Focus on Arts and Ecology

Winter might look like rest time, but trees can still dry out—here’s how to water smart during cold, dry spells so they come back strong in spring. 

Guest post by John Lang of Friendly Tree, January 7, 2019

Although trees remain dormant during the winter, they are not immune to cold and dry conditions.

Trees experience the stress of harsh winter weather – though they might not show it – and it’s usually a lack of water that does the most damage. Heading into the winter with dry roots can mean major trouble for trees in the spring.

Though it may be gray and wintry outside, your trees still need you. Long, dry periods without supplemental water can damage root systems and kill your trees. Although they may look normal in the spring, trees that have been weakened over the winter will usually die back later in the summer.

Follow these tips to help the trees on your property survive the winter and remain healthy all year long.

Watering During the Winter 

Keep watering trees on a regular schedule through the fall and until the ground begins to freeze (usually late October or November). Once the ground freezes, continue to monitor weather conditions throughout the winter months. 

When to Water 

Water acts like an insulator, both to a tree and the soil. Soil that stays moist will be warmer; likewise plant cells that are plump with water will be less susceptible to damage from the cold. 

Trees which are dormant don’t need to be watered as frequently as during the growing season. When there is little to no snow cover and little precipitation, plan on watering your trees one to two times per month until they begin leafing out in the spring. If the site is particularly windy, your trees may need more water. Once the ground thaws in the spring, you can resume your regular watering schedule.

Water only when the temperature is above 40 degrees F and there is no snow or ice on the ground near your trees. Water early in the day, so the plants have time to absorb it before the temperature drops at night.

Trees like their water slow and deep. Newly planted trees will require more frequent watering. You can check soil moisture by using a garden trowel and inserting it into the ground to a depth of 2", and then move the blade of the trowel back and forth to create a small narrow trench. Then use your finger to touch the soil. If it is moist to the touch, then they do not need water.

Be careful to apply water all the way out to the edge of the tree’s root spread. Most established trees have a root spread equal to their height. Water deeply with a soaker hose, if possible, and avoid spraying on foliage if watering an evergreen tree.

Mulch

Mulch is one of the best things you can do for your trees heading into the winter. Adding a layer of organic mulch in the fall protects the soil from moisture loss and helps regulate soil temperature throughout the winter.  

Planting sites which are more exposed to freezing and thawing are prone to cracks in the soil, which can dry out a tree’s roots. Mulch acts as a blanket and can prevent this kind of damage.

Watering Young Trees

Young or newly planted trees are much more susceptible to drought injury during the winter months. Make sure they are well watered through the summer and fall up until the ground freezes, and water every couple of weeks during the winter when there is no snow cover.

Evergreens

Evergreen trees lose water through their needles in the dry winter air, so they need more stored-up water going into the winter season to make up for it. Cold, dry winds can actually strip water from Evergreens faster than their roots can absorb it. That’s why it’s especially important to provide a sufficient water supply in the fall, and water during dry spells during the winter.

While it may seem counterintuitive to get out the hose when everything around you is brown and gray, it’s critical to keep your trees alive and healthy. Don’t ignore your trees this winter. Keep watering them and see how they thank you with a beautiful show in the spring.

About the Author:

John Lang is a Certified Arborist and a member of the Friendly Tree team, a family-owned New Jersey tree care service, dedicated to the thoughtful and careful maintenance of your trees and shrubs. Friendly Tree Service has been in business for 26 years and remains passionate about trees and nature. With a highly trained staff that treats every property as their own and state of the art equipment, Friendly Tree is on the cutting edge of the art and science of Arboriculture.

(Sources: Arbor Day Foundation)

Rising temperatures are already impacting millions of city dwellers. What is happening and what might be done about it? 

By Joe Coroneo-Seaman, February 4, 2026

Every year, around half a million people die from heat-related causes and the health of millions more suffers from heatwaves exacerbated by global warming.

Cities are particularly at risk, as temperatures in urban areas are regularly higher than in the surrounding countryside. This heat does not hit all city dwellers equally though, with some especially vulnerable due to age, poverty and pre-existing health conditions.

Research looking at 38 cities, published last year, suggests that in half of them it could take less than a decade for the cumulative number of heat deaths to exceed annual deaths from Covid-19 during the pandemic.

