>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Welcome everyone I'm Tomoko Steen
at Science Technology
and Business Division.
Today's event is as you mentioned
sponsored by the Asian Division here
and also French Society
and also Science
and Technology and
Business Division.
It's a wonderful corporation
with the Asian Division
and we usually have
much more dry room.
This is a very beautiful room
we can have the speaker in.
So today's speaker, Professor Joanna
Lewis is the associate professor
at Georgetown's Science
Technology Society.
Oh no no. Science and Technology
and International Affairs
at the Georgetown University's
Foreign Service Institute.
Its official name is Edmund
Walsh School of Foreign Service
and her research focus is energy,
environment, innovation in China.
Some people say that green
energy in China is oxymoron,
but it's not actually
[laughter] true.
With Dr. Lewis advising
you know the China is going
to be leading the green energy
in the world [assumed spelling]
and also Dr. Lewis is leading
[inaudible] project and it's kind
of hard to understand
the project name.
International Partnerships
and Technological Leapfrogging
in China's Clean Energy Sectors and
it's Leapfrogging so she is going
to explain to you more about this.
And also her book, recent book,
Green Innovation in China received
in 2014 Harold and
Margaret Sprout Award
by the International Studies
Association for best book
for that year in environmental
studies.
I think you all should read it
and also she was National
Academy's Committee
on the US China Corporation on
Electricity from Renewables.
So this National Academy has many
the committees and produce monograph
and if you're interested you I can
actually point to you the monograph.
She has advised domestic
and international agencies including
domestic one is UNIDO and USAID.
So she was advisory board to ACORE
also and the US-China Program.
So she has Ph.D. from the Berkeley
and also M.A. from Berkeley
and I know some of you
actually Berkeley graduate
and before further do please join
me the welcoming Professor Lewis.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you very much.
Thank you all for coming this
afternoon and I'm very appreciative
of the invitation to
speak with you today
so thank you very much
for having me.
Today the title of my
talk is China's Rule
in Global Clean Energy
Technology Development
and so I thought I would speak a bit
about what is happening
generally both internationally
and domestically in China as
it relates to clean energy.
Particularly how this is influencing
the international discussion
on climate change and the
climate change negotiations
in the United Nations.
I want to start by mentioning
the recent bilateral deal
between China and the United States.
You may remember last November
the Presidents came together
for a summit and announced
what I think many of us
in this field thought was
really a ground breaking deal
between the two countries,
in that both countries just
simultaneously announced the actions
that they were going to do to
address climate change and I think
that this is an extremely important
not just for what's happening
in both countries domestically,
which I'll talk about,
but particularly for the
upcoming climate talks
that we'll be taking place in
Paris at the end of this year.
Whereas you may know
countries are trying
to reach a new global agreement
on climate change following
on the Kyoto Protocol and
then negotiations since then.
So the key elements
of this announcement
which were particularly notable
the United States of course agreed
to take on an economy-wide
target to reduce its emissions 26
to 28 percent from 2005
levels by 2025 and to try
to do this actually the
more aggressive end.
China also for the first time
announced that it would try
to achieve the peaking of CO2
emissions around the year 2030
and to try to peak early
as well as announced a goal
to increase the share
of non-fossil fuels
in primary energy to
20 percent by 2030.
This includes renewable energy
as well as nuclear power
and so this announcement was really
done with the intention of trying
to really motivate
other countries as well
in the international climate talks.
So China's goals from last
November have now been enshrined
in its pledge that it has submitted
to the United Nations in advance
of Paris and so this includes
the targets I mentioned as well
as a new what we call carbon
intensity target as well.
So I think these are
quite significant
because of course this
is the first time
that China has actually mentioned
its emissions would peak.
If you study China energy
data, which I'm sure many
of you are familiar with the
statistics, for many years it looked
like China's emissions
both its energy consumption
and its greenhouse gas emissions
would essentially grow exponentially
for the coming decades.
And so all the modeling
projections coming out of China
and the United States and other
places essentially just showed an
upwards slope.
It's really just been in the last
few years where we've realized
that that's not actually the case
because domestic energy trends,
which I'll talk a bit about today.
And so I think that you
know the real question is,
which I want to focus on which these
are really the topic of my research,
how can China transition
to a lower carbon economy?
And to do that of course it does
take clean energy technology.
So a lot of my work actually looks
at how China has acquired
clean energy technology.
Where is that technology coming from
and whether China is
contributing to green innovation?
I'll just talk about this briefly
today, but that was the topic
of my last book and then finally I
want to end with a bit of discussion
about how the United States
and China are cooperating.
And could continue to cooperate
on clean energy and why
that I think that's important.
So I mentioned that in the target
when China announced a peak year
for the first time, when we see
this is a study that was done both
by researchers at GNY
[assumed spelling] and MIT here
which shows a very similar
peak projection for China
and I show you this to
point out that essentially
if China's total carbon
emissions are at a peak
in the year 2030 you would
essentially have to scale
up clean energy extremely
substantially.
