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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Tariffs and trade restrictions
US BAN: China has placed an export ban on shipments to the US of gallium, germanium and antimony, plus further restricted exports of certain types of graphite to the country, in a “rapid retaliation by Beijing against new export controls from Washington”, the Financial Times said. It added that “the immediate impact of the measures was unclear, given that the US had been diversifying its supply chains”. Analysis by Carbon Brief found that previous country-agnostic export controls on the minerals, all of which are used in low-carbon technologies, had a limited impact on supply chains, with Chinese exports either resuming after a short dip or remaining stable. Analysis by consultancy Trivium China stated that one of China’s motives with the ban could be to “warn the incoming Trump administration” against “ramping up economic and trade pressure”.
SOLAR TARIFFS: Meanwhile, the US has also imposed a “new round of tariffs on solar panel imports” from Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, following accusations by a US industry lobby of Chinese-owned factories in the four nations “dumping products into the [global] market”, Reuters reported. In response, China’s commerce ministry expressed its “concern over the US’ intention to politicise and weaponise trade investigations”, the state-run newspaper China Daily said. It cited a commerce ministry spokesperson saying that Chinese solar companies in southeast Asia have made “positive contributions to the local economic and social development”. Another Reuters article noted that Malaysia has “urged” Chinese companies not to use it “as a base to rebadge products to avoid US tariffs”.
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CHINA ‘HAWK’: On 6 December, president-elect Donald Trump nominated China “hawk” senator David Perdue for US ambassador to China, BBC News reported. Perdue wrote in the Washington Examiner in September 2024: “China continues to laugh at US attempts to partner with it on climate change…We should withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, as it commits the US to fund it primarily while giving China a free pass.”
CONTENT REQUIREMENTS: Meanwhile, according to Nikkei Asia, the EU is “adding restrictions to its [European Hydrogen Bank] subsidy program for ‘green’ hydrogen production that effectively lock out Chinese-made equipment” by stating that projects “will not be eligible if electrolyser stacks…sourced from China account for more than 25% of output capacity”. The Financial Times reported that the EU’s new €4.6bn tender for “technologies for decarbonisation” will only be accessible to Chinese companies that “agree to transfer intellectual property rights to the EU”, according to Teresa Ribera, the EU’s new executive vice president for a “clean, just and competitive transition”.
Carbon concentrations reporting
CLIMBING CO2: The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere above China’s land area rose in 2023, reaching approximately 421 parts per million (ppm), according to the country’s newly released greenhouse gas bulletin for 2023, reported the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily. This rise of 2.3ppm was “slightly lower” than the average annual growth in concentrations of 2.4ppm over the past decade, the newspaper added. The 21st Century Herald, a business newspaper, also covered the bulletin’s launch, noting that the average concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide in 2023 rose year-on-year at a rate “lower than the global [average]”.
EXPERT WARNING: Separately, a new report found that, “while the civil sector has achieved significant synergistic emission reductions of CO2 and air pollutants”, the power and heating sectors are seeing “dual-growth” of carbon emissions and air pollution, while the emissions reductions of industry and transport “need to be further unleashed”, finance newspaper the Economic Daily reported. The study, released by the China Clean Air Policy Partnership – a consortium of leading universities, government-linked research institutes, industry associations and other stakeholders – assesses the “challenges China faces on the road to carbon neutrality and clean air synergy and proposes solutions”, current affairs news outlet China News said. It quoted professor He Kebin, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute for Carbon Neutrality, saying at the launch event that the upcoming shift from “dual-control of energy” to “dual-control of carbon” marks a “critical period” in China’s “green transformation”.
WEATHER IMPACT: Meanwhile, China “reported its warmest autumn this year since records began”, with average temperatures standing at “1.5C higher than the average year”, Agence-France Presse said. Scientists in China are searching for ways to develop climate-resilient potatoes – given the plants are “particularly vulnerable to heat” – in order to “protect [the country’s] food supplies”, Reuters reported. Also, “continued rains followed by extreme high temperatures” have severely damaged China’s kiwi harvest, according to Bloomberg.
Grid reform efforts continue
UNIFIED GRID: The China Electricity Council (CEC) launched a “blue book” – the term used for research reports or policy proposals issued by government departments or government-affiliated organisations – outlining a “strategic roadmap for future development” of a national unified power market, industry news outlet International Energy Net reported. It quoted a deputy director of the National Energy Administration (NEA) saying a unified power market is crucial for “deepening power sector reforms” and promoting the energy transition. Energy news outlet BJX News also covered the document’s release, which outlined a timetable for the plan: namely, that “preliminary construction [of a unified market] will be completed in 2025, full construction will be completed in 2029, and improvements and upgrading will be completed in 2035”. It added that key elements of the plan include “convergence” of provincial mechanisms, “participation” of large-scale renewable energy bases and “market adaptation” to the energy transition.
