Note: This article was co-authored with Fan Dai, Aimee Barnes (California-China Climate Institute, University of California, Berkeley [CCCI]), Yunshi Wang (University of California, Davis) and Angela Luh (University of California, Berkeley) and cross-posted at CCCI. In addition, Mary Nichols and Candace Vahlsing (California Air Resources Board); Patty Monahan and Ben De Alba (California Energy Commission); Lauren Sanchez (California Environmental Protection Agency); Prof. Ouyang Minggao and Prof. Wang Hewu (Tsinghua University); Gong Huiming (Energy Foundation China) and Evan Westrup (California-China Climate Institute) contributed to this piece.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the globe, now is the time for us to reflect not only on our shared vulnerability, but also on what’s possible through collective action. California and China, which have both confronted this virus with great force, are also uniquely positioned to tackle the climate crisis head-on – together. One of the most effective steps we can take is to get more zero-emission vehicles on our roads.
Why focus on transportation? The answer is simple: it’s one of the greatest sources of carbon emissions and major sources of air pollution. In China, analysts estimate that transportation emissions constitute more than 9 percent of the country’s overall carbon footprint – and that share is expanding rapidly. In cities, for example, transportation accounts for as much as 65 percent of carbon emissions in Shenzhen, and vehicle emissions are responsible for 45 percent of the total particulate matter concentrations in Beijing. Meanwhile in California, 41 percent of overall emissions come from transportation, due mostly to passenger vehicles. The share rises to nearly 50 percent when carbon emissions from producing gasoline and diesel are factored in. Notably, transportation emissions have continued to increase in California, while emissions in nearly every other sector have declined steadily in recent years.
The good news is that we know what we need to do – and California and China have set world-leading zero-emission vehicle goals to get us there. In China, the goal is for zero-emission vehicles to account for 25 percent of total vehicle sales by 2025, increasing to 40-50 percent of total sales by 2030. Meanwhile, California aims to have 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025 and 5 million by 2030. California also established a voluntary framework with five vehicle manufactures to reduce emissions that can serve as a path forward – alternative to the one which the federal government has now chosen – for clean vehicle standards nationwide. To help achieve these goals, both California and China have offered numerous incentives to consumers and manufacturers and aggressively invested in research and development.
As a result, in part, of these policies, California and China are dominating the global zero-emission vehicle market and have put a significant share of these vehicles on our roads. In fact, China, the number one market in the world for plug-in electric vehicles, accounted for 54 percent of the world’s 2.26 million vehicles sold last year. And by the end of 2019, 3.8 million plug-in vehicles were on China’s roads. Similarly, California accounted for nearly half of America’s plug-in vehicle sales in 2019 with 156,101 vehicles sold and approximately 700,000 vehicles on the state’s roads.
While these figures are encouraging, the road ahead is long and winding. In 2019, plug-in vehicles represented just 8.26 percent of California’s annual new vehicle sales and overall sales of these vehicles declined year-over-year by 12 percent. And after years of zero-emission vehicle sales growth, China saw a similar trend in 2019, recording a 4 percent decline in sales year-over-year. In China, experts attribute this drop primarily to demand-side subsidy cuts and in California, the expiration of federal tax credits for purchases from many of the major manufacturers was a contributing factor.
So where do we go from here? What can California and China do to reverse recent trends and encourage much faster adoption of zero-emission vehicles? We start by accelerating our cooperation. This means taking steps to align California and China’s zero-emission vehicle goals, policies, research and investment. Possible actions include:
- Internal Combustion Engines: Studying options to phase out the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines by a specific date.
- Zero-Emission Vehicle Goals: Harmonizing zero-emission vehicle goals for 2030 – and beyond, with shared targets for new vehicles sales (as the ZEV Alliance has done) and/or zero-emission vehicle market share.
- Charging Infrastructure: Agreeing to mutual charging infrastructure targets, while also expanding and sharing research on market opportunities and technological innovation, from the battery to the charger.
- Procurement: Accelerating and aligning procurement requirements – in both the public and private sectors.
