Podcast: Can China meet its ambitious emissions targets?


Sinica supchina.

On the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser chats with Michael Davidson, a leading scholar on China’s environmental policy, who holds joint appointments at UC San Diego as an assistant professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering. Michael unpacks recent announcements out of Beijing, including Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 decision to cease all funding for coal-fired power plants outside of China, and explains the linkage between China’s push for non-fossil energy and the recent power shortages that have affected 20 provinces. He also explains China’s new emissions trading scheme, or ETS, and discusses what China still needs to do to meet the ambitious targets set by Xi Jinping last year: reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

Listen to the podcast

Further reading

Davidson, M., Karplus, V. J., Zhang, D., & Zhang, X. (2021). Policies and Institutions to Support Carbon Neutrality in China by 2060. Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 10(2).