From the heart of Beijing to the edges of the global stage, you are at Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin.
Winter is a stress test for every energy system.
From heating homes in Europe to powering data centers in North America, cold weather pushes grids to their limits.
This winter, China is facing that same test at a scale unmatched anywhere else in the world.
In this episode, we invite you to do a quick reality check and see how the country writes this chapter of its energy story.
For today's show, I'm joined by Fei Fei and Steve Hatherly.
Now pull up a chair and join the conversation.
Most countries worry about keeping the lights on during extreme weather.
China has to do that for nearly one fifth of humanity, across climates ranging from subzero winters to tropical heat.
How it manages that challenge matters far beyond its borders.
So how are we doing this winter so far?
And i think to answer that question we should be responsible and explain the situation here in the country to those who have no idea how a country powers uh, on so many people in such a huge land.
So let's start with The situation in China, especially from the north to south, from the countryside to the city areas.
So about heating, for example, in the winter times that we are in right now, we can see cold spells from time to time, that sudden drop in temperatures and that pose challenges to the heating system.
But when it comes to temperatures, a big dress difference is between the northern part of China, which is much colder compared to the southern part of China, which is more inclined to the tropical weathers.
For example, on the island of Hainan, their temperature is averaged about 20 degrees Celsius.
Yeah, in the winter months, right?
Yeah.
And here in the northern part of the country, in Beijing, if we're lucky, we'll get around four or five degrees Celsius in a nice day.
But if it's a cold night, I think the coldest we've had so far this winter is about minus 11.
Your average would probably be somewhere about like minus three minus four, something like.
But for me, for my hometown in a northerner part than Beijing, our average temperature is about minus 10 degrees Celsius.
And when it comes to the coldest areas in northern China, the lowest temperature can't have minus 40 degrees.
Yeah, that's just like parts of Canada, too.
Yeah, so the heating in China totally depends on where you live.
So urban households, especially in the northern cities in the country.
They rely on centralized heating.
Rural areas mainly use self-provided heating like coal stoves or gas heaters or electric heaters.
Centralized heating kind of dominates public buildings and northern urban areas.
And the southern cities.
As you said, it's a lot warmer down in the south and they are not as prone to the frequent cold spells.
So the heating in the southern parts are different.
So in general, in the northern part, each city is working kind of like a giant machine.
You have different ways of energy to heat up the water in the machine and including waste heat from power plants, including other forms of heating.
And that would be pumped into millions of households through thousands of kilometers of thermal pipelines.
Yes, you heard me right.
The city.
If we're talking about densely populated city areas, the entire city is powered up or is heated up with this one huge network of pipelines.
So that's the situation in the northern part.
Whereas in the southern part well, initially I think 10 years ago, 20 years ago we heard the debate and also the complaints about southern cities being Our suffering from can suffer from cold weather as well.
We want a central heating system.
But in general, after doing the calculation and math we know it's not that cost effective in the sense that you will be wasting too much energy in construction kind of cost.
But in different parts of the southern part of the country, people would also or I think there are different types of pilot areas and pilot Well, I think constructions, including office buildings, including certain residential areas, they can start their little central heating system as well.
So northern part huge network.
Southern part, different ways to find out.
They're keeping themselves warm solutions.
Yeah, it's more fragmented when it comes to the southern cities because in older households the primary methods for heating is basically individual heaters or boilers.
But now in newer communities, they have this fragmented centralized heating within that community.
Or in some homes, they've installed floor heating to spend their winter.
And also I heard in some cities like Changsha, which is in the middle parts of China, which in the winter times they can also experience minus zero degree temperatures.
They're also experimenting with this fragmented centralized heating system from the public perspective.
So it's more of a fragmented system.
And that also means more diverse methods when it comes to where this heat is coming from.
So for northern part of China, in the past it was primarily coal.
And now we are also seeing an increasing portion of natural gas.
For example in Beijing.
I think most of these plants powering the thermal pipes and now powered by natural gas.
But when it comes to natural gas, you first of all need the infrastructure.
You need the pipes to pipe those natural gas to the plants.
And then you also need pipes to pipe the heated water to homes.
And that needs infrastructure and investments.
But when it comes to cities, that has less capacities, when it comes to this pretty advanced infrastructure building capacity, they will still go to coal to some extent, but there are also newer types of energy that they can tap into, but it's also in the developing phase, I think.
We'll go back to that point because it's quite important where the energy is from.
It's something we need to discuss.
But one tiny little anecdote I want to share is that mostly in the northern part of the country, different cities would start their central heating systems, So you have the pipe there, but there will be a day where the pipe is full of hot water and your homes are very nice and warm.
And typically it's the 15th of November till the 15th of March next year.
Take Beijing, for example, people started to debate over or not debate, discussion or discuss over which date to start the central heating and which day to stop it, based on the calculation and the prediction of the temperature.
So they would make sure that
Instead of starting this system at a fixed period of time, they would start it based on the real situation.
Which is much better.
Which is so much better.
Yeah, because temperatures are changing now and maybe even becoming a little bit more unpredictable.
Yes.
And for example, hospitals for homes for the elderlies.
Also, the central heating would start a bit earlier, given that that little community have its own central heating control, so that they can start it a bit earlier.
So that's that.
And another very interesting point is something that I didn't even think of previously is That is in cities you have buildings next to buildings, next to buildings, which makes this power network quite efficient.
But in the countryside, the situation is a bit different.
In a country, for example, in one village, there will be different houses. separated a little bit far away from each other in these places, which is why even in the north part of the country, we would still allow households to warm up its houses by themselves.
They would install their own systems.
And what's happening here in China is that it has been promoting cleaner rural heating by helping farmers replace the coal burning stoves.
Yes, that's what They were using with electric or gas based systems and through the program such as coal to electricity kind of program or coal to gas program.
The government supports households in purchasing clean heating equipment, meaning that they will link them up with the factories selling those equipment.
A little incentive, you mean?
Yes, and also switching to electricity heating and offsetting higher energy costs with subsidies.
There's the money incentives.
And in different regions, we would adopt different tailored approaches.
For example, in Liaoning Province, new users who switch to gas or electricity receives direct price subsidies one yuan per cubic meter of natural gas, 01 yuan per kilo hour of electricity.
So when we're discussing these kind of issues, we would generally ask the question how much electricity do we need to really warm up the entire country?
Does it really cost that much energy?
Is that why people all around the world, countries all around the world would find it a challenge to cope with each and every year?
Yeah, if you are switching from fossil fuels to green resources, then there's going to be challenges there, and one of the challenges is that you are depending on things like the sun and the wind to always be there for you, And they are not, which is why storage is an important thing.
But it's considered overall, despite the challenges, to be better for the planet.
And that's why China's decreasing its coal power use for green heating.
And it's also increasing in wind and solar.
So China, if we can go over a couple of statistics that I think are worth it.
It now accounts for about a third of the world's total installed power capacity.
And by the end of last year China installed wind and solar capacity that had increased 34 in just one year.
So non-fossil energy.
It now makes up about 60 of the total installed power capacity.
That surpassed coal power for the first time.
And that means every three units of electricity used in China now includes one unit of green power.
For solar specifically, by June of last year, last summertime, The capacity in the country reached about 11 billion kilowatts.
And that number might not mean anything to you, but that's over five times the new coal capacity in that same period.
So those statistics show that there's a pretty significant and also very fast change coming towards green power here in China.
Yeah, and also when it comes to green power and I think Steve touched upon that a little bit is the unreliability of the sources.
For example, in winter times.
The reason for why many countries find it challenging in power supply in winters in particular is because for powers like solar and wind and also hydropower as well, in winter times the supply will be lower.
There will be less sun, less water, and so that means, when it comes to the power supply from the solar power part and also from the water part, there will be less of that.
But on on the other hand, in winter times, as we discussed, a lot of the heatings that we use requires electricity on some level because, for example, for even the natural gas boilers, they still need electricity to fire up those gases.
Sure,
So on one hand, you need more electricity.
On the other hand, the supply is sort of dwindling because the weather is unpredictable.
And also at the same time, in wintertime, we have a lot of holiday seasons.
And that means on the industrial side of the economy.
They need to fire up their production lines as well to produce our gifts and all the other products that we need for our holidays, for example, for the upcoming Spring Festival.
And that also drives up demand.
And that is the reason for China.
We are seeing record levels of lows on the grid system, meaning more demand for three consecutive days just within this month.
And when it comes to other countries, that also means bills are going up in pretty much to the level that a lot of households find it difficult to afford anymore.
So that is the reason why the winter time we're seeing topics and discussions about how do we make energy affordable and accessible at the same time.
And make sure that we have enough of it for everyone.
Yes.
And that is only the in China or Chinese theories term, the bottom line, because we believe it's a matter of livelihood.
