ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on China's low carbon energy programme and examines how this is organised through central-local relations. It examines the dynamics of China's nuclear power programme. From the 1980s until 2014 China's energy consumption and especially coal and oil consumption increased rapidly. In the period 2014–2016 coal use actually fell, and overall carbon emissions were stable or falling in the 2013–2016 period. China's progress in recent years in deploying low carbon energy sources has outstripped the West both in terms of volume, but also in per capita terms of MW deployed. Electricity supply is a monopoly business in China. Five companies, all of them state owned, may in some senses be seen to compete with each other to generate electricity to sell to the suppliers, but the relationships tend to be ones of locally run networks rather than competition based on quality. Local governments control decisions about wind power development.
