If you are in China and looking to ride a shared bike in the city, you might find something on the bike that looks a little different: a water-bottle-size hydrogen tank.

At least a dozen cities in China now have some kind of hydrogen-powered shared bikes for their residents. They offer an easier ride than traditional bikes and a safer energy source than lithium batteries. One Chinese company is betting that this will be the next big thing in public transportation, while others are riding on a national trend toward government policies that encourage the development of the hydrogen industry.

Yet the reception has been mixed. Riders have reported unsatisfactory experiences with current hydrogen bikes, and energy experts doubt whether it makes economic sense to replace e-bikes with hydrogen-powered ones. Even though hydrogen could be a great power source for long-distance transportation in the future, it may not be suitable for urban biking, a completely different task.

While there are companies in other countries that are working on hydrogen-powered bikes—and one French company already has a mature product—China stands out for putting these bikes to use as public transportation. Bike-sharing became hugely popular in the country during the 2010s tech boom. With support from deep-pocketed companies like Alibaba and Meituan, standardized, internet-connected shared bikes have filled urban streets since, sometimes resulting in incredible waste. 

Youon, a Chinese company with over 1 million bikes on the streets of over 300 cities, is one of the main players in the bike-sharing industry. Facing fierce domestic competition, the company has chosen to differentiate its brand by investing in hydrogen bikes since 2018, with four models now available to buy or rent.

A hydrogen bike is not very different in concept from an e-bike. The difference is in whether the energy is stored in a lithium-ion battery or a hydrogen tank.

Each of Youon’s hydrogen bikes stores 20 grams of hydrogen in the form of metal powders, which can absorb and release the gas in a tank at low pressures (less than 10 bar). When the rider starts pedaling, the hydrogen is fed to a fuel cell under the seat, where a chemical reaction takes place to produce electricity. At its peak, a hydrogen bike can go as fast as 23 kilometers (14 miles) per hour. One tank of hydrogen lasts 40 to 60 kilometers (25 to 37 miles), and replacing the tank takes a few seconds.

Why hydrogen?

E-bikes have existed in China for a long time. According to the official figures, there are around 350 million in China today, and they are commonly used by everyday commuters and professional delivery workers. 

However, many of China’s largest cities have shied away from commissioning e-bikes as part of the public transportation network or even banned them, because lithium batteries pose a fire risk. In 2023, Chinese fire departments received a total of 21,000 reports of e-bikes catching fire, a 17.4% increase from the previous year. 

That created a supply vacuum for Youon. It’s positioned itself as a safer alternative thanks to its use of hydrogen. The hydrogen is stored in a low-pressure state, and if there’s any leak, it will dissipate quickly without causing an explosion, the company says on its website.

It’s a strategy that’s worked: These bikes have been more readily accepted by local governments. In 2022, Youon sold 2,000 of its hydrogen bikes to Lingang, a new high-tech district in Shanghai; in 2023, the company sold 500 hydrogen bikes to the Daxing district of Beijing. Today, its hydrogen bikes can be found in over six Chinese cities. 

Youon has since doubled down on its investment in hydrogen. The company has launched a product that lets users generate hydrogen at home with solar power and water. It also worked with the local government of Jiangsu, where its headquarters are, to publish a set of industry standards covering safety requirements, hydrogen tanks, and more. “Hydrogen energy is also an essential pathway to achieving carbon neutrality,” said Sun Jisheng, the CEO of Youon, at an industry conference in June.

The problem

However, that’s about where the advantage of hydrogen bikes ends.

David Fishman, a China-based senior manager of the Lantau Group, an energy consultancy, says he struggles to see the advantage. “Maybe the safety angle is a relevant factor for someone who doesn’t like carrying around lithium-ion batteries and storing them in their house,” he says. Other than that, hydrogen bikes are less energy-efficient than battery-powered bikes, and it costs more to produce hydrogen in the first place.

