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Abstract
China has embarked on an ambitious and unprecedented programme of energy reform and climate
change mitigation. Yet the motivations for this important shift remain unclear. This paper surveys key
central government documents and articles by China’s leading energy academics to investigate the
ideas influencing China’s new energy and climate policies. Three key ideas in particular are supportive
of greater climate mitigation than in the past. First, domestic energy security concerns have risen on the
central government agenda as a result of electricity shortages and rapidly rising energy consumption.
Such concerns have deeply influenced China’s ambitious and largely successful energy efficiency
policies. Second, growing awareness of the environmental constraints on economic growth in general,
and the potential damages of dangerous climate change in particular, has prompted stronger official
rhetoric in favour of green development. The appearance of targets and policies that specifically target
carbon emissions reductions in the 12th FYP for the first time suggests that climate change mitigation is
becoming a motivation for policy action in its own right, rather than simply a co-benefit of policies
enacted for other purposes. Third, a conviction that the world is moving towards low-carbon energy
forms has given rise to the belief that China must become a technological and economic leader in this
transition. Large levels of public financing to support the development of China’s wind power and solar
PV sectors suggests that the Chinese government has strong vested interests in seeing China
successfully compete and lead in global low-carbon energy markets. In order to understand the shift in
China’s approach to climate change since the 11th FYP, it is important to understand how new ideas
such as these have reframed and reshaped the Chinese government’s interests and objectives.