“We know what is driving it: fossil-fuel-charged, human-induced climate change. And we know it’s going to get worse,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2024. “Extreme heat is the new abnormal.”

This is what we know about urban heat, how bad it might get, and what can be done.

Cities are getting hotter

One way to measure dangerous heat is the number of days per year when the temperature exceeds 35C. Above this threshold, health impacts manifest with worrying frequency.

In the last three decades, the average number of days above 35C in 43 major global cities has risen 26%, with 1,612 such days occurring in 2024.

This number is likely to increase. Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that, at 1.5C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, South Asian cities will experience on average 95 of these very hot days every year. If warming reaches 3C this number will likely increase to 134.

Recorded outdoor air temperatures only tell part of the story.

“With the way we build now, indoor temperatures are much higher,” explains Kurt Shickman, a senior fellow at the Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, part of the World Resources Institute. “People may be experiencing a 32-degree day outside, but they’re living and working and playing and learning in spaces that are far hotter than that.”

Billions will be exposed to extreme heat

Complicating matters is the fact that many cities are growing. The UN predicts that two-thirds of humanity will live in urban areas by 2050. That amounts to 2.5 billion more city dwellers globally, 90% of them in Africa and Asia.

This growth will increase the “urban heat island” effect which makes cities hotter than the countryside that surrounds them due to waste heat from energy use, lack of vegetation and more heat-absorbing surfaces like concrete. A 2019 study found that by 2050, urban expansion could result in average summer daytime and nighttime warming of 0.5C to 0.7C, and up to 3C in some cities. Depending on the location, this extra warming is about half, and sometimes two times, as strong as that predicted to be caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Even in optimistic future climate scenarios, between 2070 and 2100 more than 3.5 billion people living in cities will be subject to at least one two-week-long heatwave with a daily average temperature of over 42C on the “heat index”. That is, how hot it feels to the human body when both air temperature and humidity are considered.

In the worst-case scenario, this could rise to 5 billion by that same period, with Bangladesh, China, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan most affected. In comparison, over the 1950-2009 period, around 1.2 billion urban dwellers are likely to have experienced this level of heat.

Heatwaves will last longer

As well as more heat, city dwellers are also likely to experience heat for longer.

Recent modelling work by the World Resources Institute looking at 996 of the world’s largest cities found their longest heatwave each year could last for an average of 16 days in a 1.5C-warmer world. That jumps to 24 days with 3C of warming.

The researchers behind this study defined a heatwave as three or more consecutive days where temperatures reach or exceed the top 10% of daily high temperatures, determined by data collected over the 40-year period from 1980.

The lengthening effect varies massively by region, with cities in the Middle East and North Africa potentially facing 36-day longest heatwaves in a 3C world, nearly two weeks longer than they are likely to suffer at 1.5C.

More people will die

At a certain point, the human body starts to buckle under extreme heat. The heart and kidneys have to work extra hard to keep your body cool, and they have limits.

Even if temperatures don’t reach life-threatening highs, going for extended periods without cooling down can put cumulative stress on the body.

Most heatwave deaths are indirect. People typically fall to existing illnesses like heart, lung or kidney disease, made worse by the hot weather.

Human-caused climate change is increasing the risks. A recent analysis of 854 European cities found climate change was responsible for two-thirds of heat deaths last summer, totalling nearly 16,500 people. Put another way, three times more people lost their lives than would have done without climate change.

Modelling looking at the same cities by scientists at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the expected future rise of heat deaths substantially outnumbers any potential drop in cold deaths from a warmer climate.

Cooling demand will soar

In a world of long, blistering hot summers, demand for ways to keep buildings cool will rocket.

In its recent work looking at the world’s largest cities, the World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates that at 3C of warming, 194 million people could need twice their historical cooling demand. This is quantified using “cooling degree days”, which measures the difference, in degrees celsius, between the daily average and a comfortable temperature. For example, if comfortable is set at 21C, as it was in the WRI study, then a 24C day gives you 3 cooling degree days (1 day x 3 degrees).

The overall additional demand would be greatest in India, whose 189 largest cities combined would have 58,873 more cooling degree days per year.

Improving access to air conditioning will help, but it may not be a feasible or equitable solution in the short term.

As Shickman points out, air conditioners need electricity, and extreme heat often arrives at the same time as other disasters. “After a hurricane or tornado, you may not have the power to run your AC.” The cost of that electricity can also be a barrier to access, leading to what some researchers call “cooling poverty”.