The main advantage of hydrogen as an energy source is that it has much higher energy density, meaning a hydrogen tank with the same weight as a lithium battery would produce more energy and power the vehicles to go farther. However, that advantage only kicks in for trips over 800 kilometers, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

That means hydrogen is a more economical choice for long-distance transportation like ships, planes, and trucks. Bikes, however, are almost on the exact opposite end of the transportation spectrum. Few people would bike for long distances, let alone those who are only renting a public bike for a short time. For anything shorter than 800 km, battery-powered vehicles are more energy efficient, says Jacobson. He estimates that a battery-powered bike consumes only 40% of the energy of a hydrogen-powered equivalent and also takes up less space.

On top of that, the company’s hydrogen bikes have failed to impress many of the early adopters. 

Gu, a resident of Lingang who only wishes to use his last name for this story, tells MIT Technology Review that he tried the bikes several times and they never felt effort-saving to him. Instead, the bike, along with the hydrogen tank and fuel-cell-powered motors, felt heavy and hard to maneuver. As a user, he has no idea whether the bike was running as expected or if the difficulty he encountered was due to its running out of hydrogen, although the company is supposed to block any bike with low hydrogen reserves from being unlocked.

Another common complaint is the inconvenience of finding and returning the bikes because there are only a limited number in the city and they have to be returned to specific locations for easy retrieval or tank replenishment. 

“The bike has to be returned to a designated spot. But even if I put the bike at that very location, there’s GPS drifting, and I’d be charged a very high fee for them to move the bike,” Gu says.

On social media, hydrogen-bike users have complained a lot about similar experiences. Youon has found itself caught up in headlines at least a couple of times recently, with stories where users question whether their bikes are really useful for their daily commutes. 

Youon didn’t respond to questions sent by MIT Technology Review.

The future of hydrogen bikes

Despite all these issues, there are at least half a dozen more companies in China working to launch hydrogen-powered shared bikes. These are often startups operating small-scale pilot projects in cities that have sizable hydrogen industries, like Foshan or Xiaoyi. 

Many of these cities have even bigger plans—they are vying to become the hub of the hydrogen economy in China, which is increasingly betting on it as the future of clean energy. 

This year, for the first time, hydrogen energy was mentioned in an annual official report from Beijing, which summarizes government work. The Chinese government said it vows to “accelerate the development of hydrogen energy … after enforcing the lead in smart, connected new energy vehicles.” The mention injected a boost of confidence into the hydrogen industry in China, which already produces more hydrogen every year than any other country.

Not all of this is good news for the environment. About 80% of hydrogen produced in China actually comes from burning coal or natural gas, and some of the fiercest government support for hydrogen comes from coal-mining cities looking to transition. While the country is moving in the direction of green hydrogen (hydrogen generated with renewable energy and water), the fuel will remain polluting for a long time.

When a technology is still in the early stages, finding the best use case for it is key. There are plenty of companies in China working on developing hydrogen-powered trucks and other long-distance forms of transportation, but considering the size of the bike-sharing market in the country, it’s no surprise that turning their attention to bikes seems like a profitable idea to some. 

However, if there’s no way to dramatically improve the performance or economics of hydrogen bikes, it’s hard to imagine the current batch of experiments lasting for long. As companies move from piloting their new products to seeking adoption and profits, they will have some serious questions to answer.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Talking about money can be difficult, but it’s a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to climate tech. 

I’ve been thinking more about the financial piece of climate innovation since my colleague James Temple sat down for a chat with Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of Meta and a current climate tech investor. They talked about Schroepfer’s philanthropic work as well as his climate-tech venture firm, Gigascale Capital. (I’d highly recommend reading the full Q&A here.) 

In their conversation, Schroepfer spoke about investing in companies not solely because of their climate promises, but because they can deliver a cheaper, better product that happens to have benefits for climate action too. 

This all got me thinking about what we can expect from new technologies financially. What do they need to do to compete, and how quickly can they do so? 

Look through the portfolio of a climate-focused venture capital firm or walk around a climate-tech conference, and you’ll be struck by the creativity and straight-up brilliance of some of the proposed technologies.

