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David Fishman Profile picture
David Fishman
@pretentiouswhat
China power - econ & policy analysis for RE, nuclear, coal, markets, grid. 12-yr migrant, currently SH Rural development enthusiast @HopkinsNanjing @LantauGroup
11 subscribers
Dec 26 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
USA Taxicab Chronicles 1:

It’s 6am and I’m in a Lyft en route to Dulles airport in Washington DC. I’m bleary-eyed and drowsy, but my driver seems chipper. He hops out of the vehicle to help me load luggage, a spring in his step.

Clearly a morning person. That makes one of us.🧵 My driver is about my age. He looks Chinese, and the app says his name is Tong, but he doesn’t sound Chinese. He speaks with the soft tones and elongated vowels of someone from SEA…perhaps Thailand.

“Hello sir, good morning, sir. Dulles Airport…which terminal please?”
Dec 3 • 31 tweets • 16 min read
On the morning of November 28, China's newest nuclear power plant, a Hualong One reactor at Zhangzhou in Fujian, connected to the grid just just 61 months after construction.

How does China build these so fast? Let's review the timeline. 🧵 Image The first thing to know about Zhangzhou NPP is it's NOT a new reactor. Actually this thing has been planned for AGES.

The first mention I can find of it goes back to 2007, when Guodian (one of the plant owners) set up a Project Office in Zhangzhou.

We learn from this very early notice that the site plans to use AP1000 reactors imported from Westinghouse. Keep in mind, the Westinghouse AP1000 export deal had basically JUST been signed at this point. The first unit at Sanmen wasn't even under construction yet. This was a wild time...there were dozens of AP1000s sites all across China being planned all at once.

sxb.nea.gov.cn/dtyw/hyxx/2023…Image
Dec 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Hugely important development here. China's Southern Grid region (Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hainan) is the pilot region for China's unified cross-provincial grid reform.

The deadline to get this cross-provincial spot market to full commercial operations is 2025. When the Southern Grid is unified, all of those five provinces will in be the same system, with pricing reflecting real-time supply and demand conditions system-wide.

In theory, an abundance of power in one province could be immediately reflected in lower pices in another.
Nov 22 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
"No one mentions this" because it's not relevant. Chinese landholders hold a good deal of power to hold up infrastucture projects and have, MANY times before.

Indeed, national SOEs like China Railway are perhaps the MOST vulnerable to having their plans "derailed" this way. This is because national SOEs building e.g., highways or railways are the most obligated to do things by the book. The "book" here means the seminal 2007 Property Law, which specified and codified individual property rights in one place for the first time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_…
Nov 21 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
⚡️October 2024 China Power Consumption Update

Chinese power consumption for October 2024 hit 774 TWh, up 4.3% against a high base from October 2023.

Healthy consumption growth in services and residential was balanced out by anemic growth in the industrial sector. 🧵 Image Secondary industry was up an underwhelming 2.7% YoY. This is the lowest YoY growth I've seen since I started tracking this dataset last year.

This is now the fifth month in a row where industrial power demand growth has been been bad, and also the weakest so far. Image
Nov 15 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Unfortunately, this Bloomberg piece about the relationship between renewables and power markets in China gets the story exactly backwards.

Power markets are not a "lifeline" for renewable generators in China; actually they're a major challenge and a huge threat to revenue. 🧵 Solar project operators especially want nothing to do with shot-term power markets, and hope to delay the day when they are exposed to them for as long as possible.

Under their current power sales scheme, they enjoy guaranteed dispatch at a fixed rate (grid company buys).
Nov 10 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
China Taxicab Chronicles: Mr. Jia, Shanghai Success Story

I hop into Mr. Jia's taxi on my way to Pudong for a meeting. It's raining, so I widen my vehicle search on the ride hailing app to include taxis, which I don't usually do. I haven't been in a taxi in a long time... Mr. Jia is in his 50s, with a neat haircut and a tidy jacket. He doesn't look like a migrant worker from some inland province, busting his ass for 15 hours a day to cobble together cash to go home and buy a house. He looks local. So I ask.

