The energy transition of the Chinese national oil companies towards renewables: An opportunity or a bottleneck?

Abstract

Renewable energy is the fastest growing energy source. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is also the largest investor in renewable energy. Although it is expected that oil will continue to dominate the energy mix in China and in the world by 2040, a transition towards a renewable model in the energy sector is unfolding, which has also been acknowledged by international oil companies (IOCs). Then, how the Chinese national oil companies (NOCs) approach such a transition becomes important – to what extent their investment transform and what are the pressures and influences behind the transformation. This paper investigates the positions and decisions taken by the Chinese NOCs, through comparing the similarities and differences between these NOCs and IOCs. A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework that considers environmental governance through dynamics at material, organisational, and discursive levels is used to examine the Chinese NOCs’ energy transition. We find that the Chinese NOCs’ energy transition is determined by: materially, economic profits; organisationally, the administrative environmental governance structure that copes with the market competition against IOCs and other state-owned companies; and discursively, the political concept of ecological civilisation.

Keywords:

• Chinese oil companies
• renewable energy
• energy transition
• China
• neo-Gramscian theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term refers to the seven transnational oil companies of the ‘Consortium for Iran’ oligopoly or cartel, which dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s.

2 It is a process named by Schumpeter (1942). It means that when new innovation emerges in the market, it excludes existing institutions, technologies, products and practices.