But in order to survive, they need a lot more than a good idea, as my colleague David Rotman pointed out in a story from December outlining six takeaways from this century’s first boom in climate tech. Countless companies rose to stardom with shiny new ideas starting around 2006 before crashing and failing by 2013.

As David put it, there are lessons in that rise and fall for today’s boom in climate technology: “The brilliance of many new climate technologies is evident, and we desperately need them. But none of that will ensure success. Venture-backed startups will need to survive on the basis of economics and financial advantages, not good intentions.”

Often, companies looking to help address climate change with new products are competing with an established industry. These newcomers must contend with what Bill Gates has called the “green premium.”

The green premium is the cost difference between a cheaper product that increases pollution and a more expensive alternative that offers climate benefits. In order to get people on board with new technologies, we need to close that gap. 

As Gates has outlined in his writings on this topic, there are basically two ways to do this: We need to find ways to either increase the cost of polluting products or cut the cost of the version that causes little to no climate pollution.

Some policies aim to go after the first of these options—the European Union has put a price on carbon, raising the cost of fossil-fuel-based products, for example. But relying on policy can leave companies at the whims of political winds in markets like the US. 

So that leaves the other option: New technology needs to get cheaper. 

As Schroepfer explained in his chat with James, one of the focuses at his venture firm, Gigascale Capital, is picking companies that can compete on economics or offer other benefits to customers. As he put it, a company should basically be saying: “Hey, this is a better product. [whispers] By the way, it’s better for the environment.”

It’s unrealistic to expect companies to have better, cheaper products right out of the gate, Schroepfer acknowledges. But he says that the team is looking for companies that can—over the course of a relatively short, roughly five-to-10-year period—grow to compete on cost, or even gain a cost advantage over the alternatives.

Schroepfer points to batteries and solar power as examples of technologies that are competitive today. When it’s available, electricity produced with solar panels is the cheapest on the planet. Batteries are 90% less expensive than they were just 15 years ago.

But these cases reveal the tricky thing about the green premium: Many new technologies can eventually make up the gap, but it can take much longer than businesses and investors are willing to wait. Solar panels and lithium-ion batteries were available commercially in the 1990s, but it’s taken until now to get to the point where they’re cheap and widespread.

Some technologies just getting started today could be the batteries and solar power of the 2040s, if we’re willing to invest the time and money to get them there. And I already see a few instances where people are willing to pay more for climate-friendly products today, in part because of hopes for their future.  

One example that comes to mind is low-emissions steel. H2 Green Steel, a Swedish company working to make steel without fossil fuels, says it has customers who have agreed to pay 20% to 30% more for its products than metal made with fossil fuels. But that’s just the price today: Some reports predict that these technologies will be able to compete on cost by 2040 or 2050. 

Most new technologies designed to address climate change will need to make a case for themselves in the market. The question for the rest of us: How much support and time are we willing to put in to give them the best shot of getting there?

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Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

For more on what the former Meta CTO has been up to in climate, read the full Q&A here. There’s a whole lot more to unpack, including work on glacier stabilization, ocean-based carbon removal, and even solar geoengineering. 

For more on the lessons that companies can take away from the first cleantech boom, give this story from my colleague David Rotman a read.

Another thing

The US Department of Energy is putting $33 million into nine concentrating solar projects, as my colleague James Temple reported exclusively last week. 

Concentrating solar power uses mirrors to direct sunlight, which heats up some target material. It’s not a new technology, and the DOE has been funding efforts to get it going since the 1970s. But it could be useful in industries from food and beverages to low-carbon fuels. Read the full story here. 

