Major progress made toward carbon targets

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