Plus, to build the air conditioning infrastructure at the scale needed will take years, whereas urban heat is an immediate health threat.

“Passive cooling has to be our primary line of approach for every building,” he asserts. “There are some [solutions] that can be applied just about everywhere: albedo modification. That is, cool roofs, changing the colour of roofs, walls, pavements, and shade. Those are really applicable in any context, irrespective of climate and water availability.”

“It’s like a buffet or a smorgasbord. The stuff in the trays is the same for every city, it’s what you put on your plate that’s going to be a little different.”

More city trees are needed

Reintroducing trees and vegetation is one way to cool cities down. Trees naturally lower the air temperature nearby by providing shade and through evapotranspiration, their version of sweating. They can reduce air temperatures around them by up to 8C.

The effect is especially pronounced in tropical, arid and continental climates. Research published in 2024 looked at the cooling effects of urban trees in 110 cities around the globe. In 83% of those with comparable data, the air cooling achieved by planting trees was enough to lower the average temperature during the hottest month to below 26C.

But according to the 2025 Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change, at a global level the density of vegetation in cities has remained largely unchanged in the last decade, growing by just 0.2% on average since 2015.

All these numbers paint a sobering picture of a sweltering future.

Yet, Shickman offers a note of guarded optimism. Life-saving measures such as cool roofs and tree planting “are city transformations that we can make, all with available materials and technologies today”.

“We are not talking about something we need to innovate out of. We know what to do. We have the tools. They are available in large parts of the world,” he reflects. “It’s a matter of doing it.”

Unless otherwise indicated, all the graphs and associated data included in this article have been reproduced with permission from the owners, allowing republishing under Creative Commons.

Snowfall in the mountain range has become erratic and unreliable, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions. 

By Shalinee Kumari, January 30, 2026

Over the first few weeks of 2026, intense snowstorms and freezing rain in the northern hemisphere caused major disruptions in power and transport across North America and Europe, resulting in over 60 deaths in the US alone. Yet in the southern part of the world, high-elevation areas such as the Himalayas have been experiencing “snow droughts”. Through December 2025 and much of January, parts of the mountain range were snowless, with no sign of a real winter in sight.

“The same pattern appears [with]in Asia: Kamchatka [in Russia] and Japan have received record snowfall, while the Tibetan Plateau has received much less,” Judah Cohen, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Dialogue Earth.

The warming of the earth has led to snow decreasing overall, but cold events may remain severe in some locations due to factors like disruptions to Arctic air regions, wrote Cohen and climate scientist Mathew Barlow. But in the Himalayas, this has not been the case recently.

Changes in large-scale wind and precipitation patterns have made the weather systems that bring winter rain and snow to the region increasingly erratic, disrupting their timing and reliability, and leading to lower than normal snowfall, said Sher Muhammad, the cryosphere monitoring lead at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Snowfall is also starting later in the winter season, with a shift to higher elevations, Muhammad told Dialogue Earth.

These changes in precipitation impact the glaciers on the Himalayas, and for the millions of people living downstream, the erratic snowfall could have severe impacts on their safety, water security and livelihoods, experts told Dialogue Earth.

Snow is changing

Experts Dialogue Earth spoke to have attributed the lower snowfall in the Himalayas to its weather systems becoming more unpredictable.

The main source of winter precipitation in the Himalayas are western disturbances – storms originating in the Mediterranean region that bring moisture eastwards to the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent.

This weather system has brought snowfall to the western Himalayas this week, which include the northern Indian areas of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. But these have been erratic, short and heavy snowfall bursts which “may not fully compensate” for the snow deficit seen earlier this year at the catchment area of rivers fed by Himalayan snow, Muhammad said.

At the start of winter in December, large swathes of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, in the western Himalayas, had been facing long dry spells with below-normal rain and snowfall.

Data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that winter precipitation in December 2025 was 99-100% below normal in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, 78% below normal in Jammu & Kashmir, and 63% below normal in Ladakh. In the Hindu Kush Himalayas, where winter precipitation is mainly in the form of snow, such deficits reflect an exceptionally weak snowfall season.

Precipitation in these areas and the rest of north-west India between January and March this year is also expected to be below normal. The IMD has forecast that the region will receive less than 86% of precipitation of the long-term averages of that period taken between 1971-2020.

