Editor's note: China Daily is publishing a series illustrating the country's efforts to achieve its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals.
A worker inspects the quality of photovoltaic panels at a factory in Suqian, Jiangsu province, last month. WANG LI/FOR CHINA DAILY
China made significant progress toward achieving its long-term climate targets in 2024, spearheading the global energy transition at an unprecedented rate of growth around the globe.
Against this backdrop, experts are increasingly optimistic about the country's advancements in meeting its climate commitments. This positive momentum, however, does not guarantee a seamless journey toward peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, with significant challenges remaining ahead.
With increasing renewable capacity coming online, coal-fired power plants are more frequently being used for backup power supply. However, this process of powering up and powering down coal-fired power stations can actually cause more air pollution than consistently operating a station at optimal performance conditions, complicating this phase of curbing emissions.
According to the National Energy Administration, in the first three quarters of 2024, the newly installed capacity for renewable energy power generation across the country surged to 210 million kilowatts.
This marked a 21 percent increase compared to the same period in the previous year and represented 86 percent of the total new power generation capacity, it said.
Notably, it said the combined new capacity from wind and solar power generation surpassed 200 million kilowatts.
China's total nuclear power generation capacity in operation and under construction ranks first in the world, said Wang Hongzhi, head of the administration at its annual work conference in December.
In 2024, 11 new nuclear power facilities were approved, making a total of 102 nuclear power units in operation or under construction across the country, with a total installed capacity of 113 million kilowatts, he said.
In 2025, China will greenlight a series of coastal nuclear power projects and progressively propel the ongoing construction of others, he said. By the end of that year, the operational nuclear power capacity in China is projected to reach 65 million kilowatts.
A recent report from Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy based in the United Kingdom, said China continues to lead the global energy transition, on its path to source 50 percent of its power from low-carbon energy including hydro, solar, wind, nuclear and energy storage by 2028.
"Never has the world witnessed the pace of growth or transformation of an energy system that China is currently achieving," said Malcolm Forbes-Cable, vice-president of upstream and carbon management at Wood Mackenzie.
By 2025, China's installed solar and wind capacity will exceed that of both Europe and North America, he said.
The report also noted a significant transformation in China's transport sector. By 2034, battery electric vehicles will dominate passenger vehicle sales, reaching a 66 percent market share, it said.
Workers assemble electric cars at a Volkswagen plant in Hefei, Anhui province, in September. CHEN ZHUO/FOR CHINA DAILY
Combining battery electric vehicles and hybrids, EVs will constitute 89 percent of total sales, it added.
"BEVs are projected to grow by 8 percent annually through 2030, while sales of internal combustion engine vehicles are expected to decline by 11 percent each year," said Forbes-Cable.
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, based in Helsinki, Finland, has published for the third year its annual assessment of China's progress toward its climate commitments and emissions pathways aligned with the goals outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
This year — in cooperation with the International Society for Energy Transition Studies — CREA surveyed a pool of 44 experts representing diverse specializations in the fields of climate and energy.
"Over the past three years, expert views have steadily shifted towards optimism on China's progress," the center noted in November.
Some 52 percent of experts surveyed this year believe China is on track to peak coal consumption by 2025, while only one-fifth say the peak will take place later, according to the latest report. In 2022, 69 percent of experts expected China's emissions to peak more than 15 percent above their 2020 level. But by 2024, this share was 44 percent, it said.
While the majority of experts continue to think that China's current economic situation is leading to an acceleration of the energy transition, the share of those who think the economic situation is going to slow down progress increased from 34 percent in 2023 to 43 percent in 2024, according to the report.
"Achieving carbon neutrality in a rapidly growing economy like China is no easy feat, but the country's substantial efforts are starting to bear fruit," said Xunpeng Shi from the International Society for Energy Transition Studies.
Clean energy industries have emerged as key drivers of economic growth. As China continues its transition, the benefits are becoming increasingly clear — expanded deployment of clean energy and ongoing industrial transformation promise even greater advantages, he said.
"This progress is fueling optimism about the future, as it accelerates decarbonization and ensures long-term prosperity for all," he added.
The CREA report also comprised a series of findings on the state of China's emissions and renewables development. It said, for instance, China's carbon dioxide emissions for the full year are expected to be flat or record a small increase.
In 2024, China made progress in controlling investments in new fossil power generation and steel-making capacity compared with 2023, and in reducing emissions from steel and transportation, it added.
"Despite optimism around emissions and the renewable energy transition, there is still to date little clarity on China's emissions pathway, which leaves open the possibility of emissions increases until 2030 and very slow reductions after," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA.
China's upcoming Nationally Determined Contributions will be essential for specifying and, ideally, firming up the country's ambitions for reducing emissions over the next decade, after the emission peak, he said.
NDCs are climate action plans under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to keep the global temperature increase this century to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 C, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
Each party to the agreement needs to create an NDC and update it every five years, progressively enhancing commitments in each update to steer the world decisively toward achieving the objectives set forth in the Paris treaty. The upcoming deadline for these revisions is set for February.
In a recent forum, Liu Bingjiang, former chief engineer at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said from January to October, the consumption of coal for electricity generation in the country increased by 46 million metric tons, down by 60 percent from the same period last year.
While this trend is favorable for achieving the country's climate targets, it may not bode well for air pollution control, he said.
The facilities for desulfurization, denitrification and dust removal of many coal-fired power plants were designed in accordance with annual operation hours of 5,500. The average annual operating hours of coal-fired power plants, however, have been declining with renewable energy development.
Some of the plants can now only operate for 3,000 hours and even 2,000 hours a year, he said. This has led to an increase in emissions of some air pollutants, especially oxynitride.
Liu, however, depicted an optimistic picture of the country's progress toward its climate targets.
"Many national documents have explicitly stated the goal of gradually reducing coal consumption during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, indicating that China's carbon dioxide emission peak is foreseeable," he said.
houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