Keeping up with climate  

Western battery startups could be in big trouble. While new chemistries and alternative architectures attracted a lot of investor attention a few years ago, the companies are now facing the reality of competing with massive existing manufacturers. (The Information)

California’s largest wildfire of the year has burned well over 300,000 acres so far. Climate change has helped create the conditions that supercharge blazes. (Inside Climate News)

The UAE has been trying to juice up rainfall with high-tech cloud seeding operations. But the whole thing may be more about the show than the science—check out this great deep dive for more. (Wired)

Congestion pricing plans—like the one recently proposed and then abandoned in New York City—can be unpopular with voters. Yet people generally come around once they start to see the benefits. Here’s an in-depth look at how attitudes toward these plans change over time. (Grist)

Air New Zealand backed down from a goal to cut its emissions nearly 30% by the end of the decade. The first major airline to walk back such a promise, the company points to a lack of supply for alternative fuels, as well as delays in new aircraft deliveries. (BBC)

Global methane emissions are climbing at the quickest pace in decades. The powerful greenhouse gas is responsible for over half the warming we’ve experienced so far. (The Guardian) 

Demand for air conditioning is swelling in Africa. But the industry isn’t well regulated, and some residents are struggling to get reliable systems and keep harmful refrigerant gases from leaking. (Associated Press)

Southeast Asia is home to a fleet of relatively new coal power plants. Pulling these facilities off the grid early could be a major step to cutting emissions from global electricity production. (Cipher News)

Correction: an earlier version of this story misstated the name of Mike Schroepfer’s firm. It is Gigascale Capital.

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

This week, we are taking a short break from China and turning to its neighbor South Korea instead. As K-pop sweeps the world and accumulates a massive, devout fan base, these fans have been turning their power into action. Today, I published a story about Kpop4planet, a group of volunteers who are using K-pop’s influence to hold large corporations accountable for their carbon footprints.

One of the most interesting (and also successful) campaigns Kpop4planet has organized shines a light on the carbon footprint of music streaming. Aware that K-pop fans stream significantly more than average (sometimes over five hours a day!) to support their favorite artists, the group successfully campaigned to get Korea’s largest domestic streaming platform to pledge to use 100% renewable energy by 2030.

I have to admit, before working on this story, it didn’t really cross my mind that streaming music could be so polluting. Streaming an album more than 27 times uses more energy than it takes to produce a CD, according to researchers, but it’s surprisingly hard to draw a conclusive answer on whether streaming is more polluting than CDs or records overall. What we do know is that since the carbon emissions associated with streaming are produced in faraway data centers and through invisible data transmissions, the problem is harder to pin down.

During my reporting, I talked to several experts about how to correctly understand the climate impact of music streaming, and one thing became clear: It all comes down to how we stream—the content, the device, the length, etc. They also recommended a bunch of things that any music streaming user can do to leave a smaller carbon footprint.

So here are the things you can do if you are a heavy music streamer:

1. Use small devices instead of big TVs. 

A major part of streaming’s carbon footprint comes from the device that’s used to play the music or video. And some are much more power hungry than others. A 50-inch LED TV consumes 100 times more electricity than a smartphone when used for streaming, according to the International Energy Agency. It also consumes more electricity if the screen stays on, displaying videos or lyrics, rather than just playing the audio. So using a smartphone to stream cuts energy consumption to a minimum.

2. Wait longer to buy a new phone. 

Yes, smartphones are designed to be pretty energy-efficient to use, but manufacturing them is another story. “In the life-cycle analysis of a phone, 85% to 90% of its lifetime energy occurs in its production,” says Laura Marks, a professor in media art and philosophy at Simon Fraser University. The manufacturing process usually involves fossil fuels, plastics, and minerals that could pollute the environment.

“So if I were to make a couple of recommendations, one of them would be to keep your devices for as long as possible, because that’s a huge, huge component of streaming that’s often overlooked,” she says.

3. Return to digital downloads, and only use streaming in selected situations.

While few people still download music files today, experts have agreed that one of the most climate-friendly ways to listen to music is to keep a digital file of your favorite song and return to it repeatedly. 

We also need to change our mindset about treating streaming as the only way to listen to music, says Joe Steinhardt, an assistant professor in the music industry program at Drexel University. “The first and the easiest [suggestion] is to think about streaming music like Styrofoam plates or plastic forks. It doesn’t mean I never use those; it’s just that I don’t eat every meal off of them,” he says. If you are listening to a large variety of music, maybe streaming is the best choice; if you are listening to a few songs repeatedly, go for a digital download or even an old-fashioned CD.