However, it is not just the total amount of snowfall that matters, Muhammad noted, but its timing, elevation and persistence, or the duration snow stays on the ground without melting.

Over the past two decades, snow droughts, or periods of atypically low snow accumulation, have been increasing with concerning frequency in the Himalayas, according to the journal Nature. Last year was the third consecutive year of below-normal snow persistence, hitting a record low of 23.6% below normal, according to a report published by ICIMOD. Between 2003 and 2025, the region experienced 13 below-normal snow years, it noted.

Muhammad said that the western disturbance weather system’s behaviour is complex and has become increasingly difficult to predict with time. “There is no consistent long-term trend in their frequency,” he said. In the last few years, western disturbances have been facing delayed onset in some winters, and a shift towards short-duration, high-intensity events, he added.

“The region now swings rapidly between snow drought conditions and episodic heavy snowfall, leaving overall winter snow accumulation below normal,” Muhammad noted. There have also been longer breaks between western disturbances, which explains the dry conditions observed earlier this winter, he added.

Additionally, studies have acknowledged a lack of scientific consensus on how the weather system is impacted by climate change.

All of this is cause for concern, said Muhammad. “Variability is often more damaging than a steady shift, and it is much harder to manage unpredictable snow.” But he noted that the later snowfall, as well as the decreased snowfall in the Himalayan valley floor, is linked to climate change.

Less snow means less water

During warm winters, like the current season, storms that would have produced snow at mid-elevations of between 1,500-3,000 metres above sea level often create rain or mixed precipitation instead, Muhammad noted. Tourist hotspots such as Shimla, Manali, Mussoorie, and Nainital sit at this height. But areas with high elevations, such as Ladakh, still receive snow.

These changes in precipitation – of reduced and inconsistent snowfall –  can lead to increased rain-on-snow events, Muhammad said. Such events often lead to the quick melting of snow, causing rapid flooding.

As rain-on-snow events increase, this reduces the natural reservoir function of seasonal snow and accelerates snowmelt, Muhammad said. Accelerated snowmelt is known to trigger hazards such as avalanches, landslides and downstream flood peaks

The precipitation changes are also expected to result in uncertainty on the availability and timing of meltwater in spring and early summer. The water stored as snow is crucial during these dry seasons in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, and water shortage could become an imminent issue for many sectors, including hydropower and irrigation, the BBC noted. This could have implications for the two billion people across Asia who depend on it for their livelihoods and survival.

For instance, farmers in northern Indian states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, who rely on winter snowmelt to irrigate crops before the monsoons, could be seriously affected. Untimely snowfall, or a lack thereof, can cause premature bud breaking, early flowering and infections in crops such as apples. In recent years, this has resulted in reduced yield and significantly affected farmers’ incomes.

In India, the water shortage issue is worsened by the sustained reduction in snowfall over the last two decades, said Manish Mehta, a scientist specialising in glaciology at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology. This reduction has been causing the annual snowline – above which snow is found on the ground year-round – to shift to higher elevations.

The shift has led to lower overall snow cover and earlier melting of the snow covering glacial surfaces, leading to premature melting of glacier ice by exposing more of its surface to warmer air and sunlight sooner in the year.

“Glaciers are melting even before the monsoon season begins, causing glacial retreat and a decrease in glacier mass and volume,” Mehta told Dialogue Earth.

In the early monsoon, river flows depend on the snowmelt, while during the peak of monsoon season, they depend on monsoon rains, Mehta explained. But during peak and late winter, the river flows depend on ice melt. Faster melting of glaciers will therefore affect the region’s long-term water security. Though impacts will not be seen immediately, “its effects will be visible in the long run, such as drying up of some rivers, drying up of waterfalls [and] reduced water flow [in the Hindu Kush Himalaya] due to melting of ice during the dry season”, he said.

Improving water management

To better manage water in the Himalayan region, Muhammad says there is a need to combine satellite data with more on-ground snow measurements across elevations to arrive at an estimate of how much water will be available when snow melts. Operational snow and runoff forecasts should also be used to plan reservoirs and irrigation channels.

There has been some progress in developing existing systems that capture erratic winter patterns, he said, such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer (Modis) and national meteorological and hydrological services. But it hasn’t been enough to cover the gaps, he added, explaining that many mountain areas have few high-altitude observations.

