Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
100% tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs following climate envoy meetings
FIRST MEETING: The recently appointed Chinese and US climate envoys Liu Zhenmin and John Podesta met in Washington last week with an aim to build on the “Sunnylands statement” that had restored engagement between presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden at their summit last year, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. At the meeting, Podesta raised issues with Liu including “Chinese overcapacity in solar and battery manufacturing, steel production and coal power”, according to Reuters, adding that “the tone of the talks continued to be cordial”. State-run newspaper China Youth Daily reported comments from Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin saying that the US “expresses willingness to strengthen cooperation with China in addressing climate change”.
100% TARIFFS: Just after Liu’s US visit concluded, Biden announced significant new tariffs on a range of Chinese imports, reported Bloomberg. The outlet quoted Biden saying: “When you [China] make tactics like this, you’re not competing, it’s not competition, it’s cheating. And we’ve seen damage here in America.” According to a breakdown published by Reuters, tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) will quadruple to 100% (plus a separate 2.5% tariff), while solar cell tariffs will double to 50%, lithium-ion EV battery tariffs will increase from 7.5% to 25% and tariffs on critical minerals rise from nothing to 25% this year.
MEDIA REACTION: New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman supported the increased tariffs, saying: “Why not just buy cheap Chinese batteries? Political economy…The Biden administration was able to get large subsidies for renewable energy only by tying those subsidies to the creation of domestic manufacturing jobs. If those subsidies are seen as creating jobs in China instead, our last, best hope of avoiding climate catastrophe will be lost.” However, another New York Times’ comment article by economists Gernot Wagner and Conor Walsh asked the US to not “slam the door on inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles”. Bloomberg columnist David Fickling commented that “Chinese clean tech is not the enemy”, adding “from all the talk of Chinese ‘overcapacity’ coming out of Washington, you might think that the problem of addressing climate change had already been solved…We’ll need all [western nations’] industrial might – plus that of China, and a whole host of countries besides – to get there.” An editorial in the Economist called the tariffs a “bad policy, worse leadership”, saying they “will bring underappreciated economic harms to America and the world”.
CHINA REACTION: The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said that the tariffs are the “most typical form of bullying in the world today”, adding “it shows that some people in the US have reached the point of losing their minds in order to maintain their unipolar hegemony”, Reuters reported. State-run newspaper China Daily quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin saying that the US is “making double standards by justifying its own subsidies and exports, while accusing other countries’ subsidies and exports as ‘unfair’ and ‘overcapacity’”. State broadcaster CCTV reposted a statement by the Ministry of Commerce which says that the US move is “a clear example of political manipulation”.
State-backed media disputes US ‘overcapacity’ argument
PEOPLE’S DAILY: The Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily published comments under the nom-de-plume “Zhong Caiwen”, which is likely linked to the party’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, on 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13 May about China’s manufacturing production capacity under the background of “the US trying its best to exaggerate the so-called ‘overcapacity’ of China’s new energy resources”. The articles claimed that the “overcapacity arguments are designed to ‘curb and suppress China’s superior industries’”, “ignore[ing] the benefits that Chinese products bring to global consumers”, while stressing the contributions China made to tackling climate change.
ECONOMIC DAILY: Meanwhile, state-run media outlets Xinhua, Guangming Daily and Economic Daily carried similar opinions. The Economic Daily, which according to its own introduction, plays an “important role for the communist party’s Central Committee and the State Council in guiding the public opinion towards economy”, ran the headline, “Refuting ‘the theory of overcapacity in new energy’”, on its 6 May frontpage and, “Refuting ‘the theory of overcapacity in new energy’ again”, on the frontpage of 13 May. The two articles argued that the rapid growth in China is “not blind expansion”, but is based on the “urgent need to reduce global carbon emissions” and that the US uses it as “an excuse for more trade barriers”.
DOMESTIC FACTORS: Founder of H&S Capital and former news editor of BBC News Chinese Howard Zhang told Carbon Brief that this “sudden media storm” came “at a time of rising discontent over economic downturn and huge youth unemployment [in China]”. He added that “these anti-West reports help to divert public opinions and reinforce the government’s conspiracy theory that the West, led by the US, is trying to ‘stop China from rising up’ and is trying to ‘choke China off’”. Zhang acknowledged that China “does have a point”, but added it was “worth noting that these reports do not really report on Western concerns objectively and these reports are still mainly targeting the domestic audience”.
INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK: Isabel Hilton, founder of London-based NGO Dialogue Earth (formerly China Dialogue) told Carbon Brief that the reason behind China arguing its “predominance in key industrial areas was not the result of unfair subsidies”, but because “it is unlikely that either the EU or the US will allow important industrial sectors to be undermined in what they see as unfair completion, with all the political and economic damage that would follow. Hence, the Chinese need to argue that it is not unfair.” Hilton, a visiting professor at King’s College London, added that a key point made by the Chinese media commentary was “China’s model of industrial development is no different from that of Western industrialised countries and that, further, they obey WTO rules and do not restrict or protect their own market…we can debate quite a lot of this, especially the market access point”.
Xi rebuts overcapacity and endorses climate cooperation during visiting Europe
OVERCAPACITY TENSIONS: On 5 May, president Xi commenced a five-day visit to Europe, which he began by meeting French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Agence France-Presse reported. The newswire quoted von der Leyen saying the EU “cannot absorb massive over-production of Chinese industrial goods”. In comments covered by the People’s Daily, Xi responded that “there is no such thing as ‘China’s overcapacity problem’”. Meanwhile, China and France signed the “Sino-French joint declaration on strengthening cooperation on biodiversity and the oceans: Kunming-Montreal to Nice”, to deepen cooperation on biodiversity protection, People’s Daily reported.
PRE-READ: Le Figaro published an article by Xi ahead of his arrival in France, in which he noted that Sino-French cooperation “spearheaded cooperation in aviation and nuclear energy”. He added: “Our two countries can deepen cooperation on innovation and jointly promote green development…The Chinese government supports more Chinese companies in investing in France. And we hope that France will ensure that they operate in a fair and equitable business environment.” State newswire Xinhua published an official English translation of the piece.
OTHER COUNTRIES: Meanwhile, Xi also visited Serbia and Hungary, where the South China Morning Post said he “upgraded relations with China’s two closest allies in Europe”. German chancellor Olaf Scholz did not meet Xi in person, but told journalists at a press conference that there are “many overlaps” between China and western automotive manufacturers, Reuters reported. State-run outlet Reference News quoted the German federal minister for digital affairs and transport saying “we don’t want to close off markets” to Chinese EVs.
EU SOLAR PROBE: Following the EU’s launching of a probe into Chinese solar companies last month, Longi and Shanghai Electric withdrew tenders to supply a Romanian solar park in “the latest sign that the EU’s new anti-subsidy powers are having a deterrent effect” on companies suspected of receiving Chinese subsidies, the Financial Times said. It quoted the EU internal markets commissioner saying the regulation ensures “foreign companies which participate in the European economy do so by abiding [by] our rules”.
China’s low-carbon energy boost
NEW DATA: China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that China’s electricity generation from wind and solar increased 25% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024. In the same period, electricity generated from coal declined. According to data from National Energy Administration (NEA), the total solar capacity in the first quarter of 2024 reached 45.7 gigawatts (GW), China Energy Net reported. In addition, China’s low-carbon electricity capacity will be enlarged with the State Council approving the construction of a 2GW offshore solar project at Lianyungang city, economic newswire Jiemian reports. Once being constructed, it will connect with eight existing nuclear power plants and become a 10GW “mega” renewable energy project, added the outlet.
NEW RESEARCH: A new paper covered by Carbon Brief found that China’s rising electricity demand can be met more cheaply through a combination of solar plus battery storage than by building new coal capacity. Carbon Brief also covered a study by the China Energy Transformation Program, a project under China’s Energy Research Institute, that finds electrification, greater energy efficiency and a low-carbon power system could help China develop a net-zero emissions energy system by 2055, five years earlier than its “dual carbon” goal planned.
Spotlight
Interview: China’s renewables ‘pave the way to rapidly reduce coal reliance’
A new report by Australia-based thinktank Climate Energy Finance argues that China could reach its “dual carbon” climate goals earlier than planned.
