Connect with us

Published

on

UK government targets for “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) will only cut emissions from the sector to 0.8% below current levels in 2040, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

From 2025, flights taking off from the UK must use a fixed share of SAFs, which are largely made from waste products. This share will gradually rise from 2% next year to 22% in 2040.

The government says its “SAF mandate” will cut aviation emissions by 6.3m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2040.

However, Carbon Brief analysis of government forecasts shows this being almost entirely wiped out by rising demand for air travel, meaning emissions would only fall by 0.8% overall.

The SAF mandate is the most substantial policy to date under the UK government’s “jet-zero” strategy for decarbonising air travel, which eschewed efforts to limit demand. The mandate relies heavily on fuels made from used cooking oil and other waste products, which are in limited supply.

No change

The SAF mandate will require jet fuel suppliers to ensure that an increasing share of the product they supply is “sustainable”. This is meant to encourage investment in new facilities to produce SAFs.

Fuels described as SAFs include those made from waste, such as used cooking oil, household waste and offcuts from the forestry sector.

Despite their name, SAFs produce just as many emissions as fossil fuels when burned to power planes.

However, they generally – although not always – have a lower overall “lifecycle” carbon footprint than petroleum-based jet fuel. This is due to CO2 emissions absorbed from the atmosphere when growing plants for biofuels, or emissions that are avoided by diverting waste products to be used as fuels.

These emissions savings are counted towards the UK’s aviation sector as a whole.

(The government says that, for the time being, it will not support SAFs made directly from crops, which tend to have relatively high carbon footprints due to changes in land use.)

The new UK mandate starts in 2025 with a requirement that 2% of total jet fuel demand is SAF, increasing to 10% in 2030 and 22% in 2040. The government says there is currently not enough certainty in the SAF market to set targets beyond that date.

These measures will cut overall aviation emissions by 2.7MtCO2e in 2030 and 6.3MtCO2e in 2040, according to the government.

Based on government forecasts for jet fuel use, this change will be almost totally offset by a growth in flights, leaving UK aviation emissions virtually unchanged between now and 2040.

Emissions in 2025 are expected to be 36.0MtCO2e, while 15 years later they are set to be 35.7MtCO2e, according to Carbon Brief analysis. This is a drop of just 0.3MtCO2e, or 0.8%. This is illustrated in the chart below, with the SAF mandate merely preventing an increase in emissions resulting from higher jet fuel use in 2040.

These figures are derived from the government’s “central case”, cited in its underlying analysis for the SAF mandate, which sees jet fuel use increasing from 11.5m tonnes (Mt) in 2025 to 13.3Mt in 2040. This, in turn, is based on policies in the government’s “continuation of current trends” scenario, with the SAF mandate included.

UK aviation CO2 emissions in 2025 and 2040, MtCO2. The estimates of emissions from jet fuel use are based on figures quoted in the SAF mandate “cost benefit analysis” for 2025 and 2040, which are taken from the Department for Transport’s otherwise unpublished, updated aviation demand forecasts. These, in turn, are based on the “continuation of current trends scenario” laid out in the jet-zero strategy, with the additional inclusion of the SAF mandate final design. Source: UK government SAF mandate and Carbon Brief analysis. Chart: Carbon Brief.

The government expects far more flights to take off from the UK in the coming years, resulting in higher jet fuel use. It has resisted pressure to curb the demand for air travel, despite warnings from experts that such actions are vital for reducing aviation emissions.

In its jet-zero strategy, the government stated that it is aiming for a “high ambition” scenario, which would see aviation emissions fall faster in the coming years. However, as it stands, it has not introduced policies to drive further emissions reductions in planes.

The SAF mandate assumes that SAFs reduce lifecycle emissions from jet fuel by 70%. Certificates will be issued to fuel suppliers for each tonne of SAF produced, using this baseline emissions reduction goal as the standard.