While datasets from remote sensing satellites help, obstacles remain on the operational front, he noted. These include clouds, complex terrain, and the absence of short-term forecasts to issue early warnings for floods, avalanches and glacial lake outburst floods.

Regionally, standardised methods and data exchange across transboundary basins are essential, because these water risks do not stop at national borders, Muhammad added. “It is extremely important to strengthen monitoring, forecasting, science-based decisions and preparedness.”

With clean energy projects no longer needing to be bundled with energy storage, companies are finding new opportunities at home and abroad. 

By Niu Yuhan, February 4, 2026

In February 2025, China shelved a requirement that new domestic wind and solar projects be bundled with energy storage. The change meant that China’s storage providers could no longer rely on these renewable projects for guaranteed demand. Instead, they now had to compete on the open market.

And yet, despite this, growth in energy storage has remained stable. Battery and battery-energy-storage system exports have hit new highs, seeing a year-on-year growth of 24% for the first three quarters of 2025, according to Reuters. The industry is adapting to the domestic market and looking to expand internationally.

But a year after the mandate ended, key questions remain. How can the industry find a stable profit model? And can exports continue to grow in the face of trade barriers and geopolitical headwinds?

The rise and fall of the energy storage mandate

The central premise of the mandate was simple. Wind and solar generation varies with the time of day and is contingent on the weather. Energy storage is a way to overcome those issues of intermittency. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) is the most used method to achieve this, but “new energy storage systems” have emerged rapidly. These alternative systems include: lithium-ion batteries, where energy is stored in solid electrodes; flow batteries, where energy is stored in liquid electrolytes; and compressed air and mechanical systems.

In 2017, Qinghai became the first part of China to put in place the requirement for new energy storage systems, providing a model to be followed. Three years later, the central government issued various policies to support the industry. Provinces moved from encouraging wind and solar projects to be built with energy storage to requiring it, codifying rules for the size and nature of systems to be installed.

These moves sparked exponential growth. Nearly 44 gigawatts of new energy-storage system capacity was installed in 2024, reported the China Energy Storage Alliance. As such, the installed capacity of new systems overtook PSH for the first time, the alliance added.

But there were also challenges, the first of which was energy dispatch.

Data from the China Electricity Council shows that in 2022, new energy storage systems delivered just 6.1% of their potential maximum output. By June 2024, those systems were operating for an average of only 3.74 hours a day.

Wang Zesen, senior engineer at the State Grid Jibei Electric Power Company, identifies two reasons for those low utilisation rates: some areas with good wind and solar resources lack grid connections to transport the power generated; and some systems are too small or inflexible to meet changing demand.

Further, the mandate led to worries over the quality of systems being installed. According to a report in China Energy News, project owners saw storage systems as an expense rather than a source of income. They therefore preferred to keep costs down by buying low-quality batteries, giving rise to safety risks.

Collectively, these concerns led to a change of policy in February 2025, when the mandate was retired. A September 2025 national action plan, however, has set the 2027 target for new energy storage system capacity at 180 gigawatts – about twice the current amount.

Dialogue Earth consulted Li Chenfei, who manages research at the China Energy Storage Alliance, a non-profit organisation in Beijing. Li says the removal of the mandate had two effects: “First, wind and solar projects in certain provinces could secure favourable, fixed-rate tariffs under existing policies if they were connected to the grid before 31 May, encouraging many to accelerate their construction schedules. These projects are still required to be paired with energy storage systems, triggering a rush in installations and a surge in capacity in the first half of the year. Second, it shifts the industry from being policy-led to market-led, meaning firms need to improve technology and operations to compete.”

In the first quarter of 2025, installations of new energy storage systems fell for the first time, only to recover quickly. Data from the National Energy Administration shows that by the end of September 2025, China had 100 gigawatts of new energy storage systems installed. That was 30 times the 2020 figure, and over 40% of the world’s total capacity. “This shows that real demand for new energy storage systems remains stable, and short-term fluctuations aren’t changing the long-term growth trend,” says Yao Yi, a senior climate and energy project manager at Greenpeace.

Making money on the market

The value of energy storage may be clear. The harder question now is how it makes money.

Currently, energy storage facilities can generate revenue in three ways. First is energy arbitrage: storing power when it is cheap and plentiful, then selling it back at higher prices when demand rises. Second is the provision of ancillary services to keep the grid stable.

