China as a Global Clean Energy Champion: Lifting the Veil
A year ago, I was asked by a publisher to write a book entitled “China as a Global Clean Energy Champion” as a follow up of my 2011 effort “The Governance of Energy in China. Transition to a Low Carbon Economy”. I felt that the proposed title was too flattering, so I added “Lifting the Veil” which would allow me to examine how China achieved its well-recognised successes in the field of clean energy, and to draw attention to some of the constraints on the country’s clean energy path.
For this new book, I have teamed up with Professor Sufang Zhang of the North China Electric Power University in Beijing who has been carrying out detailed field investigations into China’s renewable energy programmes and the power sector in general for several years. The result should be a much more detailed and insightful account than my 2011 monograph.
My old friends at the University of Westminster (London), Wojciech Ostrowski and Roland Dannreuther, invited me to give a talk to the students on their MA programme (Global Politics in Energy and Environmental Change). This I did on 6th March 2018.
I saw this as an opportunity to test some of our findings of the book, before we even send it to the publisher in August. In addition to the policy findings, I wanted to test some ramifications for institutional theory. This body of literature suggests that one-party states should be less adaptable to new challenges than open democracies. Yet China’s success in developing and deploying clean energy appears to challenge this proposition.
If you have 46 minutes to spare, you can see my lecture on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKUXNJw3UgE&feature=youtu.be
Otherwise, you will have to wait for the book in 2019.