GREEN GRID: Separately, the CEC also reported that China’s electrification rate – the share of energy demand met by electricity – was “expected to reach 34% by 2030”, financial news outlet Yicai reported. Separately, China will “set another record” for solar capacity growth this year, with new installations expected to climb from last year’s 217 gigawatts (GW) to reach 230-260GW in 2024, according to an announcement by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association covered by Bloomberg. In addition, China’s installed wind capacity has exceeded 500 gigawatts (GW) and now accounts for 50% of the global total, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
STABLE GRID: The NEA released guiding opinions that aim to “clarify the scope of new businesses” in the energy sector and “facilitate [their] connection to the grid and operation”, following the rapid expansion of China’s renewable energy sector, an NEA official told International Energy Net. Finance newspaper Securities Times quoted Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Energy Policy Research Institute at Xiamen University, saying the new rules “aim to lessen pressure on the grid and ensure safe and stable operation of the power system”.
‘Green growth’ at the fore of key economic meeting
XI’S ‘KEY TASKS’: President Xi Jinping told policymakers that “synergistically promoting carbon reduction, pollution reduction and green growth” was one of nine “key tasks” for 2025 at the central economic work conference (CEWC), an annual high-level economic policy meeting that ended on 12 December, Xinhua reported. The state news agency added that Xi’s speech underscored the need to “step up the overall green transformation of economic and social development” and “deepen reform of the ecological civilisation system”, in part by creating a “healthy ecosystem” for low-carbon industries and “cultivating new growth points, such as green buildings”. It said the speech also mentioned that China will “establish a number of zero-carbon parks, promote the construction of a national carbon market, and establish a product carbon footprint management system and a carbon labelling certification system”. These themes had been raised in a meeting of the Politburo, the decision-making body of the Chinese communist party, a few days prior, according to China Daily.
GROWING PAINS: The CEWC meeting included “pledges to take a more proactive approach” in stimulating economic growth, “but gave no details on new stimulus measures”, the Associated Press reported, adding that China would “raise its fiscal deficit”, “stabilise the property market” and “boost consumer spending”. The International Energy Agency “lifted next year’s oil-demand estimates” in response to the anticipated “impact of China’s stimulus measures”, although it added “the pace of growth is expected to remain subdued”, the Wall Street Journal said. Reuters reported that “Chinese leaders signalled…they are ready to deploy whatever stimulus is needed to counter the impact of expected US trade tariffs on next year’s economic growth”, adding that the exact size of the stimulus will “depend on” the Trump administration’s tariffs and other policy measures against China.
HIGH-QUALITY GROWTH: China is “planning a fresh set of policies to propel growth in the equipment manufacturing sector, focusing on nurturing new growth engines such as new energy vehicles”, China Daily said, in tandem with calls from the CEWC and Politburo meetings to “nurture technological innovation”. A China Daily editorial argued that “Chinese policymakers are exercising tremendous prudence” to minimise risks and uncertainties while pursuing “new quality productive forces and innovation”.
Spotlight
How China’s renewables rollout boosts its ‘war on sand’
At the ongoing COP16 UN summit on desertification in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Carbon Brief hears from experts on the links between China’s rapidly expanding desert solar farms and Beijing’s decades-long efforts to keep sand in check.
China’s effort to build large solar power “bases” in and around the desert is a major part of its current renewable plan.
The initiative, which has expanded rapidly in the country’s arid north and northwest, is also part of its campaign to combat desertification, an issue increasingly exacerbated by climate change.
For more than four decades, Beijing has been trying to prevent sand from degrading its land with an afforestation programme called the “Three-North Shelterbelt” (三北防护林).
Over the past two years, the programme – described as China’s “war on sand” by the media – has been boosted by the development of large-scale solar bases in far-flung regions, such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
Installing solar panels in the desert can not only generate power, but also help prevent sand dunes from moving, according to Dr He Jijiang, executive deputy director of the Research Center for Energy Transition and Social Development at Tsinghua University, Beijing.
Energy companies’ investments also provide financial support to many regions’ sand-control campaigns – an apparent obstacle in the past – Dr He told Carbon Brief at a side event in the China pavilion at the ongoing COP16 talks.
Taming of the sand
China is one of the worst-hit countries by desertification, which essentially means land degradation in dry lands.
Nearly 18% of China’s landmass – roughly seven times the size of the UK – is affected by the issue, according to statistics reported by Guan Zhi’ou, director of China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the head of the Chinese delegation to COP16, in November.
China’s effort to combat desertification has a strong link with its – and the world’s – climate actions.
Soil is the second largest natural carbon sink on Earth after oceans and stores a large amount of carbon. When land degrades, not only does it lose the ability to store as much carbon, it can also release carbon into the atmosphere, driving further climate change.
