Introducing: The Climate Question: China's green energy revolution

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1:29Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Greer Jackson from the Climate Question podcast and every week we scour the world to see how climate change is affecting our planet and ask what can we do about it. We thought you'd like to hear this episode about China's clean energy revolution, where we speak to the BBC's correspondent in Beijing, Laura Bicker. You can listen to the whole episode right here. But to hear more from us, search for The Climate Question wherever you get your BBC podcasts. And you can also find us on the BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you travel across China today, you'll see a country undergoing one of the biggest energy transformations in history.

2:15The boom in wind and solar power is unprecedented in scale and speed. No nation on Earth can match it. But at the same time, China is still building coal power plants, the dirtiest type of energy there is, and on a massive scale. It's also producing around a third of the planet's greenhouse gases. So here's the real question. Can the world's biggest polluter change in time to avoid the worst effects of climate change? That's our climate question from the BBC World Service with Greer Jackson and Jordan Dunbar. Laura Bicker is the BBC's China correspondent. Hi, Laura. Hello. Nice to be back on the programme.

3:01How are you two doing? Very well. You're joining us from Beijing. I am. In the midst of winter, we've had freezing temperatures over the last few weeks, so it's nice to be warm in the studio. Yeah, and you've done some great reporting, haven't you? Tell us a bit about that. Well, we've travelled right from north-south across China because one of the things I really wanted to look at is how China's renewable revolution is looking on the ground. And I'd seen some of it for myself on my previous travels, but I really wasn't prepared for just how much China's landscapes changed. And these are utterly amazing scenes.

3:39There's one point in the train journey as we were heading north where you saw the tracks of the train just winding through and each single carriage of the train was filled with coal. And in the background, you had the smokestacks of the old coal plant. And then on the hillsides, on the ridges, you've got these huge wind turbines turning away. and then these miles of solar panels, and that's just in one province, that's just in Inner Mongolia. And then as you head south in Yunnan, as you cycle along the side of the Red River, and by the way, it is deep red because of the colour of the clay, you see these kind of panels and they almost look like scales on the hill.

4:22The hillside's so steep and these panels are placed right on the edge. but I think as I've traveled right across from north to south one of the things I found is that not everyone is embracing this dramatic shift back in Inner Mongolia when I was up in the north I was speaking to the farmers who look after their flocks of sheep they farm these sheep for their cashmere and merino wool and they were telling me I mean honestly they were laughing at me because I is freezing and they're turning their collars up as this icy blast comes from the north and they're saying to me no we see the climate changing we believe that this part of the world is getting warmer and wetter so I went away and looked at China's figures for this area and indeed the temperature has increased there by two celsius according to China's meteorological figures and And the rainfall has also increased.

5:20So they see the need for these panels. And also, they believe, and scientists have shown that it does work to an extent, that these solar panels are managing to hold back the advance of the desert. Overgrazing in this area has caused real problems. It's caused the advance of these sand dunes. And what they're able to do, because the solar panels actually offer some shade, the grasslands grow underneath the panels. And actually, they're managing to put the flock of sheep within the solar panels themselves. So you've got these sheep and goats munching away in the middle of this solar installation.

6:01And from the air, when you fly the drone overhead, many of them have been put in kind of, what shall I say, shapes. So some are shaped like pandas, obviously, it's China. This one is shaped like a horse to show the stealth and the speed of China's transition. But you ask what the locals think. Further down south in Yunnan, we went to someone who used to grow tea, green tea, and made quite a decent living from it. And there his crop has been ripped out in place of these panels. So basically, he rented the land from the tea company. The tea company has now rented it to the energy company. Now, obviously, we asked both for comment and they declined.

6:42but this was a farmer who believes he's losing out on a living. He doesn't understand why there's a need for those panels there. So there are very dissenting views on both sides. Laura, once again, this is a mega project in China. You're talking about, we've talked about Megadams in another episode. This is a complete physical transformation of the landscape. How have the Chinese government been able to do this when so many other countries struggle with a fraction of installing solar and renewables? So this is a plan. This is a grand plan right from the start. So way back in 2012, when President Xi came to power, he pushed what he called new productive forces.

7:27Laura Bicker:Every bit of happiness in the world is created by hard work. Our responsibility is to further unleash and develop the productive forces and steadfastly take the road of prosperity for all. China was good at manufacturing. Back then, it was your T-shirts, your electronics, your TVs. That is what China sent to the world. What China has done since then is move to what, as I said, President Xi calls his three productive forces. So these are batteries, electric batteries, electric vehicles and solar panels. So what they've done is they've put state subsidies, offered loans to many companies. And in return, what's happened is manufacturing has scaled up.

