BEIJING: As 2023 draws to a close, the world has seen China leap forward in its transition to green and low-carbon development.
Conducive to global efforts to combat climate change, China has been investing heavily by leveraging its resources, technology and workforce to transform itself into an environmentally friendly country, and making strides to share its gains with the rest of the world.
The following are some facts and figures that show what China has achieved in its green shift over the past few years. China’s renewable energy sector is gaining traction as the government strives to increase the proportion of electricity from non-fossil fuels in its energy structure.
In 2023, the country’s renewable energy capacity, which includes wind power, solar power, hydropower and biomass energy, surpassed that of thermal power for the first time to constitute more than half of the country’s installed power generation capacity.
Renewable energy currently accounts for about one-third of the country’s total power consumption, with wind power and solar power combined accounting for more than 15 percent of total power use. China has committed to the dual carbon goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
To meet these goals, the country released an action plan to peak carbon emissions and announced another plan to select 100 carbon-peak pilot cities and industrial parks, with the first batch of 35 made public in November.
The world’s second-largest economy saw its energy intensity, or energy consumption per unit of GDP, fall 0.4 percent year on year in the first half of 2023, with the pace of decline accelerating from the drop of 0.1 percent registered a year earlier. –Agencies