Carbon Brief interviews the author of the report to find out more. The questions and their answers are edited for length and clarity. The whole interview is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Carbon Brief: Your report concluded that China’s coal power output will soon peak and decline – despite rising coal capacity – thanks to the rapid rise of clean energy sources. How widely do you think that potential tipping point is understood, both within China and internationally?
Xuyang Dong: This potential is not being understood or acknowledged enough both within China and internationally. China is prioritising energy security over the need to reduce coal-use…Concurrently, China is increasing renewable energy capacity at a staggering pace that far outstrips every other nation on the planet.
Internationally, news headlines continue to emphasise that China is building new coal-fired power plants, leading to a lack of confidence about China’s commitment to decarbonising its national electricity grid…However, the picture is more positive when we look at installed capacity. At the end of March this year, 53% of China’s installed capacity was zero-emissions.
CB: If China is to announce more ambitious climate goals and expand renewable energy like you suggested in the report, in your opinion, what are the barriers?
XD: We are aware there are concerns over China’s land use as a major constraint for building more wind and solar farms. We have run a case study on a 1.5GW solar project being built in the Tengger Desert in Ningxia Province. The project has 3.5 million solar modules installed, and only took up 0.1% of the total desert. In our model, we estimate that China needs to install a total of 5,405GW of new solar capacity to reach its dual-carbon targets and that may require only 11% of a total land area of the Gobi Desert, a neighbouring desert to Tengger.
The real challenge is that… more transmission lines are needed to maximise the renewable energy generation potential of China’s desert areas, and to resolve China’s land use constraints in the east coast.
CB: What do you think about policy support?
XD: I think being more ambitious in the overall climate target would be a good start… Considering its political system is “top-down”, a more ambitious target could help the central government to give out more mandates, build better transmission lines and distribute the generated power into the areas that are needed.
Internationally, China needs to align with other developed countries to take its responsibilities as the leading renewable superpower, and the carbon price would be an important policy lever… A further driver would be for other nations to also catch up with China’s staggering renewable expansion, and start to emulate its speed and scale, so there will be no excuse left for China to do less.
CB: What do you think about China’s “new three” – solar, batteries and EV – and how they help China in energy transition and economy?
XD: The “new three” has played a very huge part in China’s economic growth [in 2023]…I know there are a lot of concerns about this overcapacity in the industry, such as in the EU and the US, and I think for China to address the concerns over industrial overcapacity, it needs to, first, stimulate domestic demand and deployment of solar and wind farms, energy storage systems buildout and EV sales. Secondly, China could use its cheap renewable exports to help emerging markets and developing economies to build more renewable energy capacity, boosting and accelerating the global energy transition. Finally, it should be collaborating on joint ventures with European and US investors to build local factories.
Watch, read, listen
ENVIRONMENT ‘SPY’: The South China Morning Post reported that China’s top spy agency claimed two foreign NGOs and foundations had stolen “environmental data” from China.
FLOODING AI: A new artificial intelligence (AI) model was developed by Chinese scientists to forecast flood risks and monitor hydrological conditions even in basins lacking hydrological records, another South China Morning Post article reported.
NEA COMMENT: The Communist party-affiliated magazine Current Affairs Report published an article written by the head of China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), Zhang Jianhua, about “high-quality development of new energy”.
G7’S STRATEGIES: EU-China environmental cooperation specialist Arvea Marieni wrote a comment on G7’s climate strategies for China’s state broadcaster CGTN.
In April 2024, nearly half of cars sold in China were electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), which are known collectively as “new-energy vehicles” (NEVs). According to figures from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), NEVs made up 44% of sales in April, up from 34% a year earlier and just 4% during the same month in 2020.
New science
Impact of flowering temperature on lychee yield under climate change: a case study in Taiwan
Climate Services
A decline in the number of cooler days as a result of climate change could make existing varieties of lychee “unsuitable for cultivation in production areas in southern Taiwan”, a new study says. With some lychee farmers in Taiwan already experiencing economic losses as the climate warms, the researchers project a decline in lychee yields per hectare of 12-35% by the end of the century.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 16 May 2024: Biden’s 100% tariffs on Chinese EV; State media pushback; Xi’s Europe trip appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Claver Gatete is Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Jason Veysey is Energy Modeling Program Director and Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Lisa Sachs is Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.
