Last September, China made its first solemn commitment at the UN General Assembly to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Since then, an extensive and profound systematic economic and social transformation has been gradually carried out across the country.
In the past year, China has demonstrated unpcedented power of action as a major country: the central government has set the dual carbon goal as the top-level strategic layout, various ministries and commissions have issued key policies, all provinces and cities have written the dual carbon work into the 14th Five-Year Plan, and the financial system has started green upgrading.
How to understand carbon neutrality? What are the challenges for China? How should deal with, make pssure change opportunity? What should anyone do? Changan avenue governor (WeChat ID: Capitalnews) joint chongyang, renmin university of China financial institute (WeChat public number: chongyang of National People's Congress) launched the "key knowledge" column, this interview chongyang, renmin university of China financial institute, senior researcher at the Chinese people's university of ecology, deputy director of the center for financial research, professor, school of environment, LanHong tutors.
Governor: 2021 is seen as the first year for China to embark on a carbon-neutral journey. How to understand this concept? Why is carbon neutrality a historic turning point in China since its first anniversary?
Blue Hong: Carbon neutrality is actually the embodiment of harmonious development between man and nature. It is not only a national strategy, but also a matter of human survival.
When we talk about carbon neutrality, we are talking about reversing the extreme imbalance caused by the violent release of hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon dioxide since the industrial Revolution, and returning to carbon neutrality.
The dual carbon goal of peaking carbon by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060 is a particularly big challenge for China, even more difficult than developed countries such as Europe and the US.
We are an industrial society and it is impossible to revert to primitive society. It's as if China is still building while the developed world is already building. To achieve carbon neutrality, they only need to reduce emissions in air conditioning, automobiles and other consumption areas, while we have not completed the construction of industrialization and are an emerging market.
The United States can achieve its emissions reduction goals by encouraging fewer cars and more new-energy vehicles, or by using less air conditioning. But at least in the short term, There is a contradiction between economic development and carbon emissions in China, which is to reduce carbon emissions while rolling out its industrial system.
You might say, well, we peaked in 2030, and we can increase emissions now. It's not. We need to start cutting carbon now. The point of peak carbon is not to reach a peak, but to fall after that point.
We are cutting emissions now, but why are total emissions still growing? It will take a while for our GDP growth and co2 emissions to fall out of sync when emissions per unit of GDP are reduced to a certain extent. In other words, even as GDP grows, carbon dioxide can still fall.
It is obviously impossible for us to reduce emissions in exchange for a reduction in GDP, as our population is growing and our material needs are increasing. What we need to do is to grow the economy, and at the same time use a drop in emissions per unit of GDP to lead the decline from peak to peak. This is not a peak and then fall.
Governor: You see the dual carbon target as a challenge. This year, how did China demonstrate its power to act as a major country?
LAN Hong: On the whole, China is actively promoting carbon reduction in fossil energy, industrial manufacturing, transportation, construction and other fields.
The first is the replacement of fossil fuels. We are number one in renewable energy, especially wind power and photovoltaic power. Last year, in particular, China single-handedly kept global renewable energy on the rise during the pandemic.
And on the cost side, last year we reached parity or even lower than that of coal power, which is pushing renewables to expand their share of the market. In other words, we have made a big advance in energy's co2 emissions by replacing coal power with renewable energy.
Next comes industry, which now accounts for the largest share of carbon dioxide emissions. Through the development of circular economy and the introduction of carbon capture and storage technologies, we have significantly reduced industrial electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions through technological transformation and energy conservation.
At psent, the reduction of industrial co2 is mainly at the front end. Reduce energy use by saving energy and introducing new green technologies
A lot of efforts have been made to tackle the problem at the source and at the end. For example, carbon capture and sequestration technology is also gradually spading, but one difficulty is that the cost is relatively high.
The current price in China's carbon market is around 50 yuan per ton, but the cost of emission reduction through carbon capture and sequestration is much higher than 50 yuan per ton, which means that more companies have to do it out of responsibility rather than market motivation. But as new technologies continue to be developed, current projections suggest there is room for a sharp decline. If it falls below the price of a national carbon market, it becomes a new green industry.
So when we talk about carbon neutrality, we really feel great pssure in the early stage, and it needs to pay a lot of costs. But with the marketization and scale promotion of green technology, the cost will be reduced, and it will be transformed into a profitable new industry called green low-carbon industry, which will become a source of GDP growth.
