China to continue green transition toward carbon peak and neutrality

©CGTN

China will actively implement its policies to work toward the goals of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, Vice Minister of Ecology and Environment Zhai Qing said on October 21. China made the pledges at the United Nations General Assembly in 2020.

"Climate change is a prominent global challenge and a matter of common interest for the international community. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that addressing climate change is not something others ask us to do, but something we want to do," Zhai said at a press conference on the sidelines of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

©CGTN

In the past decade, the country has maintained an average economic growth rate of 6.6 percent with an average annual energy consumption growth rate of only three percent, according to Zhai.

In 2020, China's carbon emission intensity decreased by 48.4 percent compared with that in 2005, exceeding the target it had pledged to the international community, he pointed out.

In 2021, the carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP decreased by 34.4 percent compared with that in 2012. In the same year, the share of coal use in its primary energy mix dropped to 56 percent from 68.5 percent in 2012 and 72.4 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, the proportion of non-fossil energy in its total energy consumption reached 16.6 percent.