China Energy and Climate Policy, Looking Beyond the Plan - with Yan Qin

Environment China

A lot has happened in China climate and energy policy just in the weeks since the release of the outline of the national 14th Five-Year Plan. Provinces, state-owned energy giants, cities, and companies are announcing carbon neutral plans, ministries are issuing new policies, and there are new discussions around accelerating the carbon market to include more sectors and add auctions. Yet without the bright, blinking lights of the words Five-Year Plan, these important developments are often missing from English-language reporting. We will go through them one by one, and also address larger questions, like whether China now sees itself as a leader on climate policy, and the trend towards administrative management versus markets in energy and carbon.

Today, we’re talking again with Yan Qin, a power and carbon analyst at Refinitiv in Norway. She has extensive experiences in energy market analysis and quantitative modelling. Her work focuses on the short-term outlook for power and carbon trading, supply-demand forecasting, and energy policy insights, mainly for clients at utilities and energy companies. Yan holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Oslo.

For further reading:

Carbon Brief: https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does-chinas-14th-five-year-plan-mean-for-climate-change

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies: https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/key-issues-for-chinas-14th-five-year-plan/

China Dialogue: https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/the-14th-five-year-plan-sends-mixed-message-about-chinas-near-term-climate-trajectory/

Vox: https://www.vox.com/22313871/china-energy-climate-change-five-year-plan-wind-solar-coal-oil-gas