- Credit-Based Requirements: Encouraging China to adopt and adapt California’s credit-based zero-emission vehicle mandate, which requires auto manufacturers to produce a specific number of zero-emission vehicles each year, based on the total number of vehicles sold by the manufacturer in the state.
- Market Demand: Collaborating on innovative ways to drive zero-emission vehicle market demand, including sharing best practices, expanding public-private-nonprofit partnerships (e.g. Veloz, Go Ultra Low models) and supporting demonstration projects to deploy hydrogen fuel cell technologies.
- Innovation and Investment: Allowing and encouraging both zero-emission heavy-duty and passenger vehicle manufacturers to compete in California and Chinese markets, while continuing to expand government and business-to-business investment, loans and grants focused on research and development of new technologies, as well as workforce development.
Current geopolitical tensions and the COVID-19 crisis complicate this partnership between California and China, but this uncertainty should remind us that we have no time to waste. The University of California-wide California-China Climate Institute, working in partnership with the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University, stands ready to drive this collaboration forward. And as California and China work ever more closely together, we have to bring in other players like the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico. All of this, with the goal of getting more zero-emission vehicles on the road before the next United Nations climate talks. By doing this, we send a clear message to the world: zero-emission vehicles are the future.
Note: this post is co-authored with Fan Dai, director of the University of California’s California-China Climate Institute.
With the high-profile failure of last week’s UN climate conference in Madrid, the focus of international action on climate change will need to shift to political leaders of key global economies. We attended the conference in Madrid on behalf of the UC California-China Climate Institute and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley Law and saw firsthand how California and China may now be well positioned to lead in this global leadership vacuum. Both jurisdictions have dominant economies and official commitments on climate action, as well as strong willingness to act at the local levels.
An alliance of the “willing” among these leading economies, however, will not be easy. China and California both face headwinds to strong climate action. First, China is facing internal leadership changes on climate amid fears of a slowing economy, which is pushing the national government to scale back climate commitments. Most prominently, longtime government climate policy maker Xie Zhenhua is stepping down, while Ministry of Ecology and Environment vice minister Zhao Yingmin takes over. Xie’s departure coincides with a shift in China’s climate policy away from its economic-focused National Development and Reform Commission towards its traditional environmental protection ministry, with unknown consequences for future climate action.
These bureaucratic changes are happening at the same time that China is delaying introduction of its new national emissions trading system and returning to support more coal development to boost its economy. The numbers bear this reality out: China has raised its coal-fired power capacity by about 4.5% in 2018-2019, while oil consumption increased by an average 5.5% in 2018 and over the previous decade. Meanwhile, sales of electric vehicles dropped 34.2% in September 2019 compared to the previous year, as the country phased out subsidies.
Meanwhile, California’s aggressive climate agenda proved successful in this past decade, with the state meeting its 2020 climate goals four years early in 2016. But headwinds from the federal government, including a proposed rollback of federal vehicle fuel economy standards, means the state faces uncertainty reducing emissions from its now-dominant transportation sector. That sector now constitutes approximately 50% of the state’s carbon emissions, when factoring in oil refinery emissions. Worse, vehicle driving miles in the state are increasing, due to inefficient local government land use policies encouraging sprawl over transit-oriented growth.
To meet the 1.5-degree goal under Paris agreement, both California and China need to decarbonize their economies and be on a path to carbon neutrality by mid-century, with China needing to achieve a decline in emissions by the 2030s. Given the absence of US national leadership and now international discord as seen in Madrid, both California and China will need new partnerships to advance their climate programs. Specifically, the two climate leaders could lead collaborative efforts on:
- Cap-and-trade program: Given California’s success rolling out a functioning cap-and-trade program, the state is well positioned to provide technical assistance for China’s nascent carbon trading program, especially around monitoring, reporting and verification of emission data, consignment auction, and exploring potential market alignment under scenarios where the programs are linked by degrees.
- Zero-emission vehicles and low-carbon transportation: California leads the U.S. in adoption of zero-emission vehicles, particularly battery electric models, while China is now a dominant manufacturer of both the vehicles and their batteries. The two jurisdictions could share knowledge regarding smart policies for deployment as well as how to better integrate their markets to reduce costs for consumers while boosting local jobs. Collaboration over electrification of heavy-duty vehicles and ports in particular could be mutually beneficial.
