New Horizons in Environmental Politics. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019. ix, 159 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) US$110.00, cloth; US$31.00, ebook. ISBN 978-1-78811-8149.
Politics of Renewable Energy in China by Chen Gang is a thorough and detailed account of China’s renewable energy development, with a specific focus on the various negotiation and lobbying processes that have been part and parcel of both successes and failures in China’s renewable energy experiences. The book is organized into nine different chapters. Chapter 1 starts out by anchoring the discussion on renewable energy developments firmly within the sphere of environmental pollution and global climate change. Gang questions whether authoritarian regimes can effectively respond to the global climate crisis, something which many in the 1990s believed could only be dealt with by democracies. Chapter 2 develops what Gang calls a “mercantile strategy,” which China used to develop the renewable energy sector. The idea is that an expansive industry-support and trade of renewable energy technologies in the early 2000s led to overcapacities and trade disputes around the time of the financial crisis, which then in turn stimulated domestic usage of these technologies. Chapter 3 looks into the various top-down measures that have been used to support the industry, whilst chapter 4 delves more closely into the local geographic and industrial challenges to implementation of national renewable energy policies.
Chapters 5 to 8 address the relatively untold and interesting story of the role of lobbying, various interest groups, and bureaucracy in China’s renewable energy sector. These chapters provide fresh insights and add to the novel content found in the book. Lastly, chapter 9 concludes by summarizing the overall argument, namely that China’s institutional constraints are the reason why China is not able to utilize its full renewable energy potential. Thus, the book ends on a somewhat disappointing note, arguing, as several other contributions have done, that what China has achieved within the renewable energy sector is fraught with challenges and complications that largely overshadow the benefits. This may well be; however, my personal problem with this stance is that the factors that were important in supporting the relatively quick growth of wind and solar energy technologies in China, such as tensions between fragmentation and centralization in China’s energy governance, also led to large challenges in the system (see Marius Korsnes, “Fragmentation, centralisation and policy learning: An example from China’s wind industry,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 43, no. 3 [2014]). Therefore, it is somewhat simplistic to point out that to solve these problems “China has to transform its power sector from a top-down and state-driven system to a new version driven by domestic demand and with less intervention from governmental apparatus at various levels” (10).
Theoretically, Gang is clearly inspired by various conceptualizations of state capitalism and the developmental state (see Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, London: Oxford University Press, 1989). Although this theoretical backdrop is relevant, some elements of the analysis seem forced. For instance, the aforementioned “mercantile strategy” appears to fit well into Gang’s conclusion that the Chinese government is mainly about industrial “supply-side” policy, wherein the “authoritarian state’s obsession with high economic growth” (10) is a key explanatory factor. The concept of a mercantile strategy matches with the solar PV story, but appears less convincing to explain the emergence of China’s wind industry (see e.g., Marius Korsnes, Wind and Solar Energy Transition in China, London: Routledge, 2020). China’s wind industry started early in the 1990s with the import of turbines from Europe, and from 2002 the central government launched its first concession programs on wind energy, with the aim to support a domestic manufacturing industry for domestic use. This brings me to another limitation of the book, namely the rather selective focus on some renewable energy industries when developing the overall point. Hydro power, which is China’s largest renewable energy source, is part of the discussions only in chapters 6 and 7, whilst chapters 3 and 4 centre more on wind and solar energy. One can naturally not expect a discussion of all these different energy sources to be entirely integrated, but given the large difference in nature of these power sources, the lessons they jointly provide for implementation and political challenges are less clear. One solution could have been to include a chapter looking more broadly at the role of all renewables in China before focusing on wind, solar, and hydro as specific case studies to make a point. Another issue is that in several places Gang uses sources from more than a decade ago, which makes the analysis of present-day energy sector challenges less relevant. All in all, Politics of Renewable Energy in China provides an in-depth review of relevant policies, legislative issues, and implementation challenges that China’s renewable energy developers have muddled through and dealt with. Providing a rare peek at what is going on behind the scenes, the book brings a novel perspective to the larger debate of the institutional capacity and limitations of China’s authoritarian system in promoting renewable energy and mitigating climate change.
Marius Korsnes
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim