This is the title of a book being written by Philip Andrews-Speed to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2012.

China has pledged to reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions and of energy use per unit of GDP by between 40-45% between 2010 and 2020. It is also hoped by the international community that China’s total emissions will reach a peak by the year 2050. The way in which China manages its energy sector will be critical in determining how and whether it achieves these or more ambitious targets. In turn, the extent to which the country succeeds in adopting a more sustainable approach to energy will determine the scale and nature of the impact of China’s energy sector on the rest of the world.

The aim of this book is to identify and examine the those factors which will assist or impede China progress in achieving these goals which will allow a more informed evaluation of the future paths of energy policy and of energy production and consumption in China. The book will draw on ideas arising from new institutional economics and from the study of socio-technical transitions.

An early exploration of some of these ideas was published by the French Institute for International Affairs as a paper entitled “Institutions of energy governance in China”, and can be found here.