Executive Summary On the road to becoming the world’s largest clean energy consumer, China has embraced a range of policies, including both demand-pull and supply-push, to shape energy markets. Resulting integration challenges such as high levels of curtailment are a symptom of both technical and institutional barriers, and will be attenuated in China’s long-term path to carbon neutrality. Energy policy priorities for China include energy security, affordability, industrial structure, air pollution, and climate change, which can be misaligned in the short- and long-term. The 2021 power shortages have revealed some interesting political discourse surrounding these various objectives, which have at least for now bolstered market reforms.
Recommendations for this Commission and for Congress:
- Enhance visibility into and understanding of China’s energy sector challenges
- Support China’s energy sector transitions through select clean energy cooperation
- Study the dependence of the U.S. clean energy transition on developments in China