However, Prof Bill Rutherford, an Imperial College London biochemist who contributed to two major assessments of low-carbon aviation fuels in the UK last year, tells Carbon Brief he is sceptical about lifecycle emissions analysis that shows such high emissions benefits:

“Lifecycle analysis is a very fuzzy science…You can basically get what you want out of it.”

For example, in its analysis, the government assumes that SAFs made from used cooking oil – which are expected to make up virtually the entire UK supply in the short-term – cut lifecycle emissions by roughly 95-98% compared to conventional jet fuel.

Dr Andrea Fantuzzi, another Imperial College London chemist who also worked on the low-carbon fuel assessments with Rutherford, says such figures seem “way too high”. He estimates that the savings would be closer to 70%.

Fantuzzi adds that even this does not account for the land originally used to produce the oil, and assumes that the oil would otherwise be thrown away – rather than used to power road vehicles, for example. (For more on waste oils, see: More cooking oil.)

Additionally, Rutherford points out that the use of SAFs has no impact on non-CO2 emissions from planes, which could account for up to two-thirds of their climate impact. He concludes:

“The only way you can make aviation any more sustainable is to do less of it.”

More cooking oil

The only SAFs that are currently available in the UK are fuels made from used cooking oil and other waste oils, which are collected from restaurants and factories.

However, the SAF mandate includes a limit on the amount of waste oil-based fuels within its overall targets. This is partly to “incentivise the development of new technologies” and partly due to concerns that waste oil supplies will be insufficient.

For the first two years, these fuels will be allowed to make up 100% of UK SAFs. This then falls to 71% in 2030 and 33% in 2040. Overall, waste oil-based SAFs would account for 2% of total jet fuel use in 2025 and up to 7.8% in 2040.

Despite these limits, waste oil-based SAF use is expected to rise around 15-fold from current levels within a decade. This huge increase in demand for waste cooking oil under the SAF mandate is illustrated in the figure below.

Dark blue: Annual UK consumption of SAFs made from used cooking oil, 2021-23. Light blue: Projected consumption of SAFs made from waste oils, predominantly used cooking oil, between 2025-40 in a scenario that meets the SAF mandate targets. Source: UK government SAF mandate and UK government renewable fuel statistics. Chart: Carbon Brief.

The Aviation Environment Federation said in a statement that the amount of waste oil being allowed into UK jet fuel under the UK’s SAF mandate is “much higher than we, and many others, were expecting, and appears to be the result of airline pressure”. The looser cap on these fuels was “welcomed” by industry body Airlines UK.

It raises the question of where the UK will source the required volume of waste oil to meet SAF targets.

Studies have shown that there is nowhere near enough waste cooking oil produced domestically, within the UK, to supply jet fuel demand. “We’re not about to start eating more chips, so we will have to start importing more waste oil,” Matt Finch, UK policy manager at the NGO Transport and Environment, tells Carbon Brief.

The government itself acknowledges this, saying that production of these SAFs within the UK is likely to be constrained by the availability of waste cooking oil from 2029 onwards.

It notes that their availability will therefore be “highly dependent” on how much waste oil the UK can import.

As of 2023, waste cooking oil collected in the UK only accounted for 7% of the country’s SAF production. This share has shrunk in recent years, such that imports from other countries – particularly China – have driven most of the growth in production, as the chart below shows.

Annual UK consumption of SAFs, 2021-23, by country source of used cooking oil feedstock. Source: UK government renewable fuel statistics. Chart: Carbon Brief.

There is mounting evidence that the demand for imported cooking oil in the UK and Europe is being met with virgin palm oil that has been fraudulently passed off as waste. This would cancel out the fuel’s emissions savings, due to the land clearances for oil palm plantations.

The UK’s aviation sector will have to compete not only with other countries for a limited pool of waste cooking oil, but also with other sectors.

Most of the UK’s waste cooking oil supplies are currently used to make biofuels for trucks and other road transport. Again, diverting resources from road fuel use would undermine the emissions savings from using them in SAFs.

