Ma Jun: Renewables Cheaper Than Coal in China
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- Ma Jun, founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, says there is 'no business interest for the coal sector to carry on' in China because renewables are 'getting cheaper and cheaper'
- The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) developed Blue Map, China's first public environmental database; 36,000 companies have come to its platform to disclose violations, and it now helps banks run due diligence on 3 million corporations for green finance
- Since 2014, China has required tens of thousands of the largest emitters to disclose air quality data hourly and water quality every two hours, a transparency push triggered by Beijing's 2011 'airpocalypse' smog crisis
- Ma describes China's new corporate climate disclosure regime as 'probably the largest scale of corporate measuring and disclosure now happening [anywhere in the world]'
- Hard-to-abate sectors like steel and cement face a 'green premium' problem — producers say consumers only want low-carbon products in 'tiny volumes for their sustainability reports'
- Ma argues environment and climate represent 'the biggest consensus view in China' and could serve as a 'test run for having more multi-stakeholder governance'
Why it matters: The economic case for new Chinese coal is collapsing on price, but Ma's own warning cuts the other way: producers of green steel, cement, and other heavy-industry products say buyers only want symbolic volumes for sustainability reports. That mismatch — cheap renewables versus an unwilling market for green heavy industry — is the bottleneck the COP30-era decarbonisation debate is now running into.
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