If you can see here on the chart
the yellow bar, the green bar,
the purple bar this is
wind, solar, hydropower,
natural gas all are going to
have to be scaled up dramatically
and then you see down here on
the bottom the dark blue is coal.
And you see coal essentially
leveling off
and then declining quite rapidly
between now and the year 2050.
Again this is not something that you
know many people thought would be
possible for China.
China still gets about 2/3 of
its primary energy from coal
and about 80 percent of electricity.
So you know as you
mentioned earlier clean energy
in China you know many people say,
China's not doing clean energy,
but this is you know really
about where China's is going.
Right and where it will
have to go if it's going
to actually achieve
this emissions peak.
This is the chart just showing
you where China's energy has come
from over the last few decades and
again as you can see coal is just
by far the largest share, but I
think what has really driven a lot
of these this changes
in diversifying China's
energy supply is the desire
to become more efficient
and how energy is consumed.
China actually between 1980
and 2000 approximately was able
to quadruple its economy while
only doubling energy demand
and this is actually extremely
impressive no other country has been
able to achieve that
rate of improvement.
And so that's the declining line
you see sort of after 1980 here
on this chart, but if you look at
this little like blip in the chart
where in the early 2000's you
actually had energy use growing
faster than economic
growth for the first time
in several decades in China.
This actually caught the
attention of the leadership
because this essentially means
that their overall economy
was becoming less efficient.
This also had to do with a
resurgence of heavy industry
and as you know China is trying
to move away from heavy industry,
manufacturing, cement, iron,
steel to more higher
value added industries
that essentially take less energy
to produce the same
unit of economic growth.
This is better for them overall
from an energy security perspective
and this is better
for the environment
from an emissions perspective.
And then of course there
are many other advantages
to reducing coal use.
In China one of course for
those of you who spent time
in China you know well
is air pollution.
Local air pollution is a current,
like a very big concern
not just for human health.
It's one of the leading causes of
early mortality in the country,
but also you know there
are concerns about sort
of the public becoming less
satisfied with the current quality
of the air and this could lead to
stability issues which of course are
of top concern for the government.
This is actually a paper my
student did that looked at on days
when the PM2.5, the
particulate levels are very high,
people are [inaudible] essentially
complaining and talking about it
and people are very very aware of
air pollution levels in their day
to day, their day to
day activities in China.
So I want to move to talk now what's
happening in clean energy there.
So globally I think
it's important to point
out clean energy is actually now
about a $300 billion
dollar a year industry.
We used to think of clean energy
as this sort of little niche sector
with a little bit of money
going into it here and there.
There's more money on an
annual basis now going
into so-called clean energy
than there is dirty energy.
Just because when we look at
new capacity that's being built,
new power plants in the
United States for example,
almost all the new power plants
we're building here are either
natural gas which are fossil
plants, but cleaner than coal
and then wind power, solar power.
In most years we're actually wind
and solar power growth rates are
much faster than they are in gas
and we have not built a new
coal plant here in a while.
We have not built new nuclear
plant either in a while.
China has played a very
big role in this investment
and in fact wind energy
in China where a lot
of my research is focused is
represents the single largest
investment in any clean energy
technology that any country
around the world has
made in the last decade.
So that's really it's quite
substantial just the amount
of investment that has gone
into growing the wind
power sector in China.
So while I showed you
in the early charts
that coal is still a huge
share of energy in China,
coal is not going away tomorrow
right, and I don't mean to imply
that it is, but again if you look
at what's going in annually in terms
of new plants we see this
real shift that's taking place
in the last few years.
Where if you go back you know about
ten years ago, China was putting
in 80 almost 100 new gigawatts
of coal plants a year.
That's you know roughly
you heard the figures,
that's like two new plants a week
essentially, large coal plants,
but those numbers have really
slowed down quite a bit.
And so China is building
much fewer coal plants.
There's actually been a lot of media
reporting in the last few days,
they may put a moratorium
on new coal plants.
They already have done this in some
of the most polluted
parts of eastern China.
So when you look at you
know there's still a need
for growing electricity supply
and so what's being built?
Still hydropower, but also
wind power, solar power,
nuclear power playing
increasingly important role
and I haven't updated
this yet for last year,
but you would see this trend
continuing and even increasing.
So I think it was 2013 was the first
year China actually installed more
non-fossil capacity than fossil
capacity in a single year.
So that's a real shift.
So I mentioned wind power has been
a real success story in China.
This is showing you the growth
that we've seen just in wind energy
over the last decade or so
and you can see that you know
for a while the United States and
China were sort of neck and neck.
China has now installed
far more wind turbines
than the United States.
Although if you actually look
at electricity production coming
from these wind turbines
there is some concern
that they're operating less
efficiently than they could be.