4. Push for streaming platforms to do their part.

Climate action is not just about individual responsibility—it also means pushing corporations to do better. Just as Kpop4planet chased after Melon, Korea’s largest domestic music streaming service, you can also hold your favorite music streaming service accountable. 

A big part of that is figuring out where the platforms’ data centers are, as these can account for a third to a half of streaming’s carbon footprint, according to Marks. These gigantic facilities draw significant amounts of electricity. If they can switch to using renewable energy, that will be much more meaningful than any action one individual can take. It’s also important not to fall for empty promises, and to seek specific plans on where and how they plan to source renewable energy.

5. Cherish music and resist overconsumption.

Many experts mention the Jevons paradox, which states that increasing the efficiency with which a resource is used can lead to more total consumption. In the case of streaming, this means that even if the technology can become more energy-efficient on a per-song basis, the business model and the sheer convenience often encourage users to listen to more and more songs without considering the climate consequences.

To resist that mindset, Marks suggests, we should cherish listening to music more. “Instead of streaming all day, it could mean really enjoying the performance of a song—just listening to it a couple of times and then talking with your friends about it,” she says.

My conclusion? It’s never too late to become aware of the climate impact of music streaming and think about what we can do to make it even just a little greener. 

What’s your relationship with music streaming? Tell me more about it at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

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Now read the rest of China Report

Catch up with China

1. CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, is flush with cash. But China’s strict control of capital means it has to seek external investment to build up its supply chain outside the country. (Financial Times $)

2. China is asking the World Trade Organization to settle its dispute with the US about EV tariffs. (Reuters $)

3. US-China trade conflicts are spreading to the mattress market, where US retailers say the domestic market is being flooded by Chinese products. (Wall Street Journal $)

4. A new movie in China used AI face-swapping technology to make Jackie Chan look decades younger. Critics hated it. (South China Morning Post $)

5. The failed assassination attempt at a Trump rally not only boosted support for the former president but also caused the price of a Chinese stock to soar—all because the name of the company sounds like “Trump Wins Big” in Chinese. (Bloomberg $)

6. China denies it’s building a naval base in Cambodia. Satellite images show that it is. (New York Times $)

7. Claw-machine arcades are cropping up in Hong Kong—but it’s a result of the failing retail market and low demand for commercial property. (Nikkei Asia $)

Lost in translation

Morowali, a remote, agricultural community in Indonesia, has been transformed into a hub for heavy industry by the entrance of a Chinese company, according to the Chinese magazine Sanlian Lifeweek. Tsingshan Holding Group, a Chinese steel and nickel company, was instrumental in investing in and setting up the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), where a rich local reserve of nickel ore is converted into high-purity nickel sulfate that’s essential for electric vehicle batteries. 

IMIP has created at least 100,000 jobs and contributed significantly to Indonesia’s economy, but it has also led to environmental and health challenges for local communities. Concerns about air and water pollution, garbage disposal, and worker safety have intensified following an explosion in 2023 that killed eight Chinese workers and 13 Indonesian workers. Now, local workers are organizing to sit down with management and push for changes in worker welfare.

One more thing

If you want a guaranteed sighting of a UFO, come to Shenzhen. Last week, a Chinese company tested an electric helicopter that looks just like a UFO. Flying at a low height and able to land on water, the vehicle is designed for transporting tourists and displaying ads in the future.

Manned UFO looking eVTOL by Shenzhen Smart Drone Co making maiden flight
Flying saucer is low altitude UAV operating @ 10-30 m & can land safely on water surface
Designed for sightseeing & advertising performances
Use 6-axis & 12-propeller duct design that's entirely contained… pic.twitter.com/kUiaRKPnAY

— tphuang (@tphuang) July 13, 2024

On Valentine’s Day 2023, five K-pop fans came to a bustling street in the center of Seoul, one of them in a bee costume. Then they started dancing to “Candy” by the boy band NCT Dream and unfurled a banner with a message for Korea’s largest domestic music streaming platform: “Melon, let’s use 100% renewable energy and happily be together with Kpop for the next 100 years.”

