China eyes clean energy to boost carbon neutrality efforts

Zhang Jianhua, head of the National Energy Administration, said the government will step up efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 with more active new energy development goals and also push forward a large-scale, high-proportion, high-quality and marketized development of clean energy in China.

The government will accelerate the replacement of fossil fuels with renewables while lifting its consumption and storage capacity toward a new power system that makes clean energy a central focus, he said during a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday.

According to Zhang, the installed capacity for renewables will witness a substantial increase during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25) to ensure that renewables account for a larger proportion of the overall energy mix.

It is expected the renewable energy will account for two-thirds of the increase of electricity consumption in the whole society by the end of 2025. It will also account for more than half of the increments in primary energy consumption.

Renewable energy will become the principal part of the increase in energy and electricity consumption from the incremental complementary role, the administration said.

According to the administration, the development and utilization scale of renewable energy in China ranks first worldwide and has provided strong support for the low-carbon energy transition in the country. The installed power capacity using clean energy reached 930 million kilowatts, 42.4 percent of the total installed capacity and 14.6 percentage points up compared with that in 2012.