The government acknowledges this, noting that “the SAF mandate may divert feedstocks which would have been utilised in other sectors of the economy and this may increase emissions in other sectors”. However, it says this is justified because “there are limited alternatives to decarbonise aviation by 2050”.

One of the scenarios modelled by the government assumes that SAF targets are met, but insufficient waste cooking oil means there is not enough biodiesel for road vehicles. This reduces the cumulative emissions savings between 2025-40 from 53.9MtCO2e to 43.0MtCO2e.

New fuels

The government is also supporting new types of SAF production in the UK, including fuels made from “black bin bag waste” and residues from farming or forestry.

In the newly released documents, the government says the UK will be a “leader” and a “first mover” in these technologies, spurred on by the cap on waste oil fuels and supported by the Advanced Fuel Fund.

Unlike waste oil-based fuels, the government says there will be “sufficient” materials available to meet production demand for these advanced fuels until at least 2040. From that point onwards, it says lack of materials “may become a constraining factor”.

However, a 2023 report by the Royal Society highlighted the limited availability of some waste materials to produce SAFs. It estimated that forest offcuts, for example, would be able to provide no more than 1.7% of current jet fuel demand.

Moreover, many waste sources are already recycled or burned to generate electricity and the government has targets in place to cut household waste in the coming years. “Most waste is already used for something that’s not jet fuel, so we know supplies of waste-based SAF will be limited,” Finch tells Carbon Brief.

Finally, the government’s mandate also includes another target, within the overarching SAF goal, for scaling up the production of “power-to-liquid” fuels.

These fuels can be made using green hydrogen and carbon captured from the air. Unlike most SAFs, they could cut up to 100% of CO2 emissions compared to conventional jet fuel, but they are currently less developed than other options.

The target for power-to-liquid fuels will start in 2028 at 0.2% of total jet fuel demand, reaching 0.5% in 2030 and 3.5% in 2040.

These targets are lower than the ones introduced in the EU, which is aiming for 35% of its jet fuel to be power-to-liquid by 2050. The bloc is also targeting 70% of aviation demand to be met with SAFs by 2050, whereas the UK’s targets stop at 22% by 2040.

Targets for uptake of power-to-liquid fuels, as percentages of total jet fuel demand, in the UK, the EU and Germany. Source: UK government SAF mandate, RefuelEU, German PtL Roadmap 2021. Chart: Carbon Brief.

In its “balanced net-zero pathway” for UK aviation, government advisors the Climate Change Committee (CCC) proposed that SAFs should make up 25% of jet fuel by 2050, with one-third of this made up of power-to-liquid fuels – roughly 8% of total jet fuel. The government targets are roughly in line with this trajectory.

Thinktank Green Alliance laid out three scenarios for SAF expansion in 2022, including higher ambition goals, with power-to-liquid fuels reaching 28% and 50% of total jet fuel by 2050.

However, it noted that such a rollout could be constrained by the large amounts of additional green hydrogen and renewable power required to produce these fuels.

The report stated:

“It could be argued that aviation should not be a priority use of renewables as there are other options to cut carbon in the sector, such as managing the number of flights taken.”

The post Analysis: Benefits of UK ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ will be wiped out by rising demand appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Benefits of UK ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ will be wiped out by rising demand

Continue Reading

Climate Change

Hardline Conservative Wins Republican Primary for Texas Oil and Gas Regulator

Published

on

Bo French prevailed over incumbent Jim Wright after a primary campaign focused more on Islamophobia and deportations than oil and gas regulation.

Bo French has won the Republican nomination to help run a little-known but influential regulatory office in Texas that oversees the state’s oil and gas industry.

Hardline Conservative Wins Republican Primary for Texas Oil and Gas Regulator

Continue Reading

Climate Change

Q&A: Can China turn hydrogen into its next clean-energy industry?

Published

on

China has said that hydrogen is a key “future industry”, important to both its energy transition and its industrial policy.

Hydrogen frequently goes through hype cycles, most recently driven by rising oil and gas prices due to the conflict in the Middle East.

