An electricity crisis engulfing much of China has exposed the underbelly of the country’s governance system, with local officials often paying lip service to Beijing’s orders and using shortcuts to get around their failures, according to climate experts. In recent weeks, more than 20 provinces have introduced power rationing to cope with soaring coal prices and rises in electricity demand. Factories were told to shut down and households were warned that electricity supply could be unstable. At the same time, Beijing has set explicit energy and emission control targets, and local officials were told that they would be assessed on how well they met those targets. Climate experts said that to meet those targets, Beijing wanted local governments to take aggressive action to upgrade factories and make them more energy efficient. Instead, local authorities went back to the old playbook. “China’s climate actions will require curbing coal production and reining in the development of coal-fired power plants. To do this, local governments need to transform energy and industrial structures and improve energy efficiency,” said Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. “But at the local level, officials are slow to take action [for change]. When there is surging demand, they go back to the old way of development – launching projects [with quick returns] that are energy intensive and emissions heavy.” The problem is so rampant that in a commentary on Sunday, Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily blasted cadres for power cuts that had disrupted production and plunged households into darkness. It said Beijing’s targets to limit energy consumption had been in place for almost six years and the orders were consistent and clear. It criticised the local authorities for resorting to last-minute, sweeping measures such as power cuts so they could claim to be meeting their year-end performance targets. 23 Chinese metal workers sickened by carbon monoxide in power blackout President Xi Jinping has pledged that China will take the lead in the global fight against climate change by reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Transforming its industrial mix and curbing projects that energy intensive are essential in reaching these goals. The drive comes after more than three decades of growth-at-all-costs development that turned the country into an economic powerhouse but inflicted serious environmental damage and unleashed an unsustainable demand for resources. Since becoming party chief in 2012, Xi has made restoring China’s environmental health a top priority of his policy agenda, and emphasised the importance of implementation at the local government level. Under the five-year plan for 2016-2020, China introduced a “dual-control” policy that required provinces to cap their energy use and cut energy intensity, or the amount of energy used per unit of GDP. But many provinces struggled to achieve these targets by 2020, and some imposed power cuts in December in the rush to meet them. Part of the problem is the delegation of approvals for some types of energy-intensive projects, such as coal-fired power plants, has shifted from the central government to provincial authorities, leading to the commissioning of a large number of such schemes. “Some officials at the local level were not aware of the importance of decarbonisation for the economy, or some just wanted to build those energy-intensive projects to spur economic growth,” an expert with a government-linked research institute said, asking to not be named. “These projects may not be against the law but some are so big that they pose a huge demand on resources such as energy and generate substantial emissions once they become operational.” Chinese power producers seen taking a hit from surging coal prices to meet winter demand with no sign of tariff hike In addition, some local officials thought they could keep building energy-intensive projects up to 2030, the deadline for peak carbon emissions. According to China Environmental News , a newspaper affiliated with the environment ministry, researchers from the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning said many local officials were convinced that they could carry on business as usual and push emissions to a “new peak” by 2030. Meanwhile, China’s carbon emissions went up 15 per cent year on year in the first quarter of this year – the biggest jump in more than a decade, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “The carbon dioxide surge reflects a rebound from coronavirus lockdowns in early 2020, but also a post-Covid-19 economic recovery that has so far been dominated by growth in construction, steel and cement,” Myllyvirta said. China aims to cut energy intensity by 3 per cent this year and a cumulative 13.5 per cent from 2021 to 2025. But according to the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, 20 of the country’s 31 provinces and regions failed to meet their targets in the first half of this year.