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
China confirms climate commitment
XI’S NOT FOR TURNING: Chinese president Xi Jinping confirmed that the country’s 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) will cover the “entire scope of the economy, including all greenhouse gases” and be published before COP30, Bloomberg reported. It added that these comments, made at a virtual meeting of global leaders, signaled that “China won’t back off from its ambitions” on climate change, despite economic and geopolitical challenges. Reuters noted that Xi also flagged that “China’s actions to address climate change will not slow down”. As “Xi’s first international appearance on climate change since 2021”, the speech “sends a clear signal of China’s support for multilateralism”, Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Bloomberg. Nevertheless, campaign group Greenpeace East Asia global policy advisor Yao Zhe “cautioned against” interpreting it as meaning that an ambitious climate pledge is “guaranteed”, Climate Home News said, adding that it “remains an open question, especially given the ongoing tariff war with the US”.
BRAZIL’S INFLUENCE: The meeting was part of a broader campaign by COP30 host Brazil to persuade China, the EU and other powers “to commit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global warming well below 2C”, Reuters reported. Shortly before the meeting, Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, reaffirmed China’s commitment to tackle climate change at a meeting with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago in Beijing, according to China Environment News. Corrêa do Lago later told journalists he believes China is developing a “very ambitious” climate pledge, Bloomberg said.
GREEN BRICS: At a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the foreign ministers of BRICS member states “reinforce[d the] group’s commitment to climate action”, according to a press statement published on the bloc’s website. Meanwhile, Xi visited the headquarters of the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank established by BRICS, where he called on the bank to “implement more…green finance projects, so as to help developing countries…accelerate their green and low-carbon transformation”, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported. A China Daily editorial noted: “The BRICS countries are working together to help…developing countries finance the fight against climate change”. However, Reuters covered new research finding that Chinese companies are still building 7.7GW of new coal capacity overseas, mostly in BRICS member Indonesia, counter to China’s 2021 pledge to “stop financing coal projects overseas”.
Solar and wind outweigh fossil fuels
RENEWABLES REIGN: China’s combined wind and solar capacity has exceeded that of thermal sources (火电, which mainly refers to coal and gas) for the first time in history, industry news outlet BJX News reported, with 74 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar installations in the first quarter of 2025 bringing total capacity up to 1,482GW. This compares to 1,451GW of thermal power, the outlet added. Finance outlet Caixin noted that wind and solar capacity had already topped coal power (煤电) capacity in July last year. In a press conference, a National Energy Administration (NEA) official indicated that solar and wind capacity additions will continue to surpass thermal additions in the long-term, according to BJX News. Writing on Bluesky, Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), wrote that the high number of new solar and wind additions showed a “huge rush to install capacity” before subsidies are cut off in July under the forthcoming market-based renewables pricing policy.
NEW NUCLEAR: Meanwhile, China has approved the construction of 10 new nuclear reactors, Shanghai-based news outlet Jiemian said. The units will have a combined capacity of at least 12GW, according to Carbon Brief calculations, bringing China’s total nuclear capacity to 113GW once built, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The country has also formalised a ban on new “captive” coal-fired power plants in an updated list of business areas in which companies in China are not allowed to operate for 2025, BJX News reported.
MARKET REFORM: A new notice on regional spot markets for electricity was issued, BJX News said, mandating several provinces to begin either “official operations” or trial operations, with the goal of spot markets covering the whole nation by the end of 2025. China enacted “basic rules” for ancillary services markets for the power grid, finance news outlet East Money said, which includes defining the scope for grid-regulating services, operating practices and cost mechanisms for the sector. An analysis in China Electric Power News noted that the issuance of these rules marks the establishment of trading rules for the “three major trading types” – medium- and long-term markets, spot markets and ancillary services – in an “important step” for power market reform.
