China Briefing 10 August 2023: Severe floods; G20 ‘obstruction’; Q&A on nuclear power

§ Snapshot

CATASTROPHIC FLOODING: More than a million people were forced to leave their homes after northern China was engulfed by floods brought by Typhoon Doksuri. 

ENERGY DATA: Newly released Chinese official data shows that the output of fossil fuels “steadily increased” in the first half of 2023, while new renewable installations grew 98%.

EMISSIONS HIGH: New analysis for Carbon Brief shows China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the second quarter of 2023 returned to record levels seen in 2021. 

G20 CLIMATE TALKS: China denied obstructing G20 climate negotiations in India, claiming “the reports are inconsistent with the facts”. 

SPOTLIGHT: Carbon Brief looks into the journey of China’s nuclear fleet and what’s driving the next stage of its strategy for the technology.

NEW SCIENCE: Peer-reviewed studies examined China’s drylands being “unsuitable” for grazing by the end of the century and how upgrading solar and wind power systems could help the country to achieve carbon neutrality. 

§ Key developments

Dangerous floods killed dozens of people in China

RECORD RAIN: Typhoon Doksuri brought torrential rain and severe floods to northern China, forcing more than a million others to evacuate, CNN reported. From 29 July to 2 August, the capital Beijing saw its heaviest rainfall – 29 inches (74cm) – in “at least 140 years”, the Associated Press reported. Beijing’s local government recorded 38 deaths as of 8 August, state news agency Xinhua reported. Smaller towns surrounding the capital continued to suffer from floods after the rain, when the capital’s flood relief systems directed water into them, said BBC News. Xinhua reported that the China Meteorological Administration predicted “as many as three typhoons” may affect the country this month. Typhoon Khanan is already approaching northeast China, the country’s top grain production region, the South China Morning Post reported.

SPONGE CITY: In an analysis of the floods, local outlet Beijing News said that China has acknowledged the danger of climate change, including increasing “urban rainstorms and waterlogging” in its “National climate change adaptation strategy 2035”. The country has built 30 “sponge cities” to soak up rainfall. However, analysis by the Japan Times said those “‘sponge cities’ are not built for extreme flood events” as they were designed for rainfall levels in the 30 years prior to 2014, whereas floods “are now far in excess of what the systems were designed to cope with”. Beijing News also admitted the “sponge cities” had not fully functioned as planned, but attributed this to local governments’ “insufficient understanding” of their construction. The Washington Post published an article titled: “How floods and extreme heat could test China’s one-party system.”

China denies ‘obstructing’ G20 climate talks

‘INSUFFICIENT’ ACTION: The latest G20 environment and climate ministers meeting concluded in Chennai, India, on 28 July, adopting a consensus outcome, but reaching an “impasse” on “concrete targets to cut…emissions”, Reuters reported. The Independent reported that the G20 ministers acknowledged climate action has been “insufficient”. The Financial Times reported India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav speaking at a “tense press briefing” after the talks, where he “avoided questions about the lack of consensus on fossil fuels and renewable energy”.

CHINA’S REACTION: The Financial Times was among several outlets reporting that China had “obstructed” the talks. Citing “people familiar with the talks”, the paper said that Beijing’s stance was backed by Saudi Arabia, “putting in jeopardy hopes of concluding an agreement on ending fossil fuel use and boosting renewable energy”. But China’s foreign ministry hit back, saying that those “reports are inconsistent with the facts” and that “China worked to coordinate the interests of all parties in order to promote the conclusion of a balanced text”, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported. Other Chinese state-backed media, such as Economic Daily, have also criticised the claim as being against “truth”.  

New energy data released

‘NEW HIGH’: China’s National Energy Administration held its quarterly press conference and released energy data for the first half of 2023 on 31 July. The state-run industry newspaper China Electric Power News highlighted that the domestic production of raw coal, crude oil and gas “steadily increased”, with year-on-year growth of 4.4%, 2.1% and 5.4%, respectively. Additions of renewable energy capacity reached 109 gigawatts (GW), a year-on-year increase of 98.3%, the outlet added. The state-run newspaper China Daily said additions of “new energy” storage projects – which refers to electricity storage processes that use electrochemical, compressed air, flywheel and supercapacitor systems, but not pumped hydro – reached “the total installed capacity of previous years in the country”, some 8.63GW.

