China Environmental Law

We have previously discussed the moves earlier this year to tinker with China’s energy administrative apparatus.  Despite earlier predictions that China would be creating a Ministry-level energy entity it hasn’t, and Ministry of Energy proponents found little encouragement in the draft of the new national Energy Law, released at the end of last year, which only refers generically to an “energy supervisory authority.” Instead, China has created a new National Energy Bureau and a National Energy Committee (read the previous post linked above for details).

China Daily reports (quoting Caijing magazine) that at a June 25 executive meeting of the State Council the National Energy Bureau (NEB)

has been given the go ahead to increase its work force to about 100 across its nine departments.

While the National People’s Congress (NPC) expanded the scope of the bureau in March, it remains part of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and energy pricing and conservation management are still under the jurisdiction of other departments.

The move quadruples the size of the NEB’s work force. Several measures designed to at least allow the NEB to symbolically assert some independence from the NDRC have also been publicized lately including moving several NEB offices out of the NDRC headquarters and giving the NEB its own party committee.

The truly independent energy entity established by the NPC, the National Energy Committee, which is to serve as a strategic consultative body, is not yet up and running to the best of my knowledge.