Yet, even in China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of the fuel, hydrogen remains expensive and inefficient to produce.

This is especially the case for “green” hydrogen derived from renewables.

Moreover, there is limited supporting infrastructure and there is little incentive to use hydrogen over other energy sources.

As a result, uptake in China of hydrogen as an alternative fuel remains low.

Nevertheless, these challenges echo the early circumstances of another key clean-energy technology – electric vehicles (EVs).

In China, EVs benefited from a policy environment that included consistent signals of support, financial aid and the development of supporting infrastructure.

Many similar policies are now being deployed – and in some cases improved upon – to support the development of China’s hydrogen industry.

This article examines China’s approach to developing hydrogen and how its evolving industrial policy could make the fuel viable.

How is China using hydrogen and where does it come from?

Electrification and rising installations of solar and wind power have been the biggest drivers of China’s decarbonisation story so far. However, how China will address the more energy-intensive, hard-to-electrify segments of its economy remains an open question.

Hydrogen is seen by some in China as a potential solution for reducing emissions in a range of “hard-to-abate” industries, from steel and chemicals to aviation and shipping.

The country is the world’s foremost producer and consumer of hydrogen. It produced 36.5m tonnes of the gas in 2024, with maximum production capacity standing at 50m tonnes that year.

It also consumed nearly a third of the world’s hydrogen in 2024, as shown below.

Share of global hydrogen consumption in select regions in 2024
Share of global hydrogen consumption in select regions in 2024, %. Source: IEA.

Most of China’s production capacity is in regions with potential for high demand, such as Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Shanxi and other provinces with significant heavy industry.

In 2024, the vast majority of China’s hydrogen – around 78% – was produced using fossil fuels, predominantly coal and gas, as shown in the figure below.

Another 21% was produced as an industrial by-product, while only 1% – just 320,000 tonnes – was derived from renewable-powered electrolysis of water.

Production of hydrogen in China by energy source in 2024
Production of hydrogen in China by energy source in 2024, %. Source: National Energy Administration.

One study found that, for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, 38.6kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted if the hydrogen is produced using coal-fired power. Hydrogen made through coal gasification results in 28.5kg of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen, while gas-based hydrogen creates 13kg of emissions.

By contrast, one kilogram of renewables-based hydrogen results in 0.5kg of CO2.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels could help China avoid close to 16bn tonnes of CO2 cumulatively by 2060 – but only if it comes from low-carbon sources.

The biggest reductions, it adds, would come from heavy industry, particularly chemicals and steel, with the maritime and shipping sectors also seeing some benefit.

Currently, around half of the hydrogen produced in China is used in synthetic ammonia and methanol production.

Ammonia is primarily used to manufacture fertiliser and is seen as a possible fuel technology for shipping. Methanol is used as a fuel for the transport industry, as well as for heating.

Another quarter of China’s current hydrogen usage is consumed by the oil refining and coal-to-chemical sectors. The remaining amount is used in other industries, including transport, heating and metallurgy.

What are the barriers to scaling up hydrogen?

Although China is the largest producer and consumer of hydrogen globally, the industry faces several barriers to becoming a viable clean-energy technology.

Agora Energiewende, a thinktank focused on the energy sector, says that, in order to make hydrogen a practical clean-energy solution, China would need to expand the scale and range of its application, as well as improving the conversion efficiency of production and use.

Both BloombergNEF and the IEA highlight the importance of China creating demand for hydrogen, such as through quotas for industrial usage.

Hydrogen “suffers from a relatively large efficiency loss during various conversion processes”, adds Agora. For example, it notes that only around 22% of the energy put into hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is converted into motion, compared to 73% for battery electric vehicles. Producing hydrogen with renewable energy is also less efficient than coal-to-hydrogen processes.

Cui Chuansheng, technical director at East China Engineering Science and Technology, tells state news agency Xinhua that the variability of wind and solar power often leads to low utilisation of electrolysers, resulting in “efficiency losses”.

Meanwhile, the cost of producing hydrogen – particularly green hydrogen – remains high.