INDUSTRY AND TRANSPORT: China has called for electrification to account for 10% of the transport sector’s total “end-use energy consumption” by 2027 and for battery electric vehicles (EVs) to make up the majority of new car sales by 2035, East Money reported. Separately, China has issued its first “green hydrogen certificate”, which was awarded to a “solar + grid power” hydrogen project, the Substack China Hydrogen Bulletin reported.
Tariffs, export controls and executive orders
THOUSAND-PERCENT TARIFFS: The US has “announced plans to impose tariffs” ranging from 41-3,521% on solar panels imported from south-east Asian countries, many of which are manufactured by Chinese companies in the region, BBC News reported. Chinese companies are likely to embrace relocating to countries other than the US, the New York Times said, as the “profit margins on solar exports to the US are high enough that relocation will be worth it, even with continuing tariff uncertainty”.
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MINERAL FLOWS: China’s exports of critical metals to the US have “plung[ed]” in recent weeks, with “shipments of several critical items halting entirely in March”, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. The shortage of minerals, which are “vital for EVs, wind turbines” and other clean-energy technologies, the Financial Times reported, could “cause shutdowns in automotive production…if Beijing fully chokes off exports”. Meanwhile, China has criticised a new US executive order “aimed at stepping up deep-sea mining” to increase access to key minerals, saying the move “violates international law”, according to BBC News.
Spotlight
China issues new ‘action plan’ to control HFC emissions
China issued a new “action plan” in April to control hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) that could significantly increase short-term climate warming.
In this issue, Carbon Brief assesses its potential impact on China’s GHG emissions.
Short-term pollutant
HFCs are man-made GHGs that can be several thousand times stronger at absorbing heat than carbon dioxide (CO2). One type, HFC-23, is 10,000 times more powerful than CO2.
They are used in a number of appliances, particularly as coolants for fridges and air conditioning.
Efforts to phase them out are governed by the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances, which China ratified in 2021.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of HFCs, accounting for more than 70% of global production and 50% of consumption. It also produces and consumes the majority of the appliances that use them.
Its HFC emissions stood at 273m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2020, according to the government’s recently-submitted GHG inventory. This is equivalent to more than 2% of China’s CO2 emissions that year, which totalled 11bn tonnes.
Despite HFCs’ relatively low share in overall GHG emissions, their absorption strength necessitates their inclusion in climate strategies, says Sun Xiaopu, senior China counsel at the thinktank Institute For Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD).
She told Carbon Brief that mitigating HFCs will help avoid “short-term global warming” and climate tipping points.
Action plan for 2030
The government’s plan sets targets and timelines for “gradually reducing” production and consumption of appliances using HFCs by 2030, as well as reducing or banning consumption of ozone-depleting substances (ODSs).
These include lowering HFC production by 2029 by 10% from a 2024 baseline of 2bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e). Consumption would also be reduced 10% from a baseline of 900MtCO2e in this timeframe. This aligns with China’s obligations under the Kigali Amendment.
From 2026, China will “prohibit” the production of fridges and freezers using HFC refrigerants.
From 2029, it will ban the use of HFCs in most cooling systems, including air conditioners and other refrigeration equipment – prioritising the automotive, home appliance and industrial cooling sectors.
To enforce this, China will take measures such as requiring licences for manufacturing and consumption of controlled HFCs, improving monitoring of the production of HFC-23, as well as encouraging recycling of HFC refrigerants, and imposing import and export quotas for HFC refrigerants (although not the appliances that use them).
The plan will also introduce “stricter legal liabilities and higher financial penalties” to deter non-compliance, said Zheng Tan, programme officer of the industry programme at the climate nonprofit Energy Foundation.
He told Carbon Brief this is a “crucial step” in strengthening China’s existing HFC policy framework.
Tightening controls
Although China has controlled HFCs for some time, efforts accelerated after 2021, Hu Jianxin, a professor at Peking University’s College of Environmental Science and Engineering and Kigali Amendment negotiator, told Environment China.
China has shown willingness to act ambitiously on HFCs before. It issued a notice to freeze domestic production capacity for five widely-used HFCs in 2021, two years earlier than its international obligations required.
