China: China adjusts its inflated renewable energy subsidies (2018)

The Chinese government is lowering its subsidies for renewable energy, after researchers found that they were too high relative to the rapidly dropping global price of wind and solar technologies. The result of inflated Chinese subsidies for wind and solar-generated power was that funding was being diverted by the central government from competing needs, such as education and healthcare, while also creating an economic climate that discouraged domestic technology innovations. 

This was the finding of environmental economists from the Environmental Economics Program in China (EEPC), a Beijing-based research unit now associated with the National School of Development (NSD) at Peking University, following a review commissioned by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) into the country’s renewable energy subsidy policies. The NDRC is the country’s ‘super ministry’ that oversees the formulation and execution of national economic policies, including energy policies.

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Story | 20 February 2018