In late July, a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee had carbon emissions high on the agenda amid the worsening climate crisis that has seen extreme weather conditions across the globe. The Political Bureau meeting urged a faster rollout of a national action plan to fulfill the country’s target of reaching a carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030, according to a statement released after the meeting.
Presided over by President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, the meeting set out key economic policy directions for the second half of this year. The country forges ahead to fulfill its climate targets, which also include achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
Fu Sha, program director of Energy Foundation China’s Low Carbon Economic Growth Program, said many regions have included the development of hydrogen energy in their 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). “Each region should proceed with carbon reduction in light of local conditions,” she stressed, adding that different measures should be rolled out in a coordinated way. In addition to infrastructure, policy and institutional mechanisms need to be put in place to create a favorable situation for the development of new energy and low-carbon industries.
Lin Boqiang, head of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy at Xiamen University, said only after the country builds the infrastructure for new energy, can it undertake large-scale reduction of the consumption of coal and other fossil fuels, which make up about 85 percent of China’s energy mix. Steel, cement and the nonferrous metal industries are the main sectors with high energy consumption and emissions, and consume 21.5 percent of the country’s power.
Efforts to contain these industries will reduce China’s dependence on energy for economic development, and set the country on the path of high-quality development.
