Third plenum confirms country's new focus on carbon reduction, expert says
China's ambitions in achieving low-carbon development as laid out by the third plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which was held in Beijing last month, have won applause from international climate and clean energy experts.
Belinda Schaepe, China policy analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA, based in Helsinki, Finland, said the third plenum has sent a powerful message on the climate and energy front, underscoring China's commitment to green and low-carbon development.
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China will make concerted efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, pursue green development, and actively respond to climate change, said the communique of the third plenum.
"This elevates China's commitment to reducing emissions and tackling climate change to a new level and could pave the way for ambitious targets in China's upcoming Nationally Determined Contribution, to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)," she said, referring to China's efforts to reduce national emissions as a key part of the Paris climate accord.
Schaepe said the third plenum confirms the recent policy transition from a focus on energy intensity to carbon reduction.
"This is a positive direction and indicates that China is moving closer toward post-peak carbon reduction," she said.
The government aims to implement fiscal, tax, financial, investment, pricing policies and standards to support low-carbon development, she said.
"This continued industrial policy support will further strengthen China's clean energy sector and potentially accelerate the domestic transition."
While efforts to further strengthen China's green technology sector are a positive step forward in tackling climate change, Schaepe cautioned that they do also bring about risks for trade tensions with other countries, adding the tensions will have to be carefully managed to avoid any trade conflicts that could delay the global climate transition.
She noted that the Chinese government has proposed to improve measures for green government procurement and refining a green taxation system.
Transformative policies
"If implemented well, these policies could be transformative for high-emission sectors such as the steel sector to accelerate heavy industry decarbonization," she said, adding the steel sector may have reached a turning point with no new permits for coal-based steel plants in the first half of 2024, indicating progress in the sector's decarbonization.
She also applauded China's ambitions to improve the carbon accounting system and certification systems.
"The anticipated expansion of the national carbon market to include the aluminum, cement and steel sector provides opportunities for faster emission reductions in these sectors," she said.
Paul Dorfman, a visiting fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit of Sussex Energy Group, University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, praised China's achievements in the renewable sector.
"It is now clear that renewables will do the heavy-lifting for the net-zero energy. This is good news for China, as it cements its position as the global leader in renewables development — with twice as much solar and wind power capacity under construction as the rest of the world combined," he said.
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Dorfman said China installed more solar power in the past year than it had in the previous three years combined.
He said if their collective planned utility-scale solar and wind projects come online, China could easily reach 1,200 GW of installed wind and solar capacity by the beginning of 2025 — driven by improved system integration, lower curtailment rates and enhanced solar and wind competitiveness.
A CREA report released early this year indicated that the clean energy sector was the largest contributor to China's GDP last year.
"This very great weight of low-carbon capacity, both already built and under development, makes it very likely that China's power sector's CO2 emissions may peak earlier than predicted," Dorfman said.