One study placed the cost of hydrogen produced through alkaline water electrolysis (AWE), the most common method for producing green hydrogen in China, at $4-6 per kilogram, compared with $1.20-2.50/kg for steam methane reforming and $1.30-2 for coal gasification.

In some specific cases, such as blending hydrogen with gas, researchers find that hydrogen prices would need to fall to one-third of gas prices to incentivise uptake.

These constraints are all “interdependent”, Kevin Tu, managing director of Agora Energy China, tells Carbon Brief, with the need to ensure “bankable demand” while also reducing costs and developing infrastructure. He adds:

“Without credible offtake in the right sectors, costs will not fall; without lower costs and better logistics, downstream users will not commit.”

The IEA says that green hydrogen “could become cost-competitive by the end of this decade due to low technology costs and cost of capital”.

For now, however, the China Hydrogen Bulletin Substack reports that China’s four listed hydrogen equipment manufacturers all reported significant losses in 2025.

Meanwhile, a senior executive at a Chinese hydrogen company told economic news outlet Jiemian that he expected 40% of companies in the sector to have closed down by the end of 2026, with surviving companies only turning a profit in 2029 at the earliest.

The industry also lacks refueling and pipeline infrastructure. China’s development of a pipeline network for hydrogen remains in its early stages, with around 400km of pipelines currently in operation. By contrast, its long-distance gas network stands at 128,000km. Similarly, storage remains expensive and inefficient, creating a further obstacle to wider uptake.

How is China supporting hydrogen development?

China began considering the use of hydrogen as an energy source in earnest in the early 2000s, to address concerns around pollution and dependence on imported oil for the transport sector.

A clearer signal of its importance came in 2015, when the State Council included the technology in a 10-year national industrial strategy known as the “Made in China” initiative. This pitched hydrogen as a way to contribute to electrification of China’s road-transport system through the development of FCEVs.

Yuki Yu, founder of research firm Energy Iceberg, tells Carbon Brief that, from 2018-2021, hydrogen was treated as a “FCEV and manufacturing technology challenge”.

This has since evolved, she says, given that battery electric vehicles have emerged as the more popular technology.

Shen Xinyi, senior advisor at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), agrees, telling Carbon Brief that recent policy documents suggest the aim is now for hydrogen to be targeted at areas where direct electrification is harder, such as hydrogen-based chemicals, hydrogen metallurgy and some heavy-duty transport applications.

This is in line with the “hydrogen ladder”, an analysis of how likely different possibilities for applying hydrogen as a clean alternative are to become significant. The ladder sees significant future use of hydrogen in these hard-to-electrify areas as much more likely than for light vehicles.

Notable policy moves are being made in “three layers”, says Agora’s Tu, which are combining to improve the technology’s chances of scaling up. These are: the “legal and institutional” layer; “application-oriented” policies; and targeted measures to address “practical bottlenecks” at the local level.

One of the documents underpinning this pivot was the “medium- and long-term plan for the development of the hydrogen energy industry (2021-2035)”, issued in March 2022.

According to a report by the National Energy Administration (NEA), the plan is an attempt to develop an “industrial ecosystem” for hydrogen that features “diverse stakeholders, coordinated innovation and clustered development”.

The plan was the first government document to “lay out a long-term vision for China’s hydrogen economy”, unifying a previously disparate policy push into one document, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, a UK-based thinktank.

Following on from the 2022 plan, the importance of hydrogen as a broad clean-energy solution has been emphasised in a number of policies. These include its classification being changed from a hazardous chemical to an energy carrier in China’s Energy Law, a 2024 action plan to “accelerate” the use of low-carbon hydrogen in industry and a new pilot scheme offering subsidies for projects that achieve specific targets.

The table below sets out the timeline and content of China’s hydrogen-related policies over the past 25 years.

