"From emitting more than 11 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020, China has to drop to net zero within four decades. This is a scale and speed that no other country has attempted before, says Gang He, an energy-systems modeller at Stony Brook University in New York, who has studied China’s power system.”

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"Researchers will also need to study which sections of China’s population will be most affected by the transition and learn how to help them cope, says (Gang) He. Establishing the path to “a more just and inclusive transition would be a very important research topic”, he says.

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"And (Gang) He says that although China’s goals are not as ambitious as some would like, they are at least realistic. “What China should do is sometimes not what China could do,” he says.

"But battery storage has become cheaper over the past decade, and that could bring costs down, says Gang He, an energy-systems modeller at Stony Brook University in New York. If trends in the cost of renewables technology continue, more than 60% of China’s electricity could come from non-fossil fuels by 2030, says (Gang) He. “That is quite encouraging.”

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"But in making the shift, says (Gang) He, China also needs to consider the well-being and economic security of some 3.5 million workers in the coal mining and power industry, as well as the many people who rely on cheap electricity and heating.

Featured papers: He, Gang, Jiang Lin, Froylan Sifuentes, Xu Liu, Nikit Abhyankar, and Amol Phadke. 2020. Rapid Cost Decrease of Renewables and Storage Accelerates the Decarbonization of China’s Power System. Nature Communications 11 (1): 2486.  [pdf] 

He, Gang, Jiang Lin, Ying Zhang, Wenhua Zhang, Guilherme Larangeira, Chao Zhang, Wei Peng, Manzhi Liu, and Fuqiang Yang. 2020. Enabling a Rapid and Just Transition Away from Coal in China. One Earth 3 (2): 187–94. doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.012. [pdf] 

The five-year contract is with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), Division of Materials Management. The project is led by Principal Investigators (PI) Professors David Tonjes and Elizabeth Hewitt, Co-PI Professor Gang He, and Research Professor Krista Thyberg. The primary task is to sample a set of municipal waste systems State-wide to determine the composition of managed wastes and recyclables.

Professor Tonjes has worked on New York solid waste issues for 30 years, in both technical and policy applications. Professor Hewitt is a planner with a strong background in researching human behavior and motivations in environmental settings. Professor He has conducted extensive research on recent energy and environmental management in China in terms of both infrastructure and policy changes. Professor Thyberg has been working on solid waste issues for about 10 years, including iconic work on managing food waste. They will be supported by teams of graduate students enrolled in doctoral and masters programs in the Department, and undergraduate students drawn mostly from the Technological Systems Management major.

Featured project: NYDEC: New York State Waste Characterization

"The 2060 pledge marks the first time China and its top leader have made a long-term commitment to reducing emissions, said Gang He, a professor who studies energy and climate policy at Stony Brook University.

"This is huge given China's energy-related carbon emission accounted for about 28.8% of the global energy-related carbon emissions in 2019 and its continuing growth of [gross domestic product] and growing population of middle class," he said.

China has long argued that it should have more leeway to increase its emissions as it grows its economy. But it also strengthened the prospects for a global climate deal in 2015 when it helped demolish the so-called firewall between rich and poor nations that was once a fixture in climate talks: the idea that nations that had grown rich by releasing carbon dioxide should shoulder the burden of reducing it.

Related post: Why China’s “peak emission 2030” and “carbon neutrality 2060” is a big deal and good news for the world and the climate?

“Our paper is an effort to include in the overall discussion the employment and social justice impacts, including environmental justice, of such a transition,” said Dr. He, assistant professor in the Department of Technology and Society in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University. 

“The benefits of China’s transition away from coal is huge. We estimate that the most aggressive coal-transition pathway could reduce premature death related to coal combustion by 224,000 in 2050, compared to the business-as-usual scenario,” said Dr. He. “Similarly, our maximum estimated reduction in water consumption, arguably the most vital of all resources, is about 4.3 billion m3 in 2050.”

Featured paper: He, Gang, Jiang Lin, Ying Zhang, Wenhua Zhang, Guilherme Larangeira, Chao Zhang, Wei Peng, Manzhi Liu, and Fuqiang Yang. 2020. Enabling a Rapid and Just Transition Away from Coal in China. One Earth 3 (2): 187–94. doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.012. [pdf] 

"Gang He, a co-author of the report, told me the results of the research "are exciting and did offer me some optimism." He teaches at Stony Brook University in New York and is a visiting faculty member at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The key factor is that wind, solar and battery storage costs are plummeting to an extent that will reshape China's energy economy more than other forecasts have shown, the paper says. China produces 28 percent of the world's carbon emissions, more than any other country, and double the share in the United States.

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While the paper gives us reason for optimism, He reminded me that the transformation of China's electricity sector is just one part of reducing carbon emissions. The electricity sector is responsible for roughly half of China's emissions, with the rest coming from transportation, heating and other sources.

"Climate change is such an enormous challenge that we need systematic change and integrated solutions," He said. "Not just the supply side, but also the demand side—energy efficiency, behavior change and just transition."

“For too long relying on variable wind and solar resources for electricity generation has been considered a challenge to system operations and as having no economic advantage,” said Gang He, Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology and Society in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University.

“Now rapid technological developments and falling costs in renewable energy and storage are undermining this assumption. Our paper is an effort to reveal the implications of such changes for China’s clean power transition.”

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“The large-scale decarbonization of the power sector requires that several processes take place simultaneously,” explains Dr. He. “Both the renewable and storage capacity and transmission infrastructure must be scaled up quickly. The investment needed for the infrastructure transformation must be acquired and dedicated. And social and economic equity must be addressed during the transition to lower carbon power systems.”

Featured paper: He, Gang, Jiang Lin, Froylan Sifuentes, Xu Liu, Nikit Abhyankar, and Amol Phadke. 2020. Rapid Cost Decrease of Renewables and Storage Accelerates the Decarbonization of China’s Power System. Nature Communications 11 (1): 2486.  [pdf] 

Gang He is an assistant professor at Stony Brook University who focuses on energy economics and climate policy. He told lawmakers at a public hearing on Long Island last week that educating people should be part of any legislation that hopes to have a meaningful impact on climate change.

“In addition to policy, technology, there are also behavior components to that. How we incentivize people to change their behavior and their lifestyle.”

"There are four main streams in the National Energy Administration, including coal, electricity, natural gas and renewable energy," said Gang He, a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. "It should be noted that the coal industry is gradually being opened to market economy, while the electricity industry is still highly regulated in China." He explained that the clash represents two different types of interests.

Under the roof of the National Development and Reform Commission, which is the top policymaker in China, the Energy Administration was set up in 2008 after China -- the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter -- realized the importance of consolidating energy security issues. However, the scattered management of energy issues within the Chinese central government makes the administration's mission a difficult one.

"The structural conflict [within the government] means it's hard for the National Energy Administration to navigate among different units," said He. "Currently, the National Development and Reform Commission manages investment. The Ministry of Science and Technology focuses on technological development. The Ministry of Land and Resources deals with resources management."

He added that other energy types, such as hydroelectricity and nuclear energy, would also involve the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Environmental Protection.