How China is (and isn't) fighting pollution and climate change | Angel Hsu

Summary

This talk explores China's evolving environmental efforts, particularly its battle with air pollution and coal dependency. Starting with a personal story about unreliable air quality data, it highlights China's environmental awakening driven by public outcry. The country has made remarkable strides in renewable energy, leading in hydropower, wind, and solar. Despite these advances, concerns remain over coal consumption, pollution exports, and unreliable data. With global implications, China's environmental choices are crucial in shaping the world's climate future, as the nation navigates its complex path towards sustainable leadership.

Takeaways

• 🌆 China's air quality app once reported good air quality despite visible pollution, highlighting discrepancies in data accuracy.
• 🌬️ The failure to measure PM2.5, fine particulate matter, led to widespread citizen outcry over inaccurate air quality reports.
• 📈 Social media and public questioning spurred an environmental awakening in China, pushing the government to address pollution.
• ⚡ China's reliance on coal for two-thirds of its electricity spurred the government to launch a 'war on coal' to reduce pollution.
• 🌍 China leads the world in hydropower, wind, and solar energy capacity, with massive investments driving this transition.
• 🌞 In 2017, China installed 35 gigawatts of solar power in just seven months, surpassing many countries' total solar capacity.
• 📊 China's coal consumption peaked around 2013, leading to notable reductions in air pollution and improvements in life expectancy.
• 📉 However, there is uncertainty around China's recent fossil fuel consumption, raising concerns about a potential increase in emissions.
• 🚴 Environmental experiments, like dockless bike sharing, have had mixed success, sometimes leading to unintended consequences like bike overuse.
• 🌐 Despite domestic environmental progress, China is still exporting pollution abroad through infrastructure projects like coal-fired plants as part of the One Belt, One Road Initiative.

Q & A

What prompted the environmental awakening in China regarding air pollution?

The disconnect between official air quality statistics and what citizens were experiencing, particularly after PM2.5 pollution went off the charts in 2012, prompted citizens to question the data and demand more transparency.

Why was PM2.5 considered politically sensitive in China?

PM2.5, or fine particulate pollution, was linked to serious health issues, and the government kept data on it secret due to its harmful effects and the fear that it might trigger public unrest.

How did citizens in China begin to respond to the air pollution crisis?

Citizens became more aware of the health risks of air pollution and started demanding greater transparency. They also adopted measures like purchasing air purifiers and incorporating PM2.5 references in pop culture, such as musical festivals.

What role did Chai Jing's documentary 'Under the Dome' play in raising awareness?

'Under the Dome' played a major role in bringing air pollution awareness to the forefront by highlighting that it caused one million premature deaths annually in China. The documentary received over 100 million views in a weekend before being pulled by the government.

How has China's government responded to air pollution concerns?

In response to public outcry, China's government has taken steps like shutting down small coal mines, limiting coal consumption, and investing in clean energy sources such as hydropower, wind, and solar energy.

What are some examples of China's clean energy achievements?

China leads the world in hydropower, wind, and solar power generation. For instance, it has installed enough hydropower capacity to power two homes per citizen and surpassed its 2020 solar power target well ahead of schedule.

How is China's shift to clean energy affecting global climate change?

China's reduction in coal consumption and investments in renewable energy have contributed to reductions in carbon emissions, which is a positive step toward addressing global climate change, given China's large carbon footprint.

Despite progress, why should we be cautious about China's environmental data?

China's environmental data, particularly regarding coal consumption and carbon emissions, is often revised after the fact. There are also concerns about whether China's emissions are actually increasing despite reported reductions.

What challenges does China's One Belt, One Road Initiative pose to environmental progress?

While China is reducing pollution domestically, it has been exporting pollution abroad by financing coal-fired power plants in over 68 countries as part of its infrastructure investments, which complicates its role as a global environmental leader.

Why is China seen as a potential global environmental leader despite its challenges?