Policy Year published Key features
10th five-year plan (2001–2005) 2001 Calls for “actively developing” low-emission vehicles, understood to include hydrogen vehicles
Made in China 2025 2015 Pledges to “continue to support” development of fuel cell vehicles and “master core technologies” for low-carbon vehicles
Notice on implementation of demonstration projects for fuel cell vehicles 2020 Creates a dedicated subsidy programme for finding breakthroughs in FCEV core technologies and industrial applications
14th five-year plan (2021-2025) 2021 Hydrogen listed as a future industry
Medium- and long-term plan for the development of the hydrogen energy industry (2021–2035) 2022 Aims to reach 100,000-200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen production [this target has been met]. Also aims to get 50,000 FCEVs on the road by 2025, leading to a “diversified” hydrogen industry by 2035
Opinions on accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development 2024 Promotes further development of hydrogen production, transport, storage and applications
Implementation plan for accelerating the application of clean and low-carbon hydrogen in the industrial sector 2025 Outlines tasks to promote use of low-carbon hydrogen to reduce emissions in heavy industries, such as steel and chemicals
Energy law 2025 Sees hydrogen included in national legislation for the first time, re-classifies it from a hazardous chemical to an energy carrier
15th five-year plan (2026-2030) 2026 Again lists as a future industry, and calls for the development of green fuels derived from green hydrogen
Notice on the implementation of pilot projects for the comprehensive application of hydrogen energy 2026 Provides subsidies to projects to reduce hydrogen costs to 15-25 yuan/kilogram ($2.20-3.67/kg) and help develop a fleet of 100,000 FCEVs

Key policies in the development of China’s hydrogen sector.

In addition, the NEA said in 2025 that local governments across China had issued more than 560 hydrogen-related energy policies by the end of 2024.

Tu notes that these local policies cover everything from permitting reforms and pipeline planning to exempting FCEVs from paying road toll.

Different provinces across China adopt distinct strategies for developing hydrogen industries, based on local conditions, says the US-based Center on Global Energy Policy, such as energy mix, availability of coal and industrial needs.

However, these local policies and targets are frequently more ambitious than the “conservative” national-level targets, it adds.

Could a new pilot programme boost hydrogen’s prospects?

A new pilot programme, announced in March 2026, aims to commercialise the country’s hydrogen industry by funding projects to reduce the cost of the fuel to 15-25 yuan/kilogram ($2.20-3.67/kg) by 2030, as well as other targets.

Unlike the 2020 subsidies, which focused on FCEVs, the new programme reaffirms China’s interest in a broader series of sectoral applications for hydrogen, including in clean heating, production of low-carbon iron and steel, and production of “green fuels” and other chemicals.

This new pilot is the “strongest financial instrument ever released for China’s green hydrogen application” in terms of creating a comprehensive hydrogen policy that covers a broad swathe of the economy, supporting it with financial backing and targeting application scenarios, Yu says.

However, she argues that strict grant caps – 240m yuan ($35m) per project and 1.6bn yuan ($235m) per selected region across only five regions – limited the overall funding scale available to the industry.

Energy Iceberg has calculated that only around 60-70 projects nationally could receive funding under the current rules, out of more than 670 active green hydrogen proposals in China.

Shen agrees that the pilot programme is significant and that it will expand the use of hydrogen in China’s climate strategy, particularly green hydrogen.

She notes a provision that “explicitly states that coal-based ammonia and methanol projects cannot be labelled as ‘green’ ammonia or methanol”, suggesting that policymakers are increasingly paying attention to the “integrity” of definitions for hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuel.

The “real value” of the pilot scheme, says Tu, is that it focuses on developing “integrated city-cluster ecosystems linking supply, transport, infrastructure and end-use demand”, rather than only supporting individual projects.

This “should help identify viable business models, accelerate cost discovery and concentrate support on applications with stronger scale potential”, as well as boost investor confidence, adds Tu.

However, he continues that the broader effect it will have on boosting production of hydrogen will “depend on how quickly the selected clusters can translate the programme into real offtake and lower delivered hydrogen prices”.

How does this compare to China’s EV policy push?