Third are “capacity payments”, earned by remaining on standby as a back-up source of power.

Last April, the government said electricity spot markets should cover all of China by the end of 2025. In theory, this would allow operators to buy cheap power and sell it later at profit. In practice, however, there were smaller gaps in electricity prices during 2025 in areas with a high proportion of renewables.

Li Chenfei explains: “Under traditional models of operation, energy storage firms use capacity leasing and regular charging and discharging arrangements to make a profit … However, energy-trading markets mean they must be more precise, deciding when to buy and sell power and how to optimise trades on spot and ancillary service markets.”

Pilot projects in places like Guangdong, Fujian and Shandong have been allowing energy storage firms to trade on spot markets and provide ancillary services for years now. But many projects still struggle to turn a profit – gaps between high and low electricity prices remain too small, and the additional electricity needed to provide ancillary services costs too much. In Guangdong, for example, six independent energy storage firms trading in the spot and ancillary services markets incurred losses of CNY 21.38 million (about USD 3 million) in 2024.

But simultaneously, the expansion of renewable capacity is driving up demand for ancillary services. As of the end of 2025, over 20 provinces had set rules for subsidies. Giving frequency regulation as an example, Li says China still lags behind more mature overseas markets in the range and granularity of services offered. But he says based on current trends, the ancillary services market is set to expand, with more specialised offerings including frequency regulation, back-up capacity, ramping and inertia. “These new service types will mean larger and more stable sources of income for energy storage,” he adds.

Some provinces are also exploring capacity payments, whereby storage companies can earn a fixed fee for “effective capacity”. Li says: “During this transitional phase, making payments based on capacity can stimulate the construction of storage. But in the long term, effective capacity better reflects the contribution made to grid security, and is easier to link up to capacity payments made for other flexible resources like thermal power and pumped hydropower.”

Yao Yi argues pricing is not the only challenge – technology and oversight also need attention. Many provinces have put capacity-payment policies in place, but there is no single standard yet for defining “effective capacity” or service hours. “If there are varying standards, it’s hard to make regional comparisons and it will complicate any future cross-provincial and cross-regional electricity trading,” she says.

Overall, energy storage firms are likely to rely on three main sources of income: short-term price arbitrage on spot markets; fees for providing stabilising ancillary services; and revenue from capacity payments. As Yao puts it, policy, markets and technology must work together.

Exports: Opportunities and challenges that coexist

Even as the domestic energy storage market steadily grows, the expansion of renewable capacity overseas is driving surging demand. Chinese energy storage firms are well placed to meet this. Such firms signed 308 deals to export equipment overseas in the first nine months of 2025, according to figures from the China Chemical and Physical Power Sources Industry Association. This represented 210 gigawatts of capacity, twice as much as the previous year. Most of that growth came from Europe, Australia and the Middle East.

In 2024, the European Union and US together accounted for 73% of China’s lithium-storage exports. However, high tariffs have caused demand from the US to shrink. Yao says: “Pressure from policies such as the EU Battery Regulation may also see Europe come to rely less on supplies from China. But there’s huge potential in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. For example, Vietnam has said it will invest huge amounts of money in renewable energy, and that means a new growth opportunity for Chinese firms.”

But the export rush also carries risks, as fierce competition pushes manufacturers into price wars. According to the People’s Daily, one-third of energy storage retailers are selling products below cost, with domestic price competition spilling into export markets. This is squeezing profitability.

Yao Yi says Chinese companies need to be wary of damaging the corporate ecosystem when competing on price overseas, to avoid making the mistakes seen in the solar sector. Emphasising product quality, operational and maintenance capacity and technical standards is key to ensuring sustainable growth and cultivating a competitive reputation, she says. “What we’ve seen in solar power warns us that excessively low prices will disrupt the market and harm the long-term interests of Chinese firms.”

Yao also argues that Chinese companies ought to be mindful of the risk of other countries becoming overly dependent on imports: “If markets are dependent on Chinese imports in the long term, the development of local manufacturing capacity will be restricted. Many countries have noticed this and are hoping to see deeper cooperation to build better locally.” Chinese companies could play a key role in this cooperation if they choose to.

With the mandate gone, China’s energy storage sector will be defined by how well it navigates markets, policy and global competition.