Mostly due to constraints on the
electric grid which I'll talk
about in a moment and you also
I should mention there's many
companies globally which is what
my book looks at that in China,
which are now manufacturing state
of the art wind power technologies
selling this technology in China
and exporting it around
the world as well.
Solar has also been
in more recent years,
a really big success story in China.
China installed more solar power
last year than you know the rest
of the world sort of
installed that year
and there soon will have more solar
than you know the United States
many other countries combined.
It's really quite dramatic
the growth we're seeing there.
Part of this is due to the
fact that China has built
up a very successful manufacturing
industry in solar technology
and so these costs of the technology
have come down very dramatically.
Cost of solar I believe it's
about a 60 percent cost
reduction in the last five years.
So suddenly when solar was much
too expensive is what China many
countries believed a few years ago.
It's now cost competitive with most
of the other technologies
they would be looking at.
Particularly if you look
at externality cost as
well like pollution.
So there's very aggressive targets
to expand all these technologies.
I won't go through them in detail.
This is showing you different
scenarios for how China might scale
up different low carbon energy
technologies in the coming years
and they're you know really
quite aggressive scenarios
that people are looking at.
This is one study that
I participated
in which was done jointly with
The Energy Research Institute
of the National Development
Reform Commission in China along
with several international experts
and funded by the Energy Foundation
to look at you know what could
a very high penetration scenario
of renewable energy look
like for China in 2050?
Essentially what would
be the maximum scenario?
This is more of a visioning study.
This isn't necessarily
what will happen right?
This is you know if China did
the best they could do you know,
went sort of changed all models,
went beyond all projections
you know.
What could they do that
could actually be realistic?
And they actually showed
that China could get
to 60 percent non-fossil sources
in total energy and 80 percent
of its electricity
generation by 2050.
So remember right now that
they're at 80 percent coal
so this would be a very
dramatic transformation
and it wouldn't be easy.
This is a chart just showing you
what this would actually look
like on the ground so you can see
again coal takes this very steep
decline in order to allow the
other sources to scale up.
You see huge increases in solar.
Both solar electricity as well
as solar for heating, geothermal
and other types of renewable energy.
And this is what you know
essentially the trajectory
for how wind and solar would have
to be scaled extremely rapidly
over the next couple of decades.
I think it's important to think
about where would this
go in China right?
So for many of you are very familiar
with the geography of the countries.
So actually it's a Inner
Mongolia is where most
of the wind power is
being developed in China.
If you've been there you
know there's a lot of sort
of flat grasslands,
plains, a lot of wind
and it's been an extremely
good place
for wind development
particularly the eastern part
of inner Mongolia is connected to
the same electric grid as Beijing.
So this is actually is useful
for helping feed the power demand
of eastern China and
northeastern China.
But you can see that if
you really wanted to get
to this really you know
high scenario of wind.
You've got to put wind
turbines everywhere
and this is a problem right
because there's not a lot
of just empty land that's not
being used for other things.
You can do sort of
dual use agriculture
and wind with solar as well.
This is the possibility, but you can
see them essentially if you're going
to put wind particularly throughout
the northern part of the country
to some extent in the southern part
and you know lesser
extent in the west.
You would need to essentially
move this electricity
to where the demand is.
You can see the same
thing for solar.
Solar's actually a bigger issue
because the best solar resources
in China are in the far western part
of the country particularly
Xinjiang,
Tibet and you know it you can
imagine how challenging it would be
if you sort of put a lot
of solar farms out there,
then you move that electricity
to Shanghai this is a you
know very complex transmission
and very inefficient
transmission process.
And this again this
is talking about solar
that would far exceed the power
demand even the you know what
already exist in those provinces.
Even under a scenario without
economic development would continue
and these provinces
would grow substantially
in the next couple of decades.
So you would need to essentially put
in significant transmission
capacity.
This is power lines right?
You'd have to build extensive
infrastructure you know
around the country.
This is costly.
This is something China
is doing, starting to do,
but it's bigger than this.
It's also thinking about how our
markets power sector reform is a big
issue right now in China.
How you think about
pricing these technologies.
How you incentivize the
current large power companies.
Which are all still state
owned very powerful companies.
The grid companies very very
powerful company in China sacred.
You know they are not as excited
about this vision I should I say
of the future because it implies
a you know very different model
from what they're used
to and quite a few costs.
And you know it is a very
different type of power grid
when you're integrating as we call
it, intermittent resources right?
The sun is not always shining.
The wind's not always blowing
so you have to actually think
about how you keep the lights
on given this these sort
of new resources and there
are ways which we can talk
about if you're interested.
And then finally on this scenario
you know of course if you switch
to this you know very cleaner vision
of clean energy you get
very dramatic rejections
in air pollutants right.
Sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide
so this would be overall
beneficial for health.
One other thing that's happening
which could be quite important
in China for incentivizing this
transition is the introduction
of a so-called cap and trades
system for carbon dioxide.