MORE COAL: Reuters reported that research by Greenpeace showed “China approved more than 50GW of new coal power in the first half of 2023”. Hellenic Shipping News reported new figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showing global coal consumption “climbed to a new all-time high” in 2022, with demand from China and India increasing “over 5%” during the first half of 2023. 

China’s emissions rebound in Q2 2023 

EMISSIONS REBOUND: China’s CO2 emissions grew 10% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023, returning to the record levels seen in 2021, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The surge was due to a rebound from “zero-Covid” measures and an ongoing drought, without which China’s emissions would likely have stabilised, the analysis found.

OUTLOOK CLOUDY: The medium-term emissions outlook for China depends on the central government’s response to a sluggish economy and the balance between a rush to build new coal plants (see above) versus the “staggering” pace of renewable energy growth, the analysis added. Forecast low-carbon growth “could even put China on track to peak its emissions within two years”, the analysis concluded. Bloomberg reported on the findings.

§ Spotlight 

What is China’s nuclear strategy?

China recently approved six more nuclear reactors and is expected to have the world’s largest fleet by 2030. Carbon Brief looks at what’s driving China’s nuclear strategy.

How much nuclear power is China building? 

China began building its first nuclear plant in 1985. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OEIS) estimates that it will have the world’s largest nuclear fleet by 2030. 

For now, China is now the world’s second largest nuclear energy producer behind the US, having overtaken France in 2020. By the end of June 2023, China had an installed capacity of 57 gigawatts (GW), according to official data. It remains behind the 96GW installed in the US – for now.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says China is the “world’s fastest expanding nuclear power producer”. It has 23 nuclear units under construction, totalling more than 21GW of additional capacity. In addition, China approved 10 new reactors in 2022 and another six units last week. 

This meteoric rise has seen China’s nuclear output increase nearly fourfold in the past decade, from 112 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2013 to 418TWh in 2022 – one of only a handful of countries along with Russia (+65TWh), South Korea (+36TWh), the United Arab Emirates (+20TWh) and Pakistan (+18TWh) to see significant growth in the period.

Despite this growth, nuclear still makes up only 5% of China’s electricity mix. This is below nuclear’s 9% share of global supplies in 2022.

China has also become a leading nuclear innovator. It is the first country to build a Generation IV reactor, connecting a demonstration project to the grid in 2021. Small-scale nuclear-powered district heating projects are running in Shandong and Zhejiang. 

Dr Shengke Zhi, director for growth and development at consulting firm Wood, told Carbon Brief that China’s Generation IV technology still has a long way to go. “Generation III is still the primary choice for China’s mega-rollout of nuclear capacity,” he said.

Is nuclear power an important part of China’s climate plans?

China’s nuclear capacity is expanding, but there are question marks over how fast it will grow. China could add as many as 10 reactors a year, reaching a capacity of 300GW by 2035, according to China Nuclear Energy Association forecasts reported by Bloomberg last autumn. The OEIS cautions that a total of 100GW by 2030 is “more likely”.

Dr Philip Andrews-Speed, senior research fellow at the OEIS, described nuclear energy to Carbon Brief as a “fuel of convenience” for China, pointing out that it meets the country’s concerns around energy security and the need to decarbonise.

China has been able to build new nuclear plants much more cheaply than many other countries. Analysts put the costs per kilowatt of installed nuclear capacity in China at around one-third of those in the US or France, Bloomberg reported.

Zhi pointed to China’s “design-one build-many” approach to nuclear construction as one reason for its success. A 2018 paper in the journal Sustainability suggested nuclear power in China could become more competitive than coal by 2030.

Policymakers have used a familiar toolkit to encourage development. Mark Hibbs, senior fellow at thinktank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, identified financial subsidies, access to decision-makers and favourable price-setting as key advantages. 