KPOP4PLANET

A few weeks later, Melon, which has over 4 million active users in Korea, promised to do just that—pledging to adopt 100% renewable energy for its data centers by 2030.

It was the culmination of a campaign organized by Kpop4planet, a small group of volunteers that is achieving surprising success in mobilizing K-pop fans to act against the energy-intensive practices of the music industry. In recent years it has led a series of actions for climate causes, secured pledges to reduce the carbon footprint of music streaming, and pressured international brands to turn their supply chains away from fossil fuels.

K-pop fans have for years been known for their incredible organizing power. As their numbers have grown around the world, they have become influential political forces, shaping elections and advocating for social change. It was these actions that inspired two young fans, Dayeon Lee from South Korea and Nurul Sarifah from Indonesia, to found Kpop4planet in 2021. Particularly concerned about environmental issues, they began to think about how some aspects of K-pop culture can exacerbate environmental degradation. For example, excessive music streaming can generate carbon emissions at every step, from the data centers that process requests to the devices that play the music. 

“I [initially] thought the physical-album-waste issue was much more important,” says Lee, who is a 21-year-old university undergraduate, currently living in Japan. “But I was really surprised when I did some background research … [and] realized that the streaming issue is much more serious because it is a long-term issue.” 

While producing and selling physical recordings does, of course, have a carbon footprint, most of the environmental issues end after the initial purchase. That’s not the case with digital distribution. Streaming an album more than 27 times, according to 2019 research at Keele University in the UK, will likely end up using more energy than it takes to produce a CD. This kind of listening happens frequently in K-pop culture, which often encourages fans to host “streaming parties” where they play the same song on repeat. 

Buoyed by the success of its streaming campaign, Kpop4planet has recently targeted companies outside the music industry that have benefited from working with K-pop idols; it’s asked them to make similar pledges on renewable energy or other climate goals in order to secure continuous support from the fans. The group has put pressure on Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest e-commerce company, to set up a decarbonization plan. And it’s gone after Hyundai—which uses the K-pop band BTS as brand ambassadors—over a business deal to source aluminum from a company relying on a new coal power plant. This led to another big victory: In March 2024, Hyundai agreed to seek alternative suppliers for its aluminum.

These wins may be surprising for a group with just 10 full-time members. Hyundai and Melon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, so it’s hard to know exactly why they changed course. But for her part, Lee believes the group’s success comes from how it is able to represent the genuine feelings of a massive fan base and draw companies’ attention to those demands. In total, Kpop4planet’s online petitions have collected signatures from nearly 60,000 fans in 223 countries. And the group doesn’t stop until it gets what it wants. 

“We have to be the messenger between corporations and K-pop fans,” Lee says. “We also want to expand our campaigns to more global corporations, because we believe that K-pop fans have enough power and influence to make our society more sustainable.”

The carbon footprint of “streaming parties”

Even as streaming has become the dominant way to listen to music, its energy consumption—in faraway data centers or via invisible telecommunication transmissions—remains hard for the end user to recognize.

“I think streaming is especially nefarious because those negative impacts are happening so far away and in such an invisible way,” says Joe Steinhardt, an assistant professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia who studies the music industry and is the author of the book Why to Resist Streaming Music & How. He calls streaming music “a disposable listen” because of the way an app keeps pulling data from the cloud and not storing it locally. 

Still, it’s hard to draw a definitive conclusion on whether streaming damages the environment more than buying physical copies; its actual carbon footprint depends on many factors. For example, streaming a music or lyrics video on a TV consumes significantly more electricity than using an energy-efficient device like a smartphone. But then smartphones present their own problems; they are very energy intensive to manufacture, and people often abandon them after a short time. 

While the overall climate impact of streaming is still being studied, many of the problems it presents are undoubtedly exacerbated by the K-pop industry. The number of times a song is streamed is factored into music ranking charts, televised competitions, and awards. Artists with the highest streaming numbers are seen as more successful and consequently get more resources and exposure from the recording companies, incentivizing fans to keep streaming. 