So you know for many years
here in the United States just
about a block away there've
been very active debates
about whether the United States
should put a cap on its emissions
and then develop an
emissions trading system
where by companies
would trade by permits,
trade permits the most
efficient way possible.
The United States actually
helped to pioneer this model
for sulfur dioxide control.
In the northeast it was
extremely successful.
This is you know for people
who study environmental policy
this is believed to be one
of the most effective,
most cost effective
and environmentally effective
environmental regulations we've ever
done here and so the ideas that
this could apply to carbon.
We're not actually doing
that in this country although a
couple states are looking at this.
California and a few others, but
China has announced they're going
to do a national program
starting in 2017
and right now they have seven pilots
which are underway
essentially experimenting
with this and how it might work.
There are policies and I won't
go into this for time and detail,
but you know throughout the
different government ministries
and agencies in China which support
clean energy from a variety of ways
so the Ministry of Science and
Technology is supporting research
and development in many
of the new technologies
which will be important.
Other agencies like the National
Development and Reform Commission,
National Energy Commission helps
support large demonstration
projects, support subsidies
to promote these technologies
and these are you know spread
throughout the economy.
When you look at innovation
coming out of China,
this is just showing you US patent
applications in clean energy.
So this is an imperfect measure I
would say off the bat of innovation,
particularly in China because this
is the US view not the China view.
You can look at these data
for the US for China as well
from the State Intellectual
Property Office, but this is coming
out of the US Patent Office.
You see that even in the United
States Chinese innovation,
Chinese patenting activities are
already starting to show up here
in terms of you know very
active inventors filing
in the United States for inventions
in clean energy particularly
in areas like clean coal,
carbon capture technologies.
These are all areas where China
if they're not leading now they
may be leading in five, ten years.
So I want to end with just a bit
of a discussion about cooperation.
I think there's a lot of reasons
why it makes sense for countries
around the world to cooperate
with China on clean energy.
Essentially if you know we
have a lot of things going
on politically related
to clean energy.
There's trade tensions.
There's disputes right now
in the World Trade Organizations
surround Chinese solar panels
as you may know.
I think if you have a more
cooperative perspective
that can help to ease these broader
political and trade tensions,
but from a more technical side
if you're actually collaborating
on R&D there's actually things
that the US does do better.
There's things China does better.
There's things Germany does better
in terms of having expertise.
Having ability to bring things to
scale quickly and so if you're sort
of bringing together the best of
the scientific and technical bodies
of these different countries
you can actually speed the rate
of innovation.
Bring down the cost more quickly
if you can deal with this sort
of the framework for
how you do this and one
of those sticking points does tend
to be intellectual property rights.
So if I invent something you
know collaboratively with you
and we're both from different
countries how do we share the output
of those innovations.
Sounds simple often it's not right
and you know governments
get involved in this.
Governments you know are
a part of the R&D process.
Private companies are increasingly
important in the clean energy space,
but governments can play an
important role in helping
to facilitate these partnerships
making sure everyone feels
comfortable with the playing field
and then scientists
can do their job right.
So I want to mention
one model of this
that I think is working
extremely well.
This is something called the US
China Clean Energy Research Center
the CRC.
This is something that was
established back in November of 2009
when President Obama first entered
office and back when Secretary Chu
of the then Secretary of
Energy was then the Secretary
of Energy this is you know a
project that he felt strongly about.
It was the first initiative to set
up collaborative R&D in clean energy
between the US and China
on a scale of this nature.
This is a huge endeavor.
There are up into the first phase
of the project had about you know
over 80 projects happening
simultaneously in the US and China.
This brings together researchers
from multiple universities,
multiple national laboratories,
private companies all working side
by side on a variety of clean energy
technologies focusing on coal,
efficient buildings and
efficient vehicle technology.
And what's also quite novel about
this is that anyone who decided
to join this agreement, so all the
labs and governments and companies
that are part of this signed and
intellectual property agreement
that said you know
anything that comes
out of this will be shared equally
among all the researchers whether
they're from the United
States or China.
So this has been a really
interesting model and one
that I'm watching closely.
The bilateral relationship
has really I think picked
up steam in the last few months.
Last month in mid-September there
was a Climate Leaders' Summit,
a US-China Climate Leaders' Summit
in Los Angeles you
may have heard about.
This was actually the first time
where a lot of mayors and governors
and cities from both
countries got involved and took
on specific pledges
related to climate change.
And again the idea here is that
it's great to have the presidents
from sign off on these high level
plans and goals, but at the end
of the day it's one
thing for Beijing to take
on a huge target it's another
thing for you know the mayor
of Guangzhou [assumed spelling]
to say that we're going
to do this you know
here in our city.
We're going to implement this
and this is what it's
going to look like right.
So this is the type of thing that
was being discussed at this meeting
and then of course we have the
state visit just a few weeks ago
where President Shi
was here in Washington.