- Clean energy innovation and grid modernization: California and China are both deploying significant renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, and now face challenges integrating this variable renewable energy into their grids. Both jurisdictions can benefit from technology and policy exchanges to boost deployment of solutions like energy storage and technologies that can match electricity demand to intermittent supply.
- Nature-based climate solutions: Facing common challenges posed by climate change to their ecosystems, California and China can learn from each other how to deploy nature-based solutions to manage our forests, farmlands and natural lands to sequester carbon and be more resilient to increasingly severe impacts of climate change.
The UC California-China Climate Institute can help advance this coordination and assist China and California in partnering with other climate leaders in the US and around the globe, through its policy research, dialogue and training programs. As the federal government in the U.S. retreats from climate leadership, and as international gatherings like in Madrid fracture due to parochial disagreements, leaders from China and California now have an opportunity to fill the void and marshal other like-minded jurisdictions to join their climate and energy initiatives. Now is the time to move beyond international coalitions and toward coalitions of the willing – and the doing.
As congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration try to roll back the clock to promote gas-guzzlers over zero-emission vehicles, China, South Korea and Japan are all vying to dominate the battery market for electric vehicles. So far, China is outstripping its neighbors, as Nikkei Asian Review reports:
Last year Chinese makers claimed seven of the top 10 slots on the list of the world’s largest suppliers of lithium-ion batteries for EVs, according to Chinese research company Gaogong Industry Research Institute. BYD ranked third globally, after Panasonic — which produces batteries for Tesla — and China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., or CATL, the world’s top EV battery manufacturer.
According to projections by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, China will produce 70% of the world’s electric-vehicle batteries by 2021. The potential rewards are huge: Goldman Sachs estimates that sales of batteries to power cars will rise from under $10 billion to $60 billion by 2030, driven by a global push to reduce greenhouse gases.
South Korea and Japan have long histories in this field though and won’t fade quietly. For example, Panasonic in Japan provides Tesla with its batteries, while South Korea’s LG Chem has supplied Chevrolet.
But China’s emerging dominance should be cause for concern for those nations that would like to gain a piece of the profits from the burgeoning electric vehicle market. And while strong Chinese investment in batteries should be good for consumers overall through cheaper battery and vehicle prices, we’ve seen before the negative effects of having just a handful of countries control the market for fueling.
Either way, this booming East Asian investment in zero-emission vehicles should put American policy makers on alert about how much the U.S. stands to lose by ceasing to support crucial clean vehicle technology.
It may soon get harder and more expensive to recycle your solid waste. As the Associated Press reported, stockpiled recyclables are going nowhere these days:
It all stems from a policy shift by China, long the world’s leading recyclables buyer. At the beginning of the year it enacted an anti-pollution program that closed its doors to loads of waste paper, metals or plastic unless they’re 99.5 percent pure. That’s an unattainable standard at U.S. single-stream recycling processing plants designed to churn out bales of paper or plastic that are, at best, 97 percent free of contaminants such as foam cups and food waste.
The resulting glut of recyclables has caused prices to plummet from levels already depressed by other economic forces, including lower prices for oil, a key ingredient in plastics.
As one recycler commented, a bale of mixed paper was worth about $100 per ton a year ago, but now requires payment of $15 to dispose of it.
There may not be much we can do to get China to change its policy, particularly with Trump’s trade war raging. And it may not be a bad thing, from an environmental perspective, as anecdotal reports indicated that American companies had very little insight into what happened to recyclables once they were shipped off to China on empty freight vessels.
So Americans are likely to see higher prices for waste disposal rates soon, as companies renegotiate contracts with municipal governments. And we’re also likely going to have to be more methodical about how we recycle, such as by cleaning out bottles and cans better and separating recyclables into distinct bins by product type.
