Environment China

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 scientif...

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 classificatio...

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...

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...

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 Environme...

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 aft...

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...

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...

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 carb...

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 Ch...

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...

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 do...

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 Inst...

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 stud...

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 studi...

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 h...

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 Mylly...

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...

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...

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...

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 rec...