China cuts CO2 emission by 3b tons in past decade: white paper

BEIJING - China has reduced CO2 emission by 3 billion tons over the past decade in an effort to promote green consumption, a white paper said Thursday.

China's energy savings in the recent ten years have been equivalent to about 1.4 billion tons of standard coal as its industrial restructuring and upgrading and carbon reduction technologies have greatly raised energy efficiency, according to the white paper titled "China's Energy Transition" issued by the State Council Information Office.

Controlling both the volume and intensity of energy use has become a crucial institutional measure of the country, the document said.

China has stepped up efforts to improve energy conservation and efficiency in key sectors from