China’s carbon neutral climate goals could spawn new global players
China aims to reach peak carbon emissions in 2030. Pictured here is a wind farm in Chongqing in southwest China, on June 28, 2022.
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BEIJING — China says it wants to be carbon neutral by 2060 — and those stated ambitions are spawning companies that could one day become global leaders in their fields.
Two years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping formally announced the world’s second largest economy would strive for peak carbon emissions in 2030, and carbon neutrality in 2060.
To be carbon neutral means the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the whole country will be offset in other ways. It also means there shouldn’t?/won’t? be any increase in greenhouse emissions in China after 2030.
While the country struggles to wean itself off coal, analysts said Beijing’s top-level emphasis on climate has fueled a policy push to try to support businesses focused on renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions.
“China’s already a leader in so many parts of the decarbonization effort,” said Norman Waite, energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“They’re either leading or right in the pack with everybody else in the efforts to decarbonize. It’s not a one- or two-company effort. This is a bunch of companies who are pressing forward,” he said.
Overseas expansion
Electric cars and batteries have been an obvious growth area, with Chinese EV makers expanding their businesses beyond China.
Chinese electric car giant and battery maker BYD launched passenger cars for Europe in late September, while start-up Nio is set to hold its European launch event in Berlin in early October.
Technologies to store and transmit power generated via renewable sources are another area that analysts are watching.
“More of the Chinese companies are getting to the size in China that they start to go out as well and establish partnerships abroad” in energy storage, said Johan Annell, partner at Asia Perspective, a consulting firm that works primarily with Northern European companies operating in East and Southeast Asia.
In energy efficiency, equipment for heating and cooling, Annell said, “you’re also getting a lot of Chinese companies going out and starting to win business, particularly in the countries surrounding China” — such as Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
Emerging leader in offshore wind?
The offshore wind sector is another field that could see an emerging Chinese leader.
Offshore wind is a renewable energy that uses turbines in coastal waters — many of which can be installed near the world’s largest urban centers, IEEFA’s Waite said in a September report.
China’s leaders also recognize that, in the long term, China’s development will not be economically sustainable – and hence politically and socially sustainable – until it is also environmentally so.
Mingyang Smart Energy, already a leader in offshore wind power in China, “appears poised to disrupt international, non-Chinese markets at…
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