And you saw some important
things come out of this.
This was sort of the last time the
presidents were meeting officially
before the Climate
Negotiations in Paris.
Although they'll be
meeting informally
in the G-20 and a few other place.
A few things came out of this.
First of all was this
public announcement
about the trading system
which I mentioned earlier this was
the first time you actually had the
president of China say that this is
where China was going to do and so
that was a pretty big deal.
China also announced in the context
of its broader power Sector Reforms
that they're going to do something
called green power dispatch.
This essentially gives priority
when you're operating the grid,
as I mentioned earlier,
where if you know instead
of dispatching a cold plant
first, if it's available,
if you have wind power or solar
power also ready to be fed
into the grid and power the city
that you actually you
do those first.
So you sort of use all
the clean energy first
and only use the dirtier
energy as a backup source.
So again this is something
they're been experimenting with
and will be interesting to see if
they can do this on a large scale.
A bunch of other things announced.
Heavy duty vehicle emissions
is if you again if you've been
in China this is trucks, this
very polluting source of emissions
and so something they're
going to start regulating.
On the international side you
know, sticking points for Paris
where essentially if China
and United States can come
to some agreement, I think we
have hope for broader agreement
because these are really quite
quite difficult political issues.
One is just around what we call
transparency, transparency in data
and measurement is actually
a very complicated issue
and one that's very
important if you're going
to start making these
pledges people want
to know how do we know
you're meeting them?
How do we know what your
emissions actually look like?
Financing is extremely important
so we have created something
internationally called the Green
Climate Fund.
This is based in Korea.
It includes pledges made
by countries from all
over the world primarily
industrialized countries.
Although China has made a
somewhat surprising announcement
to many people that it would fund
essentially the same dollar amount
as the United States.
It essentially met the United
States on a dollar for dollar basis,
but it put that money into
the China South South Climate
Cooperation Fund.
So this is a fund that
China has helped establish
to help support other developing
countries in transitioning
to low carbon technology, but
that's quite significant this is the
largest you know dollar amount
that China has announced
that it would put in to
this type of support.
And then finally there's also
a really interesting discussion
happening in the International
Export Financing Community
about ending financing for
coal plants around the world.
So this is something that OPEC here
in the United States
has stopped doing.
This is something that you know
particularly is China is becoming
increasingly active in the NAIB
the New Asian Infrastructure Bank.
Many are wondering is this going
to help build coal
plants around the road.
I support Chinese Coal Technology
or will it help export Chinese Wind
Technology Solar Technology right.
So this will be I think
very interesting to watch.
So what does this all
mean for Paris next month?
So for those of you who'll
be watching this meeting
that starts November 30th.
You'll be you know this
will be quite interesting.
They'll be many heads
of state there.
I was at a meeting last
week with Secretary Kerry
where he said he planned to be on
the ground for the entire two weeks
of the meeting if necessary
to make sure it goes well.
Which is not normal.
So I think that shows the
significance that the US government
and other governments
are placing on this.
I think it's really helpful
that we've seen this evolution
in bilateral in the bilateral
relationship between China
and the United States on
climate change, on clean energy
because that wasn't the case
just a few years ago and I think
that this you know we're much
more aligned politically in terms
of where both countries are going
in seeing this a priority issue
for for domestic implementation
not just
for the international community.
We've had all these
new agreements signed
and I should say you know the United
States has been signing agreements
with all kinds of countries
around the world.
They've signed new agreements with
India, with Mexico, with Brazil.
China has signed many agreements
with other important countries
in the negotiations so I think both
countries are playing an important
role in trying to bring
others along.
In this agreement and you
know you see things showing
up in these bilateral agreements
that for a long time were
just really difficult issues
in the negotiations.
Things like intellectual
property as I mentioned
and you know we've seen the
bilateral announcements lead
to what countries are
pledging directly in the UN.
So you know this is I think a really
important Segway from bilateral
to multilateral and you know all
in all I think this just sets a much
better working environment heading
into the climate negotiations
in Paris.
And makes us really
much better poised
for some sort of successful outcome.
We can talk about what that would
look like if you're interested,
but I you know I think for those
of you who remember Copenhagen
and the outcome of that meeting.
We're in a very different
place now both
in the international
negotiations, but particularly
in the US-China relationship which
I do think is quite determine
of the potential success
of the meeting.
So I will stop there
and I'd be happy
to take any questions thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Question, please
repeat your question.
>> Okay, sure yes.
As since yes sir.
>> Could you give me a
little deeper assessment
of the the US-China
cooperation when it comes
to clean coal technology program?
What did you do see
anything commercial coming
out of the agreement?
>> Thank you.
So the question was
could you speak a bit
about clean coal technology
cooperation
between China and the United States.
This has been a big
topic of cooperation
because you know both
countries still rely on coal
for the majority of their energy.