"Hey shifu, where are you from?"
Nov 7 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
A little thread about industrial power policy:

In many Asian countries, industrial power prices are not reflective of average generation costs because of cross-subsidies (e.g., residential sector paying slightly more for power to ensure industrial tariffs remain low). Industrial power prices aren't random; they reflect a combination of economic forces like fuel costs (which you have less control over, although you can moderate your exposure to with planning) and policy choices like subsidies (which you have full control over).
Oct 23 • 24 tweets • 11 min read
The Secret Tibetan Cultural Museum - My Home Tour

After finishing our yak hot pot, we we escorted by Boss Liu to his stately mansion next to our guesthouse, hopefully to be impressed and amazed by beautiful decor.

But I was not prepared for how hard he delivered! 🧵 Image It turns out, Boss Liu has turned his huge personal home into a veritable museum, a monument to Tibetan art, culture, and craftmanship.

Not a single square centimeter of wall or ceiling space has been wasted. I hardly knew where to look, because everything was so interesting. Image
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Oct 12 • 20 tweets • 8 min read
"Hey, American! Come take pictures of this. See how our women pick potatoes!"

At 8am the morning after checking into my Tibetan guesthouse in Jiuzhaigou, I decided to explore the dirt path up the mountain behind the village - the route to the old hamlet I'd heard about. Image It was breezy, and the sky was blue with wispy white clouds. The air still held a touch of last night's coolness, which yielded as the sun rose higher and lit up golden corn in the fields.

I cannot imagine or describe a more perfect late summer/early autumn morning. Image
Oct 8 • 22 tweets • 8 min read
What's up with Chinese cities having "Tiers"? What does it mean when we say "1st-tier, 3rd-tier, etc"

We reference these tiers pretty often with the assumption that everyone knows what they mean, but I think it's worth explaining more fully. 🧵 Image First off, the tier system is not an official ranking from the Chinese government.

The most commonly-used system is the one from financial magazine Yicai Global, issued annually since 2016.

It's like US News and World Report's college rankings - unofficial but influential.
Oct 5 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
A nice conversation with a young Tibetan guy at my guesthouse about maintaining cultural identity in Jiuzhaigou County, Sichuan.

In Jiuzhaigou, we decided to stay in a family-owned guesthouse a few km away from the scenic area. It was less convenient, but worth it for a quieter stay.Image On my first evening, I relaxed in the lobby and chatted to the front desk attendant, a young Tibetan guy (late 20s) who was usually reclined behind the desk, playing on his phone.

I noticed a rack of outfits by the desk.

“Hey..these Tibetan costumes…do you rent them out?”
Sep 25 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
I recommend anyone outside of China seeking to better grasp this concept to watch a recent Chinese TV drama called "Like a Flowing River" (大江大河).

It follows the story of three very different men making their fortunes in the "New China" of the 1980s and 90s. 🧵
Image One is a new college graduate who becomes an employee at a SOE chemical plant, one becomes the quintessential hustler/private entrepreneur, and one is a former PLA soldier appointed party secretary of his hometown village.

They each reflect a real aspect of China in the 80s. Image
Sep 21 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) heard us talking about common prosperity and issued a big new statistics report on it. It's called:

"People's Lives are now Moderately Prosperous, Proceeding Steadily Towards Common Prosperity"

I pulled out some highlights.🧵Image On income growth and the rural/urban income gasp over the last decade:

"In 2023, the per capita disposable income of the population increased to 39,218 yuan, a real increase of 94.4% since 2012, after accounting for price factors. This represents 6.2% average annual real growth from 2013-2023."

The per capita disposable income of urban residents was 51,821 CNY, 75.4% higher than in 2012, with an annual average real growth rate of 5.2%, while the per capita disposable income of rural residents was 21,691 CNY, 111.4% higher than in 2012, with an average annual real growth rate of 7.0%.