And that is also why, even during extreme cold snaps, heating companies are mandated to safeguard the residents and make sure that the Price, gas price, natural gas or any kind of price that you use for the central heating is stable.
And another fun little thing that we're doing here is that northern urban areas implement strict building insulation standards.
So the exterior walls are fitted with a 10 to 20 centimeter thick flame retardant kind of boards, so that the windows oh windows as well use double or even triple layers, so that this thermal shell almost can ensure that even if heating is lost for a short period of time, the indoor temperature would typically drop no more than 5 degrees Celsius within 24 hours.
I'm pretty sure those things work for keeping the house warmer in the wintertime but also keeping it cooler in the summertime.
So a lot of methods are being used to make sure that, no matter how extreme we're talking about well, normally extreme, not end of the world kind of extreme weather we're talking about we can keep the people living in their homes warm and safe.
And that, like I said, is the bottom line.
What we're working towards is a switch or at least a push to make the heating cleaner and greener.
And there are so many methods there.
Yeah, coal itself, coal power is becoming greener, too.
China has spent a lot of years cleaning up coal power, and it's starting to show.
As early as the end of 2017, about 70 of coal-fired power units had already met ultra-low emission standards.
And as a result of that now, with less than 40 of coal Total installed capacity, coal plants generate about 60 of electricity, provide 70 of peak load support and nearly 80 of system flexibility.
At the same time, air pollutant emissions, those have gotten better as well.
They've fallen by more than 91%.
And that makes China home to the world's largest clean coal power fleet.
Now, how do you go ahead and make coal greener then?
Well, there are many ways that you can do it.
And one of the ways is a clever trick. that is called integrated gasification combined cycle.
And instead of just burning coal they turn it into gas first, then they clean out all the nasty stuff that's in it, and then they burn that gas in a very efficient turbine, and the result is you get way less sulfur and nitrogen pollution, a bit more efficiency and a big cut in carbon dioxide emissions too.
And also when it comes to coal power plants, I think of something I experienced as a child.
When I was growing up, we lived very close to a thermal power plant, and that thermal power plant supplied us with their waste waters for our heating systems, simply because, when it comes to those coal-fired power plants, how they work is that they burn the coal and then boil some of the water.
And they have this very high pressure, high temperature steam.
And that steam is the one that's been used to generate electricity.
But what about what would come out of the steam and also hot water?
This normally just means that they won't use it anymore.
And so that's why they send those wastewater into residential homes.
And in this way, not only you can sort of make better use of the coal that you burned, you also don't need extra coal to burn for the residential heating systems.
Which is, I think, right now a lot of other cities and other industries are trying to do as well, is to convert this industrial waste heat into our heating systems.
And then I think it creates kind of a closed loop, those geothermal heating uses, because the water that eventually gets cooled gets reused for other purposes.
And that makes things more efficient and cleaner and more stable for the system overall.
Yes.
And for different places, they would have different um in indolment or kind of resources that they can utilize.
For example, in pingyuan county they have introduced a different clean heating solution and, as part of an upgraded heating project, the county, rich in again geothermal resources, has launched this clean energy replacement program, which draw underground water.
It's not industrial waste anymore.
It's underground water at 58 to 60 degrees Celsius using its natural heat for space heating.
And that would definitely lower the cost to reduce energy consumption and critically, does not increase pressure on local public finance as well, meaning that people can enjoy the kind of heating in lower price.
Yeah, I mean there was a time when increased electricity usage and you see that in China, because there's 14 billion people that live here
And that is enough of an explanation as to why so much electricity is used and needed here in the country.
And there was a time when an increase in electricity use meant more pollutions.
But that's just not the case anymore.
It used to mean smokestacks and coal smoke and heavy industry running full blast maybe 24 hours, seven days a week.
But that old logic really doesn't hold true anymore.
There was a data report from Xinhua and it talked about the fact that industry still accounts for the largest share about 64 in total electricity use.
That was from 2025.
But growth is no longer driven by your traditional heavy industries.
Semiconductor plants, AI-related manufacturing, smart robotics, electric vehicles, wind equipment manufacturing all of those saw double-digit electricity growth, while your traditional major high-energy consumer industries those would be things like steel or chemicals or building materials, for example those grew by less than 2.
These industries.
They use a lot of electricity, but they also have have created much more value per kilowatt hour and are far, far cleaner than your traditional heavy industry.
So yeah, you are seeing increased electricity use, but it's not necessarily bad as bad for the environment, especially when you compare it to other industries in the past.