The government reported, prior to the action plan, that its HFC controls saw production quotas in 2024 fall by 404MtCO2e and consumption quotas fall by 262MtCO2e year-on-year.
There is scope for ambitious HFC action to continue, Sun told Carbon Brief.
Non-government bodies could use “vertical” communication channels, such as panels of technological, economic and scientific experts, to feed governments information, she added, helping them understand the feasibility of higher targets, “leapfrog obsolete technologies” or address roadblocks to adopting alternative solutions.
Hu noted that industry representatives have been consulted on HFC controls, which could encourage greater compliance – in contrast to reports of companies previously flouting ODS production controls.
Nevertheless, he told Environment China industry could “always do more”, adding that, while some sectors could stop using HFCs immediately, others may need decades – although he did not clarify which sectors, or why.
Sun speculates that this may be because the patents for these alternatives are held by non-Chinese companies, creating barriers for Chinese companies to discover new solutions.
The climate thinktank Institute for Global Decarbonisation Progress found that Chinese companies hold only 14% of patents for one such group of compounds, hydrofluoroolefins.
Beyond patents, it added, alternatives “often encounter challenges related to safety, cost or energy efficiency”.
According to Zheng, developing “effective monitoring, reporting and verification tools and capacity-building measures”, policy support to increase demand for less damaging alternatives and developing science-based standards will be important for enhancing compliance.
Furthermore, China’s action plan only applies to appliances using HFC refrigerants within China, Sun said. Companies making such appliances for export are not subject to its controls.
A report co-authored by IGSD and the appliance-focused nonprofit Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program found that Chinese companies, among others, are “dumping” inefficient air-conditioning units that use HFC refrigerants in south-east Asia.
Halting this trade, the report said, could “result in a reduction of over 1GtCO2e over 25 years”.
Watch, read, listen
CHINA 101: The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a congressional hearing on China’s energy landscape and its geopolitical implications, featuring a number of experts on China’s energy and climate developments.
GREEN FINANCE: The East Asia Forum published an article by Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of the Griffith Asia Institute, on how China can cooperate with other Asian countries to “set a global example for green economic growth”.
COOPERATION AND COMPETITION: The European Guanxi podcast explored how EU-China climate cooperation could navigate tensions around carbon taxes and EV pricing.
EMPTY BARRELS: A new report by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies outlined three potential scenarios for how China’s rising EV adoption will affect oil demand, finding it could fall by 600,000 barrels per day by 2030.
70%
The reduction in rainfall in the southern province of Guizhou since November last year, compared to average levels in previous years, as it battles a “lingering drought that has severely affected rural communities”, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported. Temperatures in April averaged 12.7C, marking the “second-highest national average temperature recorded” for the month since 1961, according to the state-supporting news outlet Global Times.
New science
Construction and analysis of China’s carbon emission model based on machine learning
Scientific Reports
A new study used machine learning to calculate a possible carbon emissions trajectory for China through to 2030. It mapped China’s carbon emissions to nine explanatory variables, including the “proportion of coal in total energy consumption and urbanisation rate”. As a result, the model estimates that China’s carbon emissions will “level off from 2022 to 2028 and peak in 2028”, with annual emissions in 2030 “expected to be about 9.72bn tonnes”.
Scientific Reports
New research examined the predictions of CMIP6 models for annual cycles of surface air temperature over China, “one of the most profound manifestations of global warming”. The study examined historical and future monthly temperatures under three different shared socioeconomic pathways. The study found that, under the model, the “amplitude” – or spread between the highest and lowest temperatures in a given year – would be narrower in future, although it noted that the patterns of likely temperature changes differ regionally, and particularly between northern and southern China.
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 1 May 2025: Xi steadfast on climate; Solar and wind surpassed thermal power; Controlling short-term GHGs appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains
Kenyan President William Ruto is the latest African leader to announce an end to raw mineral exports as governments want to add more value to their resources -
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire -
Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025
Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
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