However you know if you
think about climate change
and how you can continue
to burn coal and deal
with climate change the main
technological solution we've come
up with is something called
carbon capture and sequestration.
So the idea here for those
of you who aren't familiar is
that you essentially capture the
carbon either before you burn the
coal, after you burn
the coal, you take it,
you sequester it probably
underground in geologic formations.
We technically know how to do this,
but it's very expensive and also
if you're running a coal plant
and you're also running the carbon
capture equipment you potentially
have a 1/3 essentially you know
a 30 plus percent energy penalty
so you're actually burn more coal to
get the same amount of electricity
if you're also capturing the carbon.
I hope I explained that clearly.
Anyway that's been a
big focus of cooperation
between the two countries,
but I think it has been much
slower than many people hoped.
Mostly because of the
cost and the sort
of technical challenges
which I mentioned.
You know there's a lot of
technical interest in this,
but not a lot of political
interest and it's very expensive
to build the first few
demonstration demonstration plants.
We have a plant here
in the United States
that where this technology's
being demonstrated in conjunction
with enhanced oil recovery.
So if you can actually use
the carbon carbon dioxide
to help enhance the way that
which you're extracting oil
from the ground it makes
it more cost effective.
So this is something
China's doing too.
Quan-Hong [assumed spelling] has
a plant called Green Jen [assumed
spelling] which is in
is one of the places
where this is being
demonstrated in China as well.
Although again this is
a gasification plant
that hasn't moved along as quickly
on the carbon capture
side as many had hoped.
So I think this is still an area
that's going to be it's going
to you know be a focus,
a cooperation.
The last presidential summit had
some new announcements of projects
that they're going
to do in this area,
but I actually think it's been sort
of the biggest challenge in terms
of technical cooperation.
In the back yes.
>> Have lower crude oil prices
incentivized or [inaudible] more
in a sense getting clean energy?
>> Great question.
So the question was have
lower crude oil prices,
how's that affected
clean energy development?
You know it's I would say
there's a lot of concern
that low oil prices would
essentially mean why should we
invest in clean energy right
because if oil prices are
high we look for alternatives.
If oil prices are low we just
sort of stick with status quo.
Couple problems I think though with
that assumption you know one is
that in the United
States particularly most
of our oil is going to
transportation right.
It's going to gasoline petroleum.
Most of our wind/solar et
cetera for electricity right
and we don't have a lot of electric
cars yet in the United States
so these don't tend to actually be
overlapping sort of substitutes yet.
In China it's a little bit blurrier,
but because they are
actually starting
to do electric vehicles
more quickly.
But again you know I think
this is less of an issue
for clean energy in
the power sector.
It could change and I think the
biggest thing that's had an impact
is not so much oil prices,
although it's linked,
is non-conventional gas
expiration oil and gas.
So particularly the shale gas
right we to hear about here
in the United States which has
really revolutionized the US Energy
System and you know the fact that
we have cheap abundant natural gas
in a way we did not five years ago.
I think that is what is potentially
affecting investment in renewables.
I think because you have
a lot states in the US
that have pretty aggressive
renewable portfolio standards
that mandate you actually do
a certain share of renewables.
We've still seen pretty
aggressive growth
in wind and solar for example.
And China has not had
the same success
in domestic shale gas
exploration as the United States,
although on paper their reserves
are potentially much larger
than those of the United States.
So down the line if
those get developed
that could I think you know
be a really interesting,
but China right now
uses a tiny amount
of natural gas in their
energy system.
They need more and so for China this
wouldn't necessarily be what we call
like a bridge fuel in the US,
but this could be a really important
really important source of energy
for the industrial sector for
power for a variety of uses
that would substitute coal.
Thank you.
Ah yes.
>> Thank you for [inaudible].
I have a question [inaudible]
in the age of ambition,
he commented China does
everything in the fever fashion.
So in your expert opinion how long
those new policies [inaudible]
in research and development
in energy
and clean energy [inaudible]
sustainable.
Can they be reversed
after another [inaudible]?
I'm just curious.
>> Yeah great question.
So the question was you know are the
policies we're seeing are these sort
of short term policies if I have
it right, fevers you know trends
and will they go away in a few years
with the next the next big thing?
You know I think that we've actually
seen that this point about 10
to 15 years of sustained focus on
clean energy investment in China
from the research and development
side and from the deployment side.
China started really encouraging
when power development in 2002-2003.
So it's been more than
10 years since they put
in place the first
aggressive policies
and those haven't changed
substantially
if anything they've gotten stronger.
And I think that you know there
of course will be shifts you know
as things evolve, but you know I
think the air pollution problem is
worse now than it was then.
The I think they've
they understand now
that they can play extremely
important role globally
in manufacturing these technologies
and be a real competitor
that this is a source of
local economic development.
It's not just an environmental
policy.
It's an economic policy.
So I think there's just a lot
of reasons why continued clean
energy support is actually it's sort
of aligns with the broader
priorities of the government
which are much bigger than sort of
just an you know passing interest
in environmental protection or
in clean energy specifically.
