Asia & the Pacific

The Belfer Center began researching energy technology issues in the late 1990s. Its mission was “to determine and promote the adoption of effective strategies for developing and deploying cleaner and more efficient energy technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and stress on water resources, and improve economic development.”

In this issue, we look at the history and influence of the Center’s energy innovation efforts in the past two decades by focusing primarily on ETIP’s work in the U.S. and China.

Scientists from three universities demonstrate that buying a product made in China causes significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions than purchasing the same product made elsewhere.

The authors findings suggest that overestimation of China's emissions in 2000–2013 may be larger than China's estimated total forest sink in 1990–2007 or China's land carbon sink in 2000–2009.The revisions of the Chinese emissions are substantial enough that they may lead to adjustments in the Global Carbon Cycle.

China is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for one-quarter of the global total in 2013. Although the country has successfully lowered the rate of emissions from industry in some cities through improved technology and energy-efficiency measures, rapid economic growth means that more emissions are being added than removed. Without mitigation, China's CO2 emissions will rise by more than 50% in the next 15 years.

The magnitude and growing annual rate of growth of China's carbon emissions make this country the major driver of global carbon emissions and thus a key focus for efforts in emissions mitigations. This report presents independent data on China's carbon emissions from 1950–2012, and provides a basis to support mitigation efforts and China's low-carbon development plan.

The Belfer Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy group is co-organizing a major workshop with China’s Tsinghua University on “Energy Technology Innovation on the “Backdrop of the U.S./China Emissions Deal.” Belfer Center’s Professors Laura Diaz Anadon, Henry Lee and Venky Narayanamurti are planning the June event with Tsinghua University Professor Su Jun, a former Science, Technology, and Public Policy fellow.

"Getting individuals to take responsibility for their energy consumption is not just an issue of building short-term awareness of a cause. Rather, these campaigns require changes to long-standing habits, perhaps through constant reminders that emphasize individual action. Climate action therefore raises questions of both the desired intensity and frequency of messages in promoting behavioral change."

"An ambitious deal might also stimulate more demand for innovations in clean technologies, in which China is emerging as a global leader. But because of the UN's decision-making process, in which all its members have to agree on a new deal, Xi Jinping is in the powerful position of being able to commit to only as much emission reductions as fit his domestic policy agenda."

"Government support in the form of so-called feed-in tariff policies (FITs), which combine long-term, fixed-price electricity purchase agreements and guaranteed grid-access, has attracted large private-sector investments in sustainable electricity generation in the industrialized world. In an effort to replicate these experiences globally, a number of international organizations, NGOs, banks and donor countries are proposing mechanisms to cover part of the cost of FITs in developing countries. This paper reviews these proposals for supported FITs and then uses a case study of Thailand's Alternative Energy Development Plan 2013–2021 to investigate the opportunities and challenges of supporting FITs at a global scale."

High upfront costs are a critical barrier for investments in clean infrastructure technologies in developing countries. This paper uses a case study of Thailand's electricity sector to create realistic estimates for the relative contributions of local and global technological learning to reducing these cost in the future and discusses implications of such learnings for international climate policy.