With the US withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, people are looking to China to fill the global leadership void on environmental issues. China's significant investments in clean energy and green job growth position it as a key player in determining the global environmental future.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 When Data Fails to Show Reality

The speaker starts by discussing an experience where air quality data in Ürümqi, China, didn't match the visible reality. Though the air quality app showed low pollution levels, the thick smog was undeniable. This discrepancy stemmed from the failure to measure PM2.5, fine particulate matter that poses health risks. Public awareness surged when PM2.5 levels spiked in 2012, forcing the Chinese government to address pollution more seriously. This led to a broader environmental awakening in China, where citizens demanded more transparency in pollution data, which sparked changes in policy.

05:01

🌱 China’s Evolving Green Policies

The speaker shares how they observed China’s budding green revolution in 2011. While initially skeptical outsiders questioned whether China even had environmental policies, there was already an emerging awareness of PM2.5 pollution. Retailers began selling air purifiers, and cultural events were even named after air quality indicators. Efforts to raise awareness continued, including creative initiatives like Shanghai’s AQI Girl, a mascot representing the air quality index. In 2015, Chai Jing’s documentary 'Under the Dome' raised alarm about air pollution, which led the government to address its root causes, particularly focusing on coal consumption and clean energy investments.

10:03

💡 China’s Mind-Blowing Renewable Energy Progress

China has made remarkable strides in renewable energy, leading the world in hydropower, wind, and solar power generation. The country’s commitment to renewable energy is evident through large projects like the Three Gorges Dam, which is the world’s largest power station. China has surpassed its solar power targets and is poised to generate massive amounts of electricity from wind and solar by 2020. The shift away from coal has contributed to reduced air pollution, improved public health, and even slowed the country’s carbon emissions. However, there’s still uncertainty about China’s long-term reliance on fossil fuels.

🚴‍♂️ Challenges Amid Rapid Development

While China has made impressive progress in reducing coal consumption and improving air quality, challenges remain. The speaker notes that data can be murky, and there are concerns that China’s fossil fuel consumption may rise again. Additionally, some solutions, such as dockless bike sharing, have moved too quickly and faced unexpected problems, like bicycle graveyards. Despite these setbacks, China’s environmental actions have global implications. The country’s exports, including air pollution and coal-fired power plants, affect other nations, making China's environmental decisions critical on a global scale.

🌍 China’s Role in Global Environmental Leadership

As the US steps back from climate leadership, the world looks to China to fill the gap. The speaker emphasizes that China is at a pivotal moment, leading in green job creation and clean energy. However, China’s global role is complex, as it continues to export pollution through coal plant investments in other countries. The speaker highlights that air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions do not respect borders, meaning China’s environmental policies have worldwide effects. Though China is making progress, the road ahead is long, and global environmental health may depend on China’s future actions.

Keywords

💡PM2.5

PM2.5 refers to fine particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller. These particles can penetrate the respiratory system and cause significant health problems. In the video, it is highlighted as a major pollutant in China, and the government's initial failure to measure it led to public outcry, which became a driving force for environmental reform.

💡Air Quality Index (AQI)

The Air Quality Index is a measure used to communicate the quality of the air, taking into account various pollutants like PM2.5. In the video, 'AQI Girl' is introduced as a mascot by Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau, illustrating China's efforts to better communicate air quality data to the public.

💡Coal consumption

Coal consumption refers to the use of coal for energy production, which is a significant source of pollution. The video explains that China has the largest number of coal-fired power plants, and its heavy reliance on coal is a major environmental issue. However, since 2014, China has been working to reduce coal consumption as part of its war on coal to tackle air pollution and carbon emissions.

💡Renewable energy

Renewable energy refers to power derived from natural, inexhaustible sources like wind, solar, and hydropower. China is portrayed in the video as a global leader in renewable energy development, with massive investments in wind and solar power. These efforts are part of China’s strategy to reduce coal dependence and improve air quality.

💡Chai Jing

Chai Jing is a former CCTV reporter who produced the influential documentary 'Under the Dome,' which exposed the severe health impacts of air pollution in China. The video compares her work to Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring,' and it notes that Chai's documentary spurred public demand for stronger environmental policies, despite being pulled from the internet.

💡One Belt, One Road Initiative

The One Belt, One Road Initiative is a massive infrastructure project led by China to invest in development across more than 60 countries. The video highlights that while China is working to clean up its environmental practices domestically, it is also exporting coal-fired power plants abroad through this initiative, spreading pollution to other nations.

💡Global climate change

Global climate change refers to the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns largely caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels. China, as the country with the world's largest carbon footprint, plays a critical role in the global fight against climate change. The video discusses how China's actions on reducing coal use and increasing renewable energy can have global implications.

💡Carbon footprint

A carbon footprint measures the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual, organization, or country. China has the largest carbon footprint globally due to its heavy reliance on coal and rapid industrialization. The video emphasizes that reducing this footprint is essential for mitigating global climate change and that China is working to reduce its emissions through energy reforms.

💡Environmental awakening

Environmental awakening refers to the growing public awareness and demand for environmental reforms. In the video, this term is used to describe how Chinese citizens, driven by worsening air quality and transparency issues, began pushing for stronger governmental action to address pollution, leading to substantial environmental policy changes in the country.

💡Green jobs

Green jobs are employment opportunities that contribute to preserving or restoring the environment. The video notes that China was responsible for 30% of global growth in green jobs, highlighting how the country’s push for clean energy is not only improving the environment but also creating significant economic benefits.

Highlights

Seeing is not always believing, as evidenced by a photo from Ürümqi where the air quality app showed good air quality, but the actual visibility was poor due to unmeasured PM2.5 pollution.

PM2.5, or fine particulate pollution, was not measured in early air quality statistics, causing a disconnect between reported and actual air quality.

The US Embassy's tweet in 2012 describing PM2.5 levels as 'crazy bad' spurred Chinese citizens to demand greater transparency and action on air pollution.

Citizen awareness and social media activism in China led to an environmental awakening and forced the government to address pollution issues.

China's green evolution began to gain momentum around 2011, with public demand for air purifiers and increased transparency about PM2.5.

Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau created a mascot, AQI Girl, to communicate air quality data to the public effectively.

Chai Jing's 2015 documentary 'Under the Dome' raised awareness about air pollution and its health impacts, drawing over 100 million views before being censored.

China has made significant investments in clean and renewable energy, becoming a global leader in hydropower, wind, and solar energy.

China's Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station in the world, contributing significantly to the country's hydropower capacity.

In 2017, China installed 35 gigawatts of solar power in seven months, more than half of the total solar power capacity in the US.

China's reduction in coal consumption since 2013 has led to notable improvements in air quality and reductions in carbon emissions.

Air pollution reductions in major Chinese cities have led to an average increase in life expectancy by 2.5 years since 2013.

Despite progress, there is caution as China's coal consumption statistics are often revised, and global emissions may be rising again.

China's international investments, such as the One Belt, One Road Initiative, often include coal-fired power plants, exporting pollution abroad.

China's leadership in clean energy is crucial for global environmental efforts, especially as other countries like the US withdraw from agreements like the Paris Climate Accord.

Transcripts

When is seeing not believing?

A couple years ago, my friend sent me this photo from Ürümqi,

which is the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China.

On this particular day, she couldn't believe her eyes.

Checking the quality of the air outside using this app on her iPad,

the numbers were telling her the air quality was good,

one on a scale of 500.

But when she looked outside, she saw something much different.

Yes, those are buildings in the background.

(Laughter)

But the data were simply not telling the truth

of what people were seeing and breathing,

and it's because they were failing to measure PM2.5,

or fine particulate pollution.