In 2023, the ratio of disposable income per capita between urban and rural incomes was 2.39:1, down from 2.88:1 in 2012."Image
Sep 19 • 21 tweets • 12 min read
Gansu Travelogue 2: A "Little Mecca" of Sino-Islamic Architecture

If you're a fan of Sino-Islamic architecture, Linxia City is the place for you. This small city with a population of ~370k is the capital of the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (AP) in southern Gansu.

🧵 Image Linxia Hui AP lies about 100km southwest of Lanzhou, with a total population of ~2 million. Linxia is the name for both the autonomous prefecture and its capital city.

Per the name, it is for the Muslim Hui ethnic minority in China. The population is 57% Muslim; 32% are Hui.
Image
Image
Sep 17 • 22 tweets • 11 min read
This is a long, wonky, data-driven, meandering thread about real estate & median lifestyles & home affordability in China.

I see a people discussing Chinese homes and wages and affordability on here think about it in a kinda one-dimensional way, and I hope this adds context.
🧵 Image First,when you chat to people in China, talking about real estate is like discussing the weather. Every adult will talk about it, and everyone, no matter who or where they are, says it's expensive.

That's been the case for the entire time I've lived here.
Aug 25 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Okay, I have some commentary and theory on how China hit the 2030 goal 6 years early, because it is indeed uncommon for China to set a target they can smash so easily.

Context: In December 2020, Xi announced this 1200 GW target at that year's UN Climate Ambition Summit. 🧵 At the time, China's total wind+solar capacity was ~446 GW. They were actually exactly equal: 223 GW apiece in Q3 2020.

Ignoring Q4 2020, if each added ~38 GW of capacity per year, for the entire decade of the 2020s, they'd each hit ~600 GW by 2030 (for a total of 1200 GW).
Aug 24 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
⚡️July 2024 China Power Consumption Update ⚡️

Chinese power consumption for July 2024 hit 939.6 TWh, up 5.7% vs July 2023.

This is some of the softest expansion we've seen all year, marking two months in a row of decent-but-not-great YoY growth of power consumption. Image The softer growth was most apparent in the secondary industry segment, which was up 5% YoY. At this time last year, power consumption had stabilized, so we can't attribute this to a skewed base effect.

5% isn't horrible, and it's still growth, but I usually like to see 6%+. Image
Aug 21 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
This is bad analysis/misinformation for a few different reasons. To summarize:

1. Capacity =/= generation
2. Variable generation assets have different application model vs dispatchable assets, so they aren't ever equivalent
3. China sees a key role for nuclear
🧵 I'll start by quibbling on a small, but still relevant point: China isn't installing 5 GW of solar/wind capacity per week.

Some projects bled over from Q4 of last year, causing Q1 installs to be quite high, but it dropped in Q2.

Aug 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
11 more nuclear reactors approved yesterday in China, across 5 sites.

This extends the recent approval trend, with 10 approved in 2022, 10 approved in 2023, and 11 in 2024.

9/10 of the reactors approved in 2022 are now under construction, as well as 4/10 of the 2023 batch.🧵 Image Worth highlighting here is the good pace maintained to go from approval to FCD (First Concrete Date).

These projects aren't just being approved and then languishing in pre-construction for ages...

Within 12-18 months of approval, they're pouring safety concrete...(!)
Aug 18 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
All this happened in the last 3 months for Chinese decarbonization policy.

Can't think of the last time I saw so many major documents released in such a short period time...feels like 2024 is turning out to be a major year for China's energy policy.

Quick summary thread: 🧵 1.
 July. Expedite the Development of the Carbon Dual Controls System Work Plan

This State Council document instructs carbon intensity targets to be integrated into economic planning for the 15th FYP, and for carbon intensity reduction to be used as a national & provincial KPI.Image