So I don't think it's
going anywhere and you know
if anything they'll be new
technologies, they'll be new focus,
but I see that staying quite
central and maybe getting larger.
Yeah.
>> [inaudible] clean air effort
and development how long do
you think the [inaudible]
of people can view and see
actually clean air in the cities?
>> Yeah so the question is so
how long till the air is clean?
When will we see results?
Well you know it's interesting
you know air pollution is quite
complicated right.
If you reduce one pollutant you're
not you may increase something else
because there's very interesting
atmospheric chemistry happening
right and we're actually seeing
right now that if you look
at the data from 2015 to date
everything is lower than last year
and the year before so
pollution is down this year.
If you've been in China this
year you may have felt this.
I was in China in June and I
actually had ten blue sky days
in a row which was quite amazing,
but that's not a trend right.
Just because I see
blue sky days that's
that doesn't say oh all
the policies are working.
This is a trend because again
these things go up and down.
They go up and down because
of the way this depends
on broader weather conditions right.
There's a lot of factors here.
So we won't know I think for a few
more years how well these policies
are working, but you know if if
China really does get serious
about restricting the
building of new coal plants.
Of affecting vehicle emissions
in cities the issues tends
to be vehicle related pollution
because at this point a lot
of the factories and power plants
have been moved outside the city.
So depends where you
are with the causes,
but you know they're controlling
it in sort of all the right places
and then the question is
just how long will it take
for the implementation
to lead to results.
No. Ah yeah.
>> I have [inaudible] new question
because of putting so much money
in research, how have
space solar research,
I was very interested
[inaudible] space program
which doesn't have any programs
that leading down to the [inaudible]
and also Korea and Japan [inaudible]
and also [inaudible] clean
energy [inaudible] to the hydro
for the environmental
issue [inaudible].
>> Yeah so the question is about
sort of you know other models
of clean energy space solar
and the environmental impacts
of wind power and things like this?
Yes so these are all I
think issues which are sort
of just well actually I can't
really speak to the space solar one.
I'd be interested to learn
from you more about that.
I don't follow that as closely, but
in terms of the sighting of wind
and sort of concerns
about environmental impact I
think you know this is something
that there needs to
be much more focus on.
At the moment the wind the wind
development tends to be far
from populations but that won't last
if you do the you know the
visions I showed you right
of the very aggressive
wind development.
You know in this country
the real challenge
to wind development has
been offshore development
so you know there's a
lot of potential here in.
As I mentioned earlier if you want
to build wind power you ideally
put it near near the load,
near the people right
where the demand is.
In the US that's essentially
the eastern coastline.
We don't really have empty
space to put huge wind farms
so you don't see very many
around here, but you know off
of Massachusetts, off of
New Jersey they're looking
at doing these offshore projects,
but as you may know not a
single one has been built
yet in the United States
because they've been tied
up in you know political
approval procedures,
public you know public
opposition to the projects.
People don't want to look at
them essentially and you want
to make sure it's not going
to affect the ocean environment,
affect marine shipping.
Things like that.
China actually has
very aggressive targets
for offshore wind you know partly
because they have some coastline
that's not being used recreationally
as much, is more industrial.
But it it is still challenging.
It's more expensive to do it
that way and so I think that's
where you've actually seen the
biggest opposition and sort
of the slowest the slowest progress.
Yeah in the back.
>> You talk about these long term
emissions production agreements
between nations.
What is your understanding with
the monitoring mechanisms will be
and what do you foresee that being
one of the main topics in discussion
in Paris and kind of what?
Well I'll leave it at that.
>> Yeah great questions
so the question is what will
the monitoring mechanisms be
for the emissions targets
that countries are are putting
forward in advance of Paris.
This is actually going to be
yeah a large topic of discussion.
It has been already for a few years,
but the model we're in now leading
up to Paris is that
countries are coming forward
with what we call INDC's.
These are their Intended
Nationally Determined Contributions
so what does that mean?
It basically means every countries
sort of makes up what they are going
to do and they pledge
that to the UN,
but that they can do
it in any metrics.
Any you know they can say we're
going to do renewable energy target
or we're going to reduce carbon
emissions on an intensity basis
or we're going to reduce our growth
rate in emissions off of a baseline
which we've determined is a future
counterfactual of what you know
and so I don't want to get too
technical right, but essentially
if someone agrees to reduce their
emissions 40 percent from business
as usual by 2030, what was
business as usual and how do we know
if they achieve that or not
and how do we calculate this
if their metrics are different
from another countries?
So you know long story
short I think the issue
of measurement is extremely
important issue,
but it's a very political issue
because countries are sensitive
to essentially having everyone
else inspect their emissions data.
You know if you remember back
in 2007 it was it was reported
by an international organization
that China's emissions had
surpassed those of the US,
the next largest emitter and we're
now the largest in the world.