8:11And I mean, we are talking huge levels of production. Now, that in itself has caused a problem because you've got basically a crisis of overcapacity. And I think some figures from Reuters in the last year has shown that around 60 percent of jobs have been lost in these solar panel industries. So China is now having to scale back. Now, I do not see that China will stop producing solar panels. That's just not going to happen. But what I would say is that their overproduction, their overcapacity is now going elsewhere. Emerging economies across Southeast Asia, across Africa, they have made solar panels a cheap alternative.

8:51And that's why we've seen so much of this scale right across China. And especially within the last few years since 2023, we're looking at a massive scale. considering, you know, if you look way back at 2010, they hardly had a solar installation across the country. Now they've installed more solar panels across the country than any other part of the world combined. In fact, I think one analyst gave me the figure in May last year, they were installing 100 solar panels a second. Just let that sink in for a moment. Can you imagine what that looks like right across the country? what's in it for china laura why are they doing this is it just okay two main reasons yeah yeah i mean so so there are a couple of reasons first of all i think president xi believes that he wants his country to be in a good position in the future however when it comes to china this is not really just about lowering carbon emissions this is also about ensuring that the lights stay on There's a real fear in China that they cannot power themselves, that they don't have enough energy.

10:01Now, when they were a manufacturing powerhouse, they've had to import oil, they've had to import gas. And also they found that coal was the cheapest alternative. So coal has really powered this economic juggernaut for so long. And they knew that that was not a source that they could use forever. President Xi has decided, look, what we have to do is we have to make sure that we're self-sufficient energy-wise. I think the other reason, if you look back to some of the speeches way back, way before 2008, before China hosted the Olympics, you could see a real concern about the way international media in particular was highlighting the smog around Beijing, around the capital, around elsewhere.

10:43Laura Bicker:This is what Beijing has been like all day. And just walking through the Olympic Park, you get a sense of what the athletes might be up against. With less than a day to go before the Games begin, Beijing is failing to meet even the most generous World Health Organization targets on air quality. I think there's been a real worry about what that is doing to people's health. And so that also has fueled this kind of push towards renewables. But I think now what this country can see is with this power, with this dominance comes leverage. And we've seen that over the United States in the last year. China now has such economic leverage over the world with control over renewables.

11:27It is now the undisputed power when it comes to renewables. I spoke to Li Xiaol from the Asia Society. One of the things he told me, he says, the others are being left in the dust. There is only one global player now. And I think China loves that idea of being the dominant leader. Yeah, but isn't there a contradiction here, Laura? Because yes, it's a renewable superpower, but it's also building all this new coal capacity. And you saw that play out when you were on the ground in China, didn't you? So we were in a province called Anhui, which is a central province. And there, the contrasting Chinas are so evident.

12:08In one side, you have this old coal plant, this new coal plant being built side by side, smoke billowing from it and then in front of it is a lake now at first it looks like just any ordinary lake and then as you travel around the side of it what you start to find out is that this isn't a lake it's actually subsidence this was one of Asia's largest underground coal mines and it's just simply collapsed and in it it's taken thousands of homes villages being swept away and as we went around the side the local government has given people thousands of pounds of relocation they've moved them to new fancy flats but many of the older generation just didn't want to move this was their home and so we found two elderly they're both in their 70s chopping wood to keep warm and just have to emphasize they're chopping wood to keep warm when on one side they've got the coal fired power station and on the other on the lake they've built one of the world's largest solar farms so they've turned this environmental crisis into an opportunity but the fact that this insatiable need for energy this insatiable need for coal has at one point caused irreversible environmental harm and an irreversible human harm this is a couple who've lost everything and they said their house just went one day and they didn't manage to save anything.

13:34They don't want to move because they can't get a job where they are. They can't earn. And at least there they can grow crops to survive. So in many ways, even though China is pushing forward with this renewables, I think there is still perhaps work to be done in China to ensure that every single person benefits from the renewable revolution. And you're talking about floating solar panels there. It's really surreal to say because you can't really tell the difference between the solar panels and the water, especially on a smoggy day. The only reason we knew or you could say from the ground is because there was a boat going around checking all the solar panels and making sure they were OK.