When PM2.5 levels went off the charts in 2012,

or "crazy bad," as the US Embassy once described it in a tweet,

Chinese denizens took to social media

and they started to question why it was that they were seeing this disconnect

between official air quality statistics

and what they were seeing and breathing for themselves.

Now, this questioning has led

to an environmental awakening of sorts in China,

forcing China's government to tackle its pollution problems.

Now China has the opportunity to become a global environmental leader.

But the picture that I'll paint for you today

is one that's mixed.

There are some signs that are very promising,

and there are other trends that are more troubling

that warrant closer attention.

But now let's go back to the story at hand.

I started to witness the beginnings of China's green evolution

when I was a PhD student conducting fieldwork in China in 2011.

I traveled all across the country seeking answers to the question

that I often got myself from the skeptical outsider:

What, you mean China is doing something on the environment?

They have environmental policies?

What policies?

At that time, PM2.5 data was considered too politically sensitive

and so the government was keeping it secret,

but citizens were becoming aware of its harmful human health effects,

and they were demanding greater transparency

on the part of the government.

I actually started to see some of this growing evolution and awareness myself

cropping up all over China.

Department stores, for example, started to market these air purifiers

that could filter out harmful PM2.5.

Citizens were also adopting PM2.5 as the title of musical festivals.

(Laughter)

And then I went to a golf course in Shenzhen, which is in southern China,

and you can see from this banner, they're advertising a retreat from PM2.5.

Golf sub-par, but don't breathe sub-par air.

And then Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau

decided to create a mascot named after the air quality index

to better communicate the air quality data to its people.

I call her AQI Girl,

and her expression and hair color changes depending on the quality of air outside.

Five years later and she's still the mostly smiling face

of Shanghai's air quality.

And then in 2015,

former CCTV reporter Chai Jing

created this documentary called "Under the Dome."

It would be likened to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

And much like Rachel Carson

brought to attention the fact that pesticides were harming human health,

"Under the Dome" stamped into the popular consciousness

that air pollution was leading to one million premature deaths

every year in China alone.

This video garnered

more than a hundred million views in a single weekend

before China's government,

fearing that it might incite some type of social unrest,

pulled it from the internet.

But the damage had already been done.

Public outcry over air pollution

galvanized China's government,

perhaps in an act of self-preservation,

to think big and decisively about how it could tackle

the root of its air pollution

and many of its other environmental problems:

its energy system.

For you see, in China,

about two thirds of its electricity comes from coal.

China has more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world,

about 40 percent of the global total,

and it's because of this fact that China's government

has decided since 2014 to wage a war on coal,

shutting down small coal mines,

setting limits on coal consumption,

even canceling an Australia's worth of coal-fired power plants.

They've also been making enormous investments

when it comes to clean and renewable energy,

like hydropower, wind and solar,

and the pace and the scale of this transformation

has been absolutely mind-blowing.

Let me give you a couple of statistics to show you what I mean.

China leads the world when it comes to hydropower,

with a third of total capacity.

There's enough for every Chinese citizen

to power two homes in a single year from hydropower alone.

You may have heard of the Three Gorges Dam,

pictured here,

which is the largest power station in the world,

and it's powered by water.

In terms of wind power,

China has a third of the global capacity.

This makes it the number one leader by far.

When we look at solar, China's also leading.

In fact, they crushed their 2020 target

of installing 105 gigawatts of solar power.

This is after the government already revised upwards

several times its solar energy target

between 2009 and 2015.

Last year, in seven months alone,

China was able to install a whopping 35 gigawatts of solar power.

This is more than half of what the US has combined in total

and China did this in just seven months alone.

We can verify this remarkable growth in solar power from space,

like the startup SpaceKnow has done in this slide.

By 2020, China is on track to generate Germany's entire electricity consumption

from just wind and solar power alone.

It's pretty darn remarkable.

And we see some evidence now

that China's efforts on clean energy

is actually having an effect,

not just on air pollution reduction,

but also on global climate change,

where China has the world's largest carbon footprint.

