guide to Chinese Climate Policy. Her research focuses on issues related to U.S.-China Climate Collaboration as well as the Food Systems.

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 is the author of numerous reports and articles about China energy and environmental policies and trends. He is the lead author of the Guide to Chinese Climate Policy.

Today, we're speaking about the topic of sustainable fishing, and especially the role of finance, with Alice Chen. Qianming (Alice) Chen is a researcher at the International Institute of Green Finance, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing. She and colleagues at IIGF and WWF recently authored a series on Financing Sustainable Seafood, and she is also the author of a column summarizing the report's findings and other related ideas in China Dialogue.

For further reading:

https://chinadialogueocean.net/en/fisheries/finance-is-crucial-to-making-fishing-and-aquaculture-sustainable/

https://iigf-china.com/financing-sustainable-seafood-a-baseline-study-of-sustainable-seafood-finance-in-china

https://iigf-china.com/financing-sustainable-seafood-a-study-of-environment-related-financial-risks-in-chinas-seafood-sector

In today's episode, we are looking at Shanxi province, known as the country's most coal-intensive provincial economy. Over the past several years, various research cooperation efforts have looked at how Shanxi could transition away from its heavy emphasis on coal, and eventually phase down coal in line with China's 2030-2060 goals. Today, we are talking to Zhou Yang, Advisor at Agora Energiewende's China programme, which has just published a Chinese-language report, Experience and Lessons learned from Regional Coal Transitions in Germany. A link to the report is below. In the podcast, we will discuss a few of the potential lessons described in the report, namely (1) the importance of breaking energy monopolies and diversifying energy supply and markets to include regular citizens, (2) ways to diversify the local economy away from resource-intensive sectors, including tourism, drawing on the example of Lusatia in eastern Germany, and (3) reducing the cultural emphasis on the resource economy by boosting education and innovation in non-resource-intensive industries, drawing on the example of the Ruhr Valley economic transformation.

Zhou Yang is based in Beijing and works as Advisor China at Agora Energiewende. She manages Agora's projects on regional energy transition and power sector decarbonization. Before joining Agora, Zhou worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council Beijing Office for three years on the Oil Cap Project and Coal Cap Project. Prior to joining NRDC, Zhou was with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., where she conducted research and prepared publications on China's energy-water nexus issues.

Report link:

Zhou Yang, "Low-Carbon Energy Transition in Shanxi: Experience and Lessons from Regional Coal Transitions in Germany," Agora Energiewende, 2022, at https://www.energypartnership.cn/fileadmin/user_upload/china/media_elements/publications/2022/Agora/Low-Carbon_Energy_transition_in_Shanxi_and_lessons_from_Germany_CN.pdf.

Today, we're discussing the newly released Guide to Chinese Climate Policy, published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The book is available for free download at https://chineseclimatepolicy.oxfordenergy.org/. We are welcoming two past guests back onto the podcast: David Sandalow and Michal Meidan, who co-authored the Guide along with Anders Hove (OIES), Philip Andrews-Speed, Edmund Downie (Princeton), and Sally Qiu (Columbia).

In our discussion, we touch on the following:

• China's emissions trends
• The main drivers of emissions for each fossil fuel
• Whether China is committed to its climate goals, given near-term economic issues
• Why China is still building coal
• Trends in nuclear power
• The role of market reforms
• And lastly, David reports on his main takeaways from COP27 in Egypt

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. He is the author of numerous reports and articles about China energy and environmental policies and trends, and he's very knowledgeable about China. He joined us on episode 62, to talk about the 2019 version of the Guide.

Dr Michal Meidan is Director of the China Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 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.

Today, we're coming back to the topic of China's power system, the recent power outages in Sichuan, and the role of flexibility. Our guest today is Professor Yuan Jiahai of North China Electric Power University.

Professor Yuan a Professor of Management Science at the North China Electric Power University, where his research focuses on the low-carbon transition of China's power sector, with a particular emphasis on coal power. He has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is listed in Scopus 2020 and 2021 Highly Cited Chinese Researchers. Professor Yuan received his PhD in 2006, and since then has been active as an independent Chinese energy policy analyst, publishing not only academic journal articles, but also influential policy reports and media articles on the low-carbon transition.

On that note, Prof Yuan has recently published two very interesting items: The first is a report published by NCEPU and NRDC on power system flexibility, and the second is an article in Caixin about the Sichuan power shortages. In this episode, we discuss both the Sichuan power shortages as well as the report.

The references are here:

Yuan Jiahai et al., "四川高温限电痛点在何处，如何防止重演？[What are the pain points of Sichuan's power supply under the heat wave and how to prevent them recurring?], Ciaxin, 6 September 2022, at http://zhishifenzi.blog.caixin.com/archives/260319.

Yuan Jiahai and Zhang Jian, "电力系统灵活性提升：技术路径、经济性与政策建议" [Improving power system flexibility: technology pathways, economic analysis, and policy suggestions], Natural Resources Defense Council, July 2022, at http://www.nrdc.cn/Public/uploads/2022-07-18/62d4c2e313df1.pdf.

Today, we're talking about China's evolving market for green energy and renewable power purchases, with Sharon Feng, at Director of Advisory Services and Research at Azure International. Sharon is an expert in China's power markets, including renewables, energy storage, power trading, and clean energy procurement. She has worked in previous roles at GE, Siemens, and the philanthropy Save the Children, and holds degrees from Peking University and the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Not least, she has spoken at several Beijing Energy Network events and is based in the lovely Ditan Park of Beijing.

In today's podcast we cover:

• What has changed in China's green power markets in the past few years leading to growing interest in this type of power?
• How is green power priced, and is it always priced at a premium?
• What are the volumes like?
• What provinces are most active, and what is happening on inter-provincial trading of renewables?
• How the market is likely to develop in the future, including integration with carbon markets.
• Whether requirements that wind and solar projects install energy storage are hurting the competitiveness of renewables.
• Whether distributed solar can participate in green power markets.
• Whether energy storage makes sense for corporate buyers on a stand-alone basis.
• The role of time-of-use pricing for retail power customers and wholesale spot markets for generators.

For further reading:

https://www.azure-international.com/

Today, we're going back to the hot topic of the past two years, namely the energy transition away from coal and how it relates to energy security concerns, especially the recent power outages that have affected parts of the country.

Our guest is Xi Xi, an analyst at the innovative Green Development Program, or iGDP, based in Beijing. At iGDP she works on energy modeling with the Energy Policy Simulator (EPS), an energy systems model that informs policy makers on decarbonization pathways. She also assists in low carbon development strategy for provincial governments, while also researching energy and electricity investment in Belt and Road Initiative Countries. Previously, Xi Xi was a consultant for the U.S. EPA at Abt Associates, and she also served as an investment analyst at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, where she looked at cleantech startups for investment and grant opportunities. In addition, Xi Xi is executive director of the BJ Energy Network!