As a result, many K-pop fans stream significantly more than listeners of other genres. In the streaming parties, fans play newly released songs for long periods of time in order to show their support, boost traffic numbers, and hopefully attract more fans to the songs. In 2022, Kpop4planet surveyed 1,097 fans (more than 75% of whom were in Korea) and found that the majority of them spent more than five hours per day in streaming parties. That is almost double the amount of time an average music consumer would spend listening to streamed songs, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). In extreme cases, streaming parties may push people to play the same song on multiple devices at once—sometimes muting them, so the music is not even being heard.

“Fandom at this level, whether it’s K-pop or any fandom, is an inherently wasteful concept. It’s based on how much can I waste to show that I love you,” says Steinhardt. In any musical genre, fans are used to expressing their love through excessive purchases because it’s a financial transfer to the artists. Streaming introduced new and less expensive ways to achieve the same goal, but they are nevertheless wasteful. 

The practical solution, he says, is probably not to ask fans to stop being so devoted. “I recognize there’s a real value in that,” says Steinhardt. “So the question is, is there a way to do that that doesn’t involve overconsumption?” 

Accountability for the streaming platforms

Instead of trying to change the individual actions of fans, Lee believes, it’s more important to hold big companies responsible for their behavior. “We believe that the environmental problems that the K-pop fans are suffering from are caused by the corporations,” she says. “They have the main keys to solving the climate crisis, as they are emitting lots of carbon emissions in the supply chain.”

So when Kpop4planet started its music-streaming campaign in 2022, it set its eyes on one particular solution: demanding that streaming companies switch to renewable energy.

A large portion of streaming-related emissions depends on the specific resources that power the data center a streaming company uses. “The actual streaming process is using electrical energy, so like electric cars, it comes down to how we are producing that electric power,” says Simon George, a lecturer in sustainability and green technology at Keele University. A server based in a region dependent on fossil fuels, for instance, will generate more carbon emissions than one powered by renewable energy. 

And South Korea has very little renewable energy. In 2022, fossil fuels generated 63.6% of the electricity there, compared with 52.5% for the average OECD country. Renewables account for less than 10%. Because of that, Korean domestic streaming platforms are consuming more fossil fuels to power their data centers than their counterparts in other countries. “The more we can push to decarbonize the grid, then the better we can feel about streaming music,” George says.

Not many K-pop fans appear aware of this. Lee, too, was in the dark until she formed Kpop4planet and started doing her own research. In August 2022, she made a comic explaining why streaming can be an environmental concern and posted it on Twitter, where it was retweeted more than 18,000 times. “Everyone was so shocked. So that was the point that our streaming campaign went viral,” Lee says.

#알티추첨 #알티이벵
케이팝포플래닛ver.그것이 알고싶다
실물음반vs 음악스트리밍
탄소배출 맞짱뜨면 누가 이길까요??#멜론은탄소맛 캠페인에 함께해 주세요!https://t.co/5UwusTDowB에서 온라인 청원+본 트윗을 알티해주신 분들 중 추첨을 통해 기프티콘을 드려요 pic.twitter.com/fuKfdqRYvw

— KPOP 4 PLANET (@kpop4planet) August 12, 2022

After initially calling upon all streaming platforms to act, Kpop4planet homed in on Melon. In a fan survey that year, nearly half the respondents said they used Melon to host streaming parties and that they also expected Melon to take the lead on climate actions. Plus, 71.2% of the fans said they would move to a different streaming platform if it adopted more climate-friendly practices.

“We want to make Korean streaming platforms more sustainable so that the K-pop fans do not feel guilty by listening to our favorite idol songs,” Lee says.

Lee and her crew set a clear if ambitious goal: Get Melon to commit to using 100% renewable energy for its data centers by 2030 instead of 2040, which was the original pledge by its parent company, the Korean tech giant Kakao. Over the next year, Kpop4planet collected the names and contact information of thousands of fans, and got their backing for a public letter it sent to Melon outlining its demands. Kpop4planet also worked to establish connections with Melon employees and repeatedly invited company representatives to attend the group’s offline events aimed at raising awareness about the impact of streaming.