This was back in 2007.
That happened many years before even
the US Department of Energy sort
of expected that would happen.
But the first response from the
Chinese government was no that's
not accurate.
Like that that didn't happen
right and because honestly
like everyone was still
trying to figure
out what what was the right number.
Like that you know what are the
measurements and it's very hard
to get very accurate data on this.
I think one of the most
important things that could come
out of China's National Cap and
Trade Program, I referred to,
would be a robust national
measurement system for carbon data
for greenhouse gasses,
because if you're going
to start allocating permits
in trading in allowances
of carbon you need to
have a really good idea
of what's the total
amount of allowances?
Who's emitting what?
Are you hitting your target?
Are you below your target?
How many permits do you have to
buy to meet your target right?
So this has to be verified
very carefully.
So that they're going to have to put
that system in place for that policy
to work and that would have
great spillover effects
for the climate negotiations,
but it's not just China.
This is an issue in all countries.
You know particularly countries
that are still developing a robust
statistical and measuring system.
Ah yeah.
>> I'm curious to hear your thoughts
a little more of your thoughts
on how aggressive China's
target center.
Specifically their areas that
you think you're surprised
in how aggressive [inaudible]
or were there other areas
where you didn't think they
were aggressive enough?
>> So the question
is to can I comment
on how aggressive China's
targets are
and which ones are maybe
more aggressive than others?
And where I was surprised?
That's a great question.
You know I think that I do think
China's targets are aggressive
and I I think that so there is sort
of three big energy related targets.
Which are in the the
current pledge for Paris.
One is the peak year.
One is the non-fossil target and
one is the carbon intensity target.
You know in discussing ambition all
you can do is sort of look at these
as Ike [assumed spelling]
said business as usual trends
and projections and say is what
they're agreeing to maybe more
or less robust than what would
have happened in the absence
of a target right and so that's the
only way you can really assess how
how ambitious it is.
So if you look at the peak
year I mean as I said it
for a long time no one actually
believed a peak year was
in the cards anytime
soon and so the fact
that the government publically
said no we are going to peak
by 2030 maybe earlier,
that's a big deal.
One issue though at that
target is they haven't said
where they're going to peak.
So if you imagine a
peak you can peak here,
you can peak here [laughter] and in
terms of the global climate system
and total sort of atmospheric
emissions it really matters right
where China peaks.
So that is sort of yet
to be determined and
and will be very important.
A low peak would obviously
be be preferable
from a climate perspective.
The non-fossil energy target
is is I think quite aggressive.
You know there are I
showed you a scenario
of a much more aggressive
vision of of the future,
but that's a very very
very ambitious
and maybe not politically
realistic or economic realistic,
or technically you will be
technically challenging I'll put it
that way.
So you could get there, but it
is a really different vision
of the power system going forward.
So I think you know the target
China report is within the range
of of a sort of more more
politically realistic studies
and then the carbon intensity
target again if you look.
I did a calculation just
looking what the US Department
of Energy had projected for
China's carbon intensity
and their target is more
aggressive than that for example so.
I'll leave it at that.
Yep.
>> Is anybody doing anything
search in the [inaudible]
so they say money you
know like for heating
or air conditioning
and things like that?
>> Yeah so the question was is
there any research being done
on how you can save energy in the
design of buildings and homes?
Yes this is a huge issue in China
as you know China's building a lot
of new buildings, commercial
and residential and so
when I mention the US-China Clean
Energy Research Center buildings is
one of the three pillars of that.
And there's been a lot of
really interesting inventions
and policy sort of
models coming out of that.
So China is now putting in place
pretty aggressive building standards
for new buildings and you know
there's different ways you can do
you know more efficient materials.
One of the projects that came
out of the CRC it was sort
of a simple technology, but
really quite innovative.
It's a white roof technology.
So it's essentially a roof coating
that makes your roof more reflective
and makes the entire
building cooler.
And that's an example of something
that Dao [phonetic] and some
of the other companies
involved had and some
of the researchers
involved had come up with
and they're demonstrating I
believe that technology and a bunch
of other technologies in China.
China's been doing you
know a lot of these sort
of demonstration buildings
to show state
of the art energy efficiency
technologies as well
as then implementing them more
broadly on more general buildings.
So again I think it's it's really a
question of enforcement making sure
for all the new buildings
going in that they are sort
of the greenest most energy
saving technology possible
because there's really no reason
for them not to at this point.
It's really you save money
for the the builders.
It's an incentive issue.
You know if you're living
in an apartment building
that you didn't build you
don't care if it's efficient
if you're not paying the heating
and you know, but it's so it
with buildings it tends to be you
need incentivize the actual builders
to actually put the standards in
place so then that gets passed
on to the end users of the
building down the line.
>> Please join me to
thank Dr. Lewis.
It was wonderful talk.
>> [applause] Thank you.
Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.