14:14And then they've also got a floating rice paddy on there, too. So what they've tried to do is, as I said, create this opportunity in the face of a crisis. And the local government is actually one of the few people in my whole time in China who actually returned our calls. And they said that they were working hard to try to restore the environment in Anhui. And yes, they have built new coal-fired power stations, but they are complying with local government guidelines. And they're trying to ensure the phase out of this over a period of time.

14:52Back to Laura in a tick. First, a reminder that you're listening to The Climate Question from the BBC World Service.

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15:54Laura Bicker:I ain't being vain. I just am special. Stream the best of British TV on BritBox. Watch for the free trial today at BritBox.com. Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. Ever Google a money question and end up 12 tabs deep with 12 different answers? This podcast is your shortcut back to clarity. NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast breaks down financial decisions with a team of trusted journalists. They explain the why behind decisions like investing, home buying and choosing credit cards with clear research-backed insights. No jargon, no misinformation. Make your next financial move with confidence.

16:34Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favourite podcast app. I'm Greg Jackson and this week Jordan Dunbar and I are looking at the renewable revolution in China with the BBC's China correspondent, Laura Bicker. We've heard how China is rolling out vast amounts of clean energy, even as it continues to build coal plants. Now, intriguingly, it looks as though the country's emissions may, may have begun to level off since March 2024. Now, for the world's largest emitter, that's a big moment. Some experts are now asking whether this could be the point where China's emissions stop rising and begin to fall.

17:21It's what's known as peak emissions. You may be wondering, how can you build coal power stations and reduce your emissions though? There are two things here. The renewables boom in China seems to be meeting the increase in electricity demand. And the other thing, the new coal plants aren't necessarily being used all the time. They're basically for backup. Put together, what does this all mean? Over to Laura. So this is the other thing everybody's watching out for. So at the moment, right at the end of 2025, carbon emissions were flatlining. So it's beginning to kind of raise the question, have China's emissions peaked?

18:07So that's what we're looking at now. And I think, especially as we're coming out of winter, where we've got this kind of peak usage of coal and of fuel and of energy, as we're coming out of this winter, I think experts will be poring over the figures to see from here on in, throughout 2026, if emissions start to drop. Now, flatlining is one thing, but I think when I spoke to the experts, they said it's still too early to see that emissions have peaked. It's still too early that it may start to climb. But there is some hope there. So you mentioned global green superpower and you've mentioned the plan to build more renewables.

18:46You know, it's a real government priority. How does that work with the other Chinese plans of, you know, a goal of peak carbon emission by 2030 or carbon neutrality by 2060, if they're still building coal power plants? That is what we're watching closely because I've spoken to a number of experts on this. They are still building coal plants, But there is a belief now that China's increase in energy is being met by renewable sources. And at the speed and the scale that they're installing it, it seems that there is a hope that coal can eventually, over the next few years, be replaced by renewables.

19:25Now, is it going to happen overnight? No. But what we've seen from the speed from just 2020 to now, experts believe it is possible. I think there was a lot of disappointment in President Xi's announcement about carbon emissions because to try to reduce them by 2030. I think many felt that China wasn't going far enough, that China was capable of more.

19:55Laura Bicker:China has committed to moving from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time than many developed countries might take. That requires extraordinarily hard efforts from China. Support is being given to Peking pioneers from localities, sectors and companies. The problem for Beijing is it likes to under-promise and over-deliver. It doesn't like to look as if it's missing targets. So many analysts believe that that is what Beijing's doing at the moment, that it will start to use its dominance in renewables to overtake the coal power over the next few years. Now, there's a big report that comes out in China in March.

20:40It's called the Work Report. And that's what everybody's got their eye on, because that will maybe give us a few more clues about how they will do this. Laura, I'm wondering what the message is from the Chinese government, because you've mentioned economics there and building them. Do they talk about one solar panel per second is being built and that's helping to fight climate change? Or are the other things, secure energy, jobs, are they mentioned first? So secure energy and jobs is always mentioned first. I think the real worry here in China at the moment is that the economy has slowed down.

21:12The economy here is facing major challenges. This was, you know, I mentioned it's a manufacturing powerhouse. You know, we're looking at a nation of farmers that back in the 1980s that have really turned this country into the world's second largest economy. So when officials are kind of putting forward this message, it's always in the case of this is good for our economy, this is good for our economy. There are major economic challenges within China and they include basically a slowdown in manufacturing. They include a very high youth unemployment rate and they include a house price crisis. So I think when it comes to those three, that's what's on people's minds.