And the reason we cited so many examples is to show that even we know China as a country that provides central heating system.
The central heating system is not an umbrella term that can talk about all of the methods, all of the ways utilized by different parts of the country.
We mentioned in cities and in countryside could be different.
In the north and the south, it could be different.
And even in the similar places, because of the county, for example, is adjacent to a factory or a nuclear power plant or just somewhere with with heating, underground water that they can utilize, they can use different ways, and all that would also be very critical to consumers as well.
Yes and so, but when it comes to consumers, they are also replacing fossil fuels in their daily use with the use of electricity.
I think the most prominent example would be the use of electric vehicles.
That everybody knows that China is one of the biggest market for electric vehicle and also one of the biggest producers in the world.
But also it's not about EV itself only.
The electric use in the internet or related services, they are also growing by over 30% in 2025.
And also when it comes to EVs, We have charging and we have battery swapping.
Electricity demand also jumped nearly 50%.
So we are sort of seeing this shift in sort of every detail of our daily life in transportation, in the electric world, heat boilers or heat pumps that we use in our homes or in our offices.
We are also seeing the high speed rail, which is also 95 or 99% powered by electricity as well.
And also we are seeing, for example, smart agriculture are also replacing old diesel powered systems.
So it's not just about the energy sector.
It's also about every part and every aspect of the society taking part in that.
I guess that's why, instead of believing that China is a country, a major country with energy, we are now seeing it more like it's a major country with electricity, because not only because electricity can be from different sources of energy, and also because electricity by itself is cleaner and we are moving towards a cleaner path the entire country and all of the individuals.
That is not to say we're there already.
We're still facing many challenges and still trying to address the problems, and almost case by case, because different industries in different places would have different problems.
Yeah, different needs.
And one of the difficulties I think I mentioned it already a little while ago is that you have to have a perfectly balanced system.
When you're talking about electricity and relying on solar or wind or green energy sources is great, until it's not there on a Tuesday afternoon and all of a sudden, your energy source is gone, which means you need a backup system that is stable and reliable in place.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think when it comes to that, it's the talking about the design of the whole power system.
And I think for a lot of countries in the world it's more of a crossing the river and filling the stone process, because nobody knows the answer.
We've never had this amount solar and wind and hydropower in the system ever in history.
And everybody, not many people know exactly what to do.
But when it comes to China, I think a lot of experts are picturing a very different system from what we have today.
Right now, our power system works like the water system.
We open the tap, we have the water, we close the tap, the water doesn't come.
But in the future, as the unreliability of the solar and wind, like Steve just mentioned, is just not there on a Tuesday afternoon, what are you going to do?
So we need the system to be more flexible, to be more smart.
Dynamic.
Yeah, more dynamic.
That means not only that I open the tap, the water come running out.
That can also mean when the system needs that water.
I can also give back some of the water that I have in surplus.
And for example, sometimes that can earn me some of a small bonus money on the sideline.
Or it just helps the whole system to know exactly where has the surplus power and where needs the power at this hour.
That's a great point because oftentimes where it's needed is not where it's being produced.
So China in the western part of the country, in the northwestern part of the country, that's where a lot of the renewables are out in the desert areas.
You have these huge solar farms out there that are collecting the power of the sun and storing that energy.
But then you've got Shanghai that needs that energy.
Well, that's not next door.
That's very far away.
So how do you get it from point A to point B?
That's another challenge as well.
Yeah.
And one that's always kind of popping up in the news.
And when we talk about ultra high voltage power lines for delivery and things like that, that's what that's usually all about.
And that is the national scale.
We are moving the power from places where it's generated to the place that needs it.
But from a smaller scale.
Maybe we are also using the car, while using the electricity in your electric car to power a office building during the office building's peaking hours.
And that V2G is also transferring your electric car into a power bank of your city.
And that is also something that can give you a little bit incentive.
I'm talking about some subsidy or money that you can gain from allowing your car into the entire power solution system of the city.
Lot of different ways things are happening.
Yeah, and it's making sure that.
Well, the goal is to make sure that none of that power goes to waste.
Exactly.
And China's building a new energy system as well.
By 2035, over 30% of energy will come from non-fossil sources and wind and solar capacity.
We are looking at six times what it was in 2020.
And that's what more electricity looks like.
Cleaner, smarter, and greener for the country.
And All of us need to be aware of that situation and maybe make our own contribution as well.