The case for global energy transition has rarely been clearer. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year exposed the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems, while the falling cost of renewables, the rising penetration of electric vehicles, and the growing value of demand flexibility have made the direction of travel obvious. The benefits of a clean, secure, integrated system are no longer in dispute. What remains unclear is how to build it.
Countries around the world have called for faster renewable energy deployment and alternative energy arrangements. A secure, affordable, resilient, decarbonised system requires specific investments in specific places in a specific sequence, optimised across sectors and borders. But very few governments have the analytical foundation to translate those imperatives into investment.
The two instruments that are supposed to determine investment priorities for decarbonisation – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and country platforms – cannot answer the most basic question facing any country undertaking an energy transition: what should the energy system look like?
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New coal mine openings slow as East Asian demand plateaus
China and Australia drove global decline in new capacity additions in 2025, but planned production kept growing
To close this gap, every country needs a bankable, economy-wide optimisation model for its energy system. A model is not a plan, but it can help answer the critical question of what the future energy system should look like. It shows how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, calculates investment requirements and sequencing, and quantifies how system costs are affected by assumptions, policies, and exogenous variables like trade policy and financing terms.
Tool for efficient investment
Optimisation is a simplified way of simulating an energy system, but it can be an extremely powerful tool for moving energy planning from reactive (how do we manage the disparate actions in the energy system?) to intentional (what energy system underpins our national objectives?). A model can show how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, and how investment requirements are quantified and sequenced.
Optimisation models can treat the energy system and the sectors it serves as an integrated whole, optimising across sectors and projects in ways that can be mutually reinforcing. If considered independently, growth in industrial demand, transport electrification, and digital infrastructure can add stress to the energy system. But an optimised plan can arrange these and other changes in an efficient, synergistic way.
Two to tango: How governments can unlock private investment for national climate goals
New load can be added where low-cost power is available; industrial customers can ensure the viability of investments in energy supply; electric vehicle charging policy can smooth load curves and reduce costs for all consumers.
Additionally, optimisation modeling can also change the financeability of investments. Taken alone, each project faces uncertainty about the rest of the system, which raises the cost of capital and causes projects to stall or unwind after contracts are signed. A coherent, optimised plan makes visible the coordination that private capital would otherwise have to bet on: identified offtake, sequenced and committed transmission, contracted power supply, and so on.
What COP31 and COP32 should do
The upcoming COPs in Turkey and Ethiopia can shift the center of gravity of international climate cooperation from fragmented commitments to planning. Three moves are urgently needed.
First, optimised, economy-wide, long-term energy system planning must be the foundation on which any meaningful NDC, country platform, or finance commitment rests. NDCs are typically drafted by environment or single-line ministries, with limited cross-sectoral input from ministries of energy, finance, and planning. They contain targets, derived from sectoral strategies or national commitments, not from an analytically grounded picture of what the energy system should look like and what investments would make it work. Country platforms are generally a portfolio of investments assembled from existing project pipelines, rather than derived from a system-level analysis of what an optimised, decarbonised energy system would require.
Second, recognise regions as a key planning unit. Modern integrated energy systems are inherently regional. Renewable endowments are unevenly distributed; balancing variable supply across borders lowers aggregate cost, reduces redundant backup capacity, and unlocks economies of scale no individual nation can achieve. Many energy investments in Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa and Central Asia may only be financeable in a regional context. Assessing domestic infrastructure without regional optimisation perpetuates the perception that decarbonisation is more expensive than it is.
COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification
Third, finance the planning capacity. A coordinated commitment by multilateral development banks, bilateral donors, and philanthropic partners to help every region and its constituent countries develop and maintain their own modelling capability, with open-source tools and regional analytical hubs, would close the most consequential gap in the current architecture. The cost is small relative to current spending on country platforms, failed project preparation, and misallocated infrastructure investment.
This includes supporting regional institutions such as the ASEAN Centre for Energy, the African Energy Commission, regional power pools, and the Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization to determine what optimised regional systems require. Country-by-country pledging, repeated at every COP, will not deliver what meaningfully integrated systems can.