21:52So it's less about carbon emissions and it's more about what does this mean for us. So I think that's one of the reasons. As in, you know, it helps with the jobs, the employment, secure energy, and the co-benefit, as they say, is it's also helping to bring down the emissions. I think if you live somewhere where smog has been part of your life from the moment you were born, I think seeing blue skies more and more really has an effect. I think I spoke to someone months ago about what Chinese people want now, because obviously you've seen in the past they wanted prosperity. This is a country that within one generation have gone from barely enough to eat to lifting 800 million reportedly out of poverty to becoming the world's second largest economy.

22:44So what does China, what do the Chinese people want now? And one of the things this person who knows China well, who knows the Chinese government well, turned to me and says, what we want, Laura, is clean water and clean skies. So all of a sudden, what Chinese officials, what Chinese leaders are looking at is that basically people don't just want to be rich anymore. They also want a clean environment to live in. So, you know, what people want, very important. But on the international stage, we have these targets, right? And I think I read that in order to meet our internationally agreed targets of ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst effects of climate change, emissions have to be cut by a lot more than what China's pledged.

23:28Climate action trackers say that their current policies are highly insufficient and would lead to a world that's four degrees Celsius warmer. We've talked about peak emissions, but what does that look like in the broader picture? So many differing figures are coming in. Is China on target? Is it slipping behind its targets currently? despite all of this renewable energy. I think when you speak to experts, what they tell you is what's going wrong is basically ensuring that this renewable energy gets to the grid, ensuring that they're putting these projects in places where you can get enough sunlight.

24:05And also the fact that coal is still at the heart. I mean, it produces around half of all China's energy still currently. That's a lot. So while that is still at the heart of their energy production, And I have to say homes, a large number of homes, especially across northern China where it's cold, use the cheap form of coal. So they're slipping on their targets. But if they manage to continue at this pace, if they manage to perhaps make sure that all of their projects are installed and plugged into the grid, that could change. But there's a lot to do, and especially when it comes to people's homes, because we talked about, you know, I certainly hear the blue skies that are more prevalent across Beijing.

24:57But on the edge of Beijing is a province called Hulabay. And there are a number of pensioners there that have been warned, do not burn coal. And they were given gas heaters instead of coal heaters. Now, gas is really expensive and they're facing, you know, bills of around£600 a month. That is like three times the amount of a pension. There's no way many can afford it. And here in Beijing's backyard, we're watching pensioners freeze rather than afford their heating bills because they're being told not to burn coal. So you can see if you implement policies too quickly, if you move too fast, how it can affect real people's lives.

25:34Yeah, I bet. And we've talked about China being a green superpower, that dominance it has over the production of renewables like wind and solar. Some people see that as a threat, but hasn't it also enabled lots of benefits to people across the world? So the threat, if you speak to the likes of some Western countries, there is real fear that China's overcapacity, this overproduction, it means they'll just have all of these solar panels dumped on Europe and dumped on those who don't really want it. I think there are also those who feel that at this time they don't have a chance. There's no competition here.

26:14But in terms, if you're an emerging economy, if you're in Africa, if you're in Southeast Asia, and I've traveled across Cambodia and Laos, and these rooftop solar panels are lifesavers. They are powering people's homes. They are giving light and electricity where there was none. And they're easy and quick to install. So all of a sudden, industrial revolutions were formed on coal, whether it was the United Kingdom or whether it was China. Coal fed all of these kind of industrial heartlands. Now, because of China's production of solar panels, because China's now driven the cost of those down, it could become a possibility that other nations could become industrial nations using China's solar power.

26:57We've talked about the economic, the technological kind of power that this gives China around the world. But what message do you think it sends globally in terms of climate leadership? We've seen the US, you know, world's biggest economy at times. It really steps up. It's a global leader. Other times, like at the minute, it's stepped back. What message is China sending by this huge renewable splurge? So I don't think China so far has shown the willingness to lead the climate fight. I think it's shown a willingness to lead a fight in which it benefits in terms of economically. I think it's not shown an ability yet to step up on a platform and lead the way for other countries in the terms of flying a flag for lower carbon emissions, flying the flag for ensuring that climate targets are met.

27:50What it has done from discussions when it comes to likes of COP is that China plays quite a key part there. It's still signed up to the Paris Agreement. It takes those agreements seriously. And it likes to be part of a wider global community. But so far, China hasn't wanted to lift the mantle and run with it. So we started this programme by asking, are renewables changing China and the world? And it sounds like from everything you've just said, Laura, that is a big resounding yes. So thank you so much for helping us answer that question. You're very welcome. Nice to talk to you. Thanks, Laura.