He wrote that the “guaranteed tariff paid to producers for nuclear power…has been higher than the rate for either coal-fired or hydroelectric power”. He also quoted a Chinese nuclear industry executive, who said in 2015: “We watch this carefully…if the government were to take this away from us, the future of our business would be in a lot of trouble.”

The WNA points out that safety questions have slowed China’s nuclear ambitions. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, China temporarily suspended approvals of new power plants, to review concerns over safety and river pollution, according to Andrews-Speed.

However, the Chinese government called for “actively developing nuclear power” – with a “steady pace” of construction – as part of its 2021 action plan on peaking CO2 before 2030.

Is China exporting its nuclear power technology? 

In 2019, Reuters reported one senior industry official saying China aims to build as many as 30 overseas nuclear power units by 2030.

“I don’t see China meeting this goal”, Andrews-Speed told Carbon Brief. He attributed this to China’s domestic focus: with around 23 units under construction and as many as 156 more proposals for future plants, nuclear companies are “very much busy at home”.  

The UK, Argentina and other countries had signed deals to cooperate with China on domestic nuclear reactors, but security concerns in the UK and significant delays in Argentina have limited full cooperation. 

In Pakistan, eight reactors built with Chinese assistance are either in operation or under construction, boosting generation capacity in a country that has been beset with shortages.

China is aiming to use its nuclear projects in Pakistan as a “springboard” to further export growth for the technology, Nikkei Asia reported in July.

Nevertheless, China’s ambitions to increase its nuclear technology exports are limited, Andrews-Speed writes, by Russia’s influence in the sector, the fact that China is not yet a party to the IAEA Vienna Convention, and the fact that it does not take back used fuel. 

§ Watch, read, listen

ECOLOGICAL ‘ACHIEVEMENT’: The Chinese ministry of ecology and environment published a comment piece in Qiushi magazine, the official theoretical journal of the Communist party, declaring China has “made huge achievements” in the “construction of ecological civilization” and “building beautiful China”, under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

XI’S AGRICULTURAL PLEDGE: Qiushi’s English edition published Xi’s remarks about “mov[ing] faster to build a strong agricultural country and advance agricultural and rural modernisation”.

EXTREME WEATHER: China’s state broadcaster CCTV released an in-depth TV investigation into extreme weather, amid floods in north China, with interviews with Ma Xuekuan, chief weather forecaster of the China Meteorological Administration. 

US-CHINA CLIMATE DEAL: The Hill published an opinion piece by Li Shuo, global policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, under the title: “Xi will not be pushed on climate by Biden, but a deal is possible.” 

GEOPOLITICS AND ENERGY: The latest issue of the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies quarterly journal looks at China’s role in the new geopolitics of energy, covering critical mineral supply chains, “de-risking”, hydrogen and more.  

§ New science 

Climate-driven ecological thresholds in China’s drylands modulated by grazing
Nature Sustainability 

A new study found that up to half of China’s drylands may be “unsuitable” for grazing by the end of the century due to climate-change-induced drying. Researchers used remote-sensing data to determine how 20 different ecological variables, such as plant productivity and soil fertility, change in response to changes in grazing pressure and aridity. They found that increased pressure from grazing lowers most ecosystems’ aridity threshold, “showing how ecological thresholds can be amplified by the joint effects” of grazing pressure and climate change. They also found that almost 9% of current grazing areas are exceeding their “maximum allowable grazing pressure”.

Accelerating the energy transition towards photovoltaic and wind in China
Nature

A study describes how accelerating the deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power systems could help China meet its goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. It says historical rates of renewable installation and forecasts based on China’s 14th five-year-plan on energy development would fall short of the levels required by 2060. The authors showed how massively scaled up investment in PV and wind combined with ultra-high-voltage transmission, energy storage and demand flexibility meet required capacity while reducing average carbon abatement costs and bringing benefits to residents in the poorest regions.

China Briefing is edited by Wanyuan Song and Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to [email protected].