The 2026 energy crisis made the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems newly visible. That window of clarity will close. The international community should seize the moment to build the planning foundation that has been missing for thirty years, rather than commissioning another round of NDCs or pledges, striving for outcomes neither was designed to deliver.
The post Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition
The world is currently experiencing what is expected to become the strongest El Niño on record – dubbed a “super El Niño” by many.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.
This temporarily raises global temperatures and reshapes rainfall and extreme weather around the world – impacting the lives of billions of people.
The current El Niño event began in June and is expected to last into 2027.
El Niño is part of a wider climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
The ENSO cycle also has a cool phase, known as La Niña, as well as a “neutral” phase. El Niño and La Niña events typically last between nine and 12 months, but can go on longer.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how the ENSO cycle works, its impacts on extreme weather and global temperatures and why this El Niño event is projected to be the most intense since records began.
The post Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/el-nino-explainer/index.html
The second-largest reservoir in the US reached a record-low water height on Saturday – just days after the country’s largest reservoir broke its own record.
Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are located on the Colorado River.
They provide water for populations across seven US states in the south-western US, with around 40 million people getting some or all of their municipal water from the Colorado River.
The river also provides water for around 5.5m acres (22,258 square kilometres) of farmland across Colorado, Arizona, California and the other states in the river basin.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that climate change, population growth and over-consumption are all contributing to the current record-low levels of the reservoirs.
Record lows
At full capacity, Lakes Mead and Powell can hold a combined 68 cubic kilometres of water – enough to supply all household consumption in the contiguous US for nearly 1.5 years. However, the water level in both reservoirs has been declining for decades.
The chart below shows the water level of Lake Mead, in metres above mean sea level. The reservoir, which began to fill in 1935 following the construction of the Hoover Dam, has a “full pool” maximum capacity of 347.60 metres. The water level in Lake Mead reached a record low of 317.11 metres on 7 August.
The following chart shows the water level of Lake Powell, in metres above mean sea level. Lake Powell’s full-pool level is 1,127.76 metres.
While the reservoir reached its maximum capacity several times in the 1980s, it has not done so since. On 15 August, the water level in Lake Powell was recorded at a new record-low of 1,072.87 metres.
Both reservoirs have continued to decline in the days since breaking their respective records. The downward trend will largely continue in both lakes until next spring, when the snowpack in the mountains of the Upper Colorado River Basin begins to melt, says Dr Jack Schmidt, a senior research scientist at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The big dilemma of the moment is that we’re only in the middle of August, and we have no assurance of what the coming winter will be. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will be depleting overall total basin reservoir storage from now until, roughly, early April.”
Compounding factors
The record lows across the two reservoirs are the result of several compounding factors, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Since the turn of the 20th century, the amount of water flowing along the Upper Colorado River has declined by about 20%. Research suggests that half of this decline can be attributed to human-induced climate change.
Most of the river’s streamflow comes from the snowpack of the Upper Colorado River Basin, which stretches across five western US states but is primarily located in Colorado and Utah.
This region has been gripped by a historic “megadrought” for more than a quarter of a century. Nearly half of the megadrought’s intensity over 2000-18 is attributable to climate change, according to a 2020 study.
At the same time, the increasing population in the US south-west has put added pressure on the Colorado River’s water supply. The number of people obtaining some or all of their water from the Colorado system has grown by 15 million (around 60%) since 1992.
Schmidt tells Carbon Brief:
“There’s an ultimate cause of the present water crisis, and there’s a proximate cause. The ultimate cause is a warming climate, a warming planet and a pretty clear correlation between warming conditions and decreased runoff in the Colorado River Basin.
“The proximate cause is that in this messy democratic republic of ours, big policy decisions that match the variability of the climate occur painfully slowly – with intense political negotiations – and only incrementally.”
On 31 July, the US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the western US, released an environmental impact statement on its proposed post-2026 strategy for managing Lakes Powell and Mead. The strategy itself has not been released yet.
Schmidt notes that the statement does appear to give the Bureau flexibility to “respond to crisis” by reducing the delivery of water to several states. However, he adds:
“They acknowledge it won’t work if we just stay critically dry, and of course every climate model for the 21st century, especially with a continually warming planet, says that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The post Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels
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