While the U.S. government retreats on this critical clean technology, China continues its ascent, per August sales figures [E&E News]:
Sales of pure-electric cars rose 31.7 percent from a year ago to 72,000 units. Sales of gasoline-electric hybrids jumped 130.8 percent to 28,000 vehicles.
Beijing is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar campaign to promote electric car development in hopes of creating a profitable new industry. Automakers are rolling out dozens of electrics but still rely on sales of gasoline-powered models for their profits.
In August, Nissan Motor Co. began production of its first electric sedan designed for China. The Sylphy Zero Emission, based on Nissan’s Leaf, is the first of dozens of lower-cost electrics being developed for China by General Motors, Volkswagen and other global automakers.
From a climate perspective, it’s a good thing that China is throwing its manufacturing muscle toward clean cars. It means cheap EVs will be abundant in our near future.
But from a U.S. economic competitiveness standpoint, it’s a major surrender. While California is continuing its leadership on electric vehicles, the future of transportation increasingly looks like it will mostly involve inexpensive Chinese models plying America’s roads.
China is infamous for its air quality problems, with pictures in global news outlets of record-breaking smog in cities like Beijing and people venturing outside in face masks. The public outcry there is part of the reason that China has embraced climate change policies that reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are a major source of the pollution.
But the human impact of this pollution problem is easy to overlook for those of us who don’t know or talk to people in China. In co-teaching a climate change class this spring at Berkeley Law with some law students from China, for example, I was surprised to learn that many Chinese families spend hundreds of dollars on air filters for their apartment windows. Wouldn’t that money be better spent collectively instead, on slightly higher electricity rates from cleaner electricity sources? Yet in a country with one-party rule, they simply don’t have the option to protest at the ballot box. And when there are elections, voters are denied real choices.
Still, the government is getting the message, which is why they’ve been working with environmental attorneys from around the world to devise policies to reduce pollution. And it’s probably a big factor in the government’s decision to sign the Paris climate accords and an earlier bilateral agreement with the U.S.
But we shouldn’t overlook the personal nature of the air quality and public health challenge there. To that end, I found this documentary clip from Jing Chai called “Under the Dome” (Part 1) to be eye-opening and disturbing, from the perspective of a young mother looking out for her child’s health:
You can keep watching for further posted clips from the documentary. Let’s hope China will follow the success story of places like Los Angeles, which still suffers from smog but at a greatly reduced rate, and find cleaner skies soon.
Here’s my take on the biggest environmental victories in 2014:
5. Continuing strength of the electric vehicle market. Sales are going well, new models are being introduced, and automakers are on notice that this trend isn’t going away. No technology is more important for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions than electric drives, so let’s hope the progress continues.
4. Transportation fuels stay under California’s cap-and-trade program. There was some debate about whether or not fuels would stay under the cap, given oil-and-gas industry machinations and legislative action. But the California Legislature stayed strong. Including fuels under the cap will mean more auction revenue for climate-fighting strategies and a statement that gas prices should include at least some of the cost of pollution. Nationally, it means California is showing how to make a cap-and-trade program work without hurting the economy, providing a model for other states and one day the nation.
3. EPA’s clean power rule. It was long overdue and probably too weak, but the Obama Administration developed a power sector rule that gives states flexibility to innovate in how they reduce emissions from power plants. That can include more renewables but also more energy efficiency (of course, all this assumes the plan doesn’t get gutted in the courts). As states respond, the price of renewables will decrease and states can start to share markets to make further reductions.
2. Continued solar energy boom. Prices of panels are falling, the efficiency is increasing, and solar is now becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in some areas. This technology is a crucial part of the solution to decarbonize the electricity supply and enable electrified transportation.
1. Climate agreement with China. While the specifics of the deal were very weak, it’s a major symbolic and psychological victory that can be improved over time. China is the major emitter of carbon in the world, and they have now committed themselves to reducing these emissions. That sets up Paris in 2015 for a potentially meaningful international agreement and also bolsters arguments to reduce emissions here in the United States.
Honorable mention: the advent of cost-effective, viable energy storage deployment in California.
Happy New Year! Let’s hope 2015 brings even more progress as we race against time on climate change.