If we look at some of the data, we can see that China's coal consumption

may have already reached a peak as early as 2013.

This is a major reason why China's government announced

that actually they've already achieved their 2020 carbon reduction pledge

ahead of schedule.

This reduction in coal consumption

is also directly driving improvements in air quality

across the country,

as I've shown here in blue.

In most major Chinese cities,

air pollution has fallen by as much as 30 percent.

And this reduction in air pollution is actually leading people

to live longer lives in China,

on average two and a half years more than they would have in 2013.

In yellow, we can see the cities that have experienced

the greatest improvements in air quality.

But of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk,

we have to temper some of this optimism

with a healthy dose of caution,

and that's largely because the data are still being determined.

At the end of last year,

after roughly three years of pretty steady global carbon emissions,

scientific projections suggest

that global emissions may be on the rise again

and that could be due to increases in China's fossil fuel consumptions,

so they may not have reached that peak that I showed earlier.

But of course, the statistics and the data are still murky

and that's because China regularly revises its coal statistics after the fact.

Actually, it's funny,

since I've been here I've been having a debate on Twitter

with other climate modelers,

trying to figure out whether China's carbon emissions

have gone up, gone down or whether they're staying relatively stable.

And of course, China is still a rapidly developing country.

It's still experimenting with a range of policies,

like dockless bike sharing,

which has been hailed as a possible sustainable transport solution.

But then we have images of this bicycle graveyard

that tell a more cautionary tale.

Sometimes, solutions can move too fast

and outpace demand.

And of course, coal is still king in China,

at least for now.

So why should we care about what China is doing on the environment?

Well, what China does at home on the environment

can have global implications for the rest of us.

To borrow a line from Chai Jing,

we're all under the same dome,

and air pollution that originates in China

can travel beyond its borders

and affect populations as far away as those in North America.

China's not only exporting air pollution,

but they're also exporting aid, infrastructure, technology abroad.

President Xi Jinping in 2013 announced the One Belt, One Road Initiative,

a massive, one-trillion-US-dollar infrastructure investment project

in more than 60 other countries.

And historically, when we've seen

that China has made these infrastructure investments abroad,

they haven't always been clean.

The Global Environment Institute, a Chinese civil society group,

found that in the last 15 years,

China has invested in more than 240 coal-fired power plants

in more than 68 countries

affiliated with the One Belt, One Road Initiative.

That's more than a quarter of China's own domestic coal-fired capacity

that is exported abroad.

So we can see that even though China is cleaning up at home,

it's exporting some of that pollution

to other countries,

and greenhouse gas emissions simply don't have a passport.

So when we're trying to evaluate this question

of whether or not China is actually leading,

we can see it's still very much an open debate.

But time is running out.

I've studied the climate models, and the outlook is not good.

We still have a gap between current policies

and what needs to happen if we want to avoid dangerous climate change.

Leadership is what we desperately need,

but it's not coming from the US, for example.

The US administration last June announced its intent

to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement,

so now people are looking towards China to fill that leadership void.

So China is very much in the driver's seat

determining our global environmental future.

What they do on carbon trading,

on clean energy, on air pollution,

we can learn many lessons.

One of those lessons is that clean energy is not just good for the environment,

it can save lives by reducing air pollution.

It's also good for the economy.

We can see that last year,

China was responsible for 30 percent of the global growth

in green jobs.

The US? Only six.

So the picture that I just painted for you

hopefully seems much different

from those murky, foggy air quality statistics

to a much clearer picture of China's clean energy.

And even though China is headed in the right direction,

we know that there's still a very long road ahead.

So let me ask you once more: Is seeing believing?

Can we trust the data and the statistics

that show that China's air quality is coming down

and that its war on coal is actually having an effect?

Well, let's take a look at some of the latest satellite images

of China's solar power installations.

I want you to look very closely at this image.

Can you see?

The proof may just be in the pandas.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)