The debate around the viability of hydrogen is reminiscent of critiques of EVs.

Until recently, EVs were seen as too expensive for consumers, inefficient and challenging to use without supporting infrastructure. As a result, many western automakers chose to temper their focus on EVs, while continuing to develop internal combustion engines.

However, China has managed to develop a competitive EV industry with products that top global sales.

Part of the playbook that spurred China’s success on EVs included consistent policy signalling in favour of the technology, including mentions in high-level documents and committing resources to building charging infrastructure.

“The defining features of China’s industrial-policy success are its persistence and adaptability,” says Kyle Chan, fellow at the Brookings Institution, adding that “long before the technology and economics of EVs and batteries were proven, China was making long-term investments and policy bets [in the sectors]”.

More tangible measures included direct and indirect subsidies and policy support in the shape of favourable loan rates and low-cost land. One estimate by US-based thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) pegs the amount of support allocated to the EV industry between 2009-2023 at $230.9bn.

This coupled with the success of private Chinese manufacturers in creating innovative, nimble companies that “forc[ed] policymakers to adapt”, as well as growing links between the automotive and information technology industries, according to a separate CSIS report.

But this progress on EVs also reportedly came with significant fraud. In 2016, one investigation found that 33 companies were involved in subsidy fraud totalling 9.2bn yuan ($1.3bn).

(It should also be noted that profitability in the industry lags far behind the average for downstream industrial sectors, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, which says that “only a handful” of nearly 50 EV makers have reported profits.)

Being the subject of an industrial policy push alone does not guarantee success, states CSIS. It says the strength of the EV industry “was neither inevitable nor the result of a single master plan” and that China’s aims to develop globally-competitive industries in areas such as commercial aviation remain unaccomplished.

China’s approach to hydrogen has been markedly different.

Instead of offering blanket subsidies, the fuel cell demonstration programme it established in 2020 focused on performance-based rewards.

To avoid the subsidy issues seen in the solar and EV industries, the ministry of finance deliberately chose this indirect funding model, says Yu.

However, Yu argues, the programme did not work as well as hoped, due to the funding ceiling and the siloed attempts made by different regional governments to develop hydrogen ecosystems .

But Chinese policy thinking is becoming more selective and pragmatic for hydrogen compared with EVs, says Shen. She says:

“Electrification remains the primary decarbonisation pathway [for road transport], while hydrogen is increasingly positioned for applications where direct electrification is more difficult.”

Tu echoes this, adding that China is “clearly moving toward a more supportive policy environment for hydrogen”.

But its approach is “unlikely to replicate the EV story one-for-one”, he adds.

China’s concerted hydrogen push is also unlikely to echo the EV story at a global level, according to the IEA.

In terms of green hydrogen, around 60% of global electrolyser manufacturing capacity is currently in China, prompting concerns from the EU about a repeat of China’s global dominance in the solar and EV sectors.

However, the IEA says, electrolysers made in China “might not supply other markets at scale in the short term”, due to difficulties transporting the bulky technology globally, expectations that costs will only fall gradually, uncertainty around global demand and questions over how well Chinese electrolysers perform against global alternatives.

China’s industrial focus on hydrogen is centred more on domestic use, Shen argues. “It is less about near-term export competitiveness and more about building domestic industrial ecosystems,” she says.

The post Q&A: Can China turn hydrogen into its next clean-energy industry? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Q&A: Can China turn hydrogen into its next clean-energy industry?

Continue Reading

Climate Change

In Venezuela, Anxiety About Ramping Up Oil Production in the Heavily Polluted Lake Maracaibo Region

Published

on

Experts and local activists, wary of past exploitation, are hoping it will be different this time—but aren’t confident it will be.

There is a joke Mónica Godoy Molero likes to make with her family: if you swim in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo after an oil spill, you’ll sprout a third eye.

In Venezuela, Anxiety About Ramping Up Oil Production in the Heavily Polluted Lake Maracaibo Region

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2022 BreakingClimateChange.com