What a carbon-neutral China means for Europe - with Miranda Schreurs

Today, we are talking about the institutions and international politics of China’s climate policy with Professor Miranda Schreurs, Chair of Environmental and Climate Policy at the Bavarian School of Public Policy, and vice dean of Technical University of Munich’s school of governance, where she has served since 2016. Prior to this she was Director of the Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has served as member of the German Advisory Council on the Environment and as vice chair of the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils since 2008. She was also a tenured associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland. Schreurs’ work focuses on comparative environmental politics and policy in Europe, the US, and East Asia. She was born and raised in the United States and has also lived for extended periods in Japan and Germany and briefly in the Netherlands. She has a PhD from the University of Michigan and an MA and BA from the University of Washington.

Here are the key questions we discuss:

01:41 - Has Europe been positively surprised by China carbon developments in the last year?

03:00 - Would you say that the mutual cooperation and agreement on climate outweighs disputes on trade policy in the energy field?

07:25 - Does Europe now view China as a climate leader?

10:05 - How does Europe expect China to react to the carbon border adjustment tax?

13:00 - Regarding Prof Schreurs' past work on Multi-level Perspectives on climate governance, does she see climate policy in China becoming more centralized?

15:30 - The role of provincial and local pilots in climate-related policy

17:10 - The extent to which provinces may drag their feet on climate policy

19:30 - Incentives for local officials on environmental performance

20:30 - How did the concept of carbon neutrality come to be recognized as viable for China?

25:00 - The role of the carbon market in China compared to other policies

Important links:

https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/schreurs-miranda

Miranda Schreurs, "Multi-level Climate Governance in China," 2017:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316246858_Multi-level_Climate_Governance_in_China