The long-term view on China’s energy transition – Charles Sunnucks

Charles Sunnucks, the former fund manager of the Jupiter Emerging & Frontier Income Trust and the author of The Company Valuation Playbook: Invest with Confidence, speaks with Energy.Media about a wide range of topics, including fund management, investment in emerging markets, and living in China. Charles says he expects China to make a great deal of progress on the energy transition front over the next few decades and talks about some of the policy issues that may have to be sorted out in the process.

In this episode, Sunnucks identifies several interesting developments in the Chinese energy sector:

• The country has invested a significant amount in wind power projects in the northern and western parts of the country. However, it will also have to invest in transmission capacity, since most of the demand for the additional electricity production is concentrated in eastern regions along the coast.
• Investment in infrastructure may be easier to obtain after electricity transmission is fully unbundled from generation and distribution facilities, as is being done with natural gas pipelines.
• Chinese authorities have expressed some interest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, so there may be opportunities for outside companies to set up joint ventures with Chinese companies on this front.