Finally, Kpop4planet invited Melon to attend the Valentine’s Day dance; the company declined because of scheduling conflicts but agreed to meet for a private discussion. That’s when it made the promise to “move all the data to the cloud that does not emit any carbon emissions by 2030,” Lee says. Melon didn’t respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment.

K-pop idols are not tools for greenwashing

Kpop4planet’s actions are part of a broader evolution in K-pop fandom, which has “slowly moved from sending gifts to idols to donating or volunteering in the names of their idols,” says CedarBough Saeji, an assistant professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at South Korea’s Pusan National University. 

In recent years, these volunteering activities have become much more political and direct—like organizing, she says, “to fund the escape from Gaza for individual Palestinian K-pop fans and their families and boycotting certain K-pop products or groups because of concerns around Israel-Palestine issues.” Kpop4planet, she notes, has also spoken directly to South Korea’s National Assembly about “how to make the K-pop businesses more environmentally friendly.” 

This advocacy is no longer focused just on streaming companies. Kpop4planet has organized nine campaigns in total, including several involving Korean and international brands that have been tapping into the large K-pop fanbase to promote their products. 

Its targeting of Hyundai was a particularly high-profile example. The Korean automaker has been working with BTS as brand ambassadors since 2018, and the group has more recently represented Hyundai’s electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. So when Kpop4planet learned in 2023 about a deal between Hyundai and an Indonesian aluminum supplier, the advocates decided to call out what they saw as hypocrisy. The metal supplier has plans to build a new coal power plant for aluminum smelting and wasn’t planning on using renewable power until late 2029 at best. If carried through, this deal would have increased the carbon emissions associated with Hyundai and delayed the automaker’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. (Hyundai did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.)

So Kpop4planet worked closely with BTS fandoms in Indonesia to highlight the local impact of a coal power plant like this one. Initially, fans worried that campaigning against Hyundai would give BTS a bad rep, but Lee and her group explained that the campaign was about protecting BTS from being associated with potential greenwashing activities. Kpop4planet collected  signatures from 11,000 K-pop fans in 68 countries and delivered an open letter to Hyundai’s office in Jakarta. It also invited indigenous fans in the country to show up for offline campaigns—dancing to BTS songs, sharing how they would be personally affected, and expressing their demands directly.

The message broke through. Hyundai agreed to meet with Kpop4planet in Seoul twice over the last year. “I was a little bit nervous before meeting them, because these are very big corporations,” Lee says. “But they are just like us, and they used to love K-pop culture when they were young as well.” In their conversations, Lee says, Hyundai told Kpop4planet that “they care about the K-pop fans because the influence of the K-pop industry is getting bigger and bigger around the world.”

In March, Hyundai announced it would terminate the deal and seek alternative sources of aluminum.

Also this year, the group has collaborated with five international Blackpink fan groups to campaign against four major luxury brands that the band’s members represent. Lee says they’re now talking to Kering (the owner of Gucci and Saint Laurent) and Chanel about reducing emissions and using 100% renewable energy across their supply chains. Lee says that in a Zoom meeting with Kering, the company echoed Hyundai in saying it cared about K-pop fans as its customers, and called Kpop4planet’s strategy of leveraging the influence of K-pop idols both modern and creative. (Kering and Chanel did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.)

Indeed, not many climate activist groups probably approach their demands the way Kpop4planet does—with lots of joyous dancing. “I watched some videos on TikTok and YouTube of lots of Thai K-pop fans doing some K-pop dance covers to protest for democracy,” Lee says. “It was really impressive, because it is one of the most creative and also peaceful ways to deliver their opinions. So we want to show and highlight that kind of fun element of K-pop fandoms.” 

At the heart of all the campaigns, after all, is the love for K-pop music: “We [take] climate actions because we want to love and support our K-pop idols for a longer time.”