Does China's carbon neutrality need a paradigm shift or just steady progress? - with Chunping Xie of the Grantham Institute

Environment China

In this episode of our Women in Sustainability series, we’re talking with the Grantham Institute's Chunping Xie, looking at the topic of China’s carbon neutrality from a wider economic perspective. Specifically, we discuss a paper published earlier this year by the Grantham Institute entitled: "Embracing the new paradigm of green Development: China Carbon Neutrality Policy Framework research report."

One of the report's several authors, Chunping Xie is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, a programme to inform decision-making about China’s policies on climate change, energy, economics and development. She holds a PhD in Energy Economics, and her research interests focus on promoting clean energy transition and sustainable economic development. She has multidisciplinary expertise in economics, energy technologies and energy/climate policy.

The report we discuss today also builds on a report from 2022 entitled, "China's New Growth Story: Linking the 14th Five-Year Plan with the 2060 Carbon Neutrality Pledge." We discuss both reports in the episode.

Topics we discuss are:

• Why carbon neutrality implies a comprehensive and profound change in China’s development strategy.
• Whether the idea of a more profound change is recognized widely in China.
• The need to focus on the individual well-being as opposed to standard GDP measures.
• Achieving social consensus on carbon neutrality, and why it's important even though policy drives most change.
• Whether the present focus on coal hinders public awareness of climate change.
• On policy recommendations in transport, why it's important that China set a date for phasing out fossil fuel internal combustion vehicles.
• For cities, the relative importance of building retrofit versus new styles of urbanization versus developing cities outside the largest metropolitan areas of E. China.
• How cities can break free of the need to sell more land for fiscal budget revenue.
• Who should coordinate the overall economic paradigm shift they recommend, and whether this is happening already.

Further reading:

Min Zhu et al., “Embracing the new paradigm of green development China Carbon Neutrality Policy Framework research report,” Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, February 2023, at https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Embracing-the-New-Paradigm-of-Green-Development-in-China.pdf.

Nicholas Stern & Chunping Xie, "China’s new growth story: linking the 14th Five-Year Plan with the 2060 carbon neutrality pledge," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 2022, at https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/chinas-new-growth-story-linking-the-14th-five-year-plan-with-the-2060-carbon-neutrality-pledge-2/.