On the other hand, climate change accelerates land degradation and China is on the front line. The country has seen the largest total area shift from non-dryland into drylands over the past three decades, according to a major scientific report published by the UNCCD at COP16.
Since the introduction of the Three-North Shelterbelt programme in 1978, China has adopted a series of measures to fight desertification, from planting sand-blocking vegetation to laying straw on the ground in the shape of checkerboards to prevent its vast deserts from expanding.
Solar solution
China’s plan for renewable energy from 2021 to 2025 calls for the “large-scale development” of its sand-plus-solar anti-desertification method.
The concept centres around managing arid areas via building and maintaining solar farms. It stems from years of experience accumulated by Chinese solar developers, which have built solar farms in the desert for more than a decade – with varying degrees of success.
“Building solar farms needs a lot of space. China has vast deserts, so [companies] wanted to take advantage of it,” Dr He explained.
But to operate solar farms in such harsh conditions, these companies must first take various protective measures – and these measures helped combat desertification, too.
For example, companies need to put up fences around their solar farms to stop animals from entering, install anti-dust nets to prevent sand from gathering on equipment and make straw checkerboards around their bases to prevent nearby sand dunes from shifting, Dr He said.
Solar panels also bring benefits to the ground underneath. For example, they can reduce water evaporation by blocking out direct sunshine, according to Dr Chen Siyu, a professor at the college of atmospheric sciences at Lanzhou University in Lanzhou, a city situated on the edge of the Gobi desert in China.
Solar panels can “significantly increase” the soil moisture of dry regions and, therefore, help plants to grow, Dr Chen told Carbon Brief. A 2021 study conducted in northwest China projected that the soil moisture would increase by up to 113.6% when it is sheltered.
“Solar panels can also form a natural barrier, helping to shed wind speed and prevent dust storms from occurring and spreading,” she said.
Ramping up transition
The construction of solar farms also injects financial support to many regions’ sand-control campaigns, providing incentives for them to carry on, Dr He noted.
“In the past, planting trees only brought ecological benefits, not economic returns,” he said. “Now, if a company wants to build a solar power station, it needs to cover all related costs, from hiring equipment to growing plants.”
Ramping up the solar-plus-sand method can scale up China’s renewable deployment, as well as improving soil conditions by bringing greenery, vegetable plots and livestock to the desert and barren land. Because of this, dryland has become “a type of resource”, Dr He said.
This Spotlight is by freelance climate journalist Xiaoying You for Carbon Brief. A full-length version of the article is available on the Carbon Brief website.
Watch, read, listen
LOW-BALLING: Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin, in a lengthy interview with China Newsweek, reflected on the “disappoint[ing]” $300bn finance goal and pushed back against questions of China “playing a stronger leadership role” in climate negotiations.
LOOKING AHEAD: The Asia Society Policy Institute wrote that, against the backdrop of an economic slowdown, China’s international climate pledge next year, coal trajectory and renewables buildout are “key things to watch” in a forecast for 2025.
PUTIN’S PIPELINE: State news agency Xinhua visited a hub of the recently completed China-Russia east-route gas pipeline to explore how it supplies Shanghai and other eastern provinces.
TRUMP EFFECT: A podcast by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies discussed how the next Trump administration’s China policy could affect China’s own energy activities and climate action.
17%
The share of China’s greenhouse gas emissions produced by the steel industry, according to Reuters. The newswire added that China has published draft rules for comment on greenhouse gas emissions reporting for steel-makers, in preparation for the industry’s entry into the national emissions trading scheme.
New science
Global and Planetary Change
Compound drought and hot extremes (CDHEs) will increase across many regions of China over the coming century, especially in the eastern and central Songnen Plain and northern Sichuan Basin, a new study found. The authors evaluated changes in CDHEs across multiple croplands in China between 1961-2010 and 2031-80, using a large ensemble model, rainfall data and temperature data. “These results underscore the high risk of the spatial compounding of extremes at multiple croplands in China in the future,” the study said.
Impact of computing infrastructure on carbon emissions in China
Scientific Reports
A new paper found an upside-down “U” shaped relationship between carbon emission intensity – the emissions per unit of economic output – and computing infrastructure in Chinese cities, with emissions intensity initially increasing with a rise in computing infrastructure, before plateauing and then decreasing. The authors used data from 279 prefecture-level cities collected between 2008 to 2021. The findings are “particularly pronounced in central regions, hub cities and moderately digitally developed cities”, they said.
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 12 December 2024: Export controls; Carbon concentration figures; ‘War on sand’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 12 December 2024: Export controls; Carbon concentration figures; ‘War on sand’
When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.
But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.
Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.
“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.
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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids
But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.
Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.
Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China.
Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?
While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.
On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.
The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.
A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer.
In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve.
Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.
“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.
China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing
Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.
“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.
Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.
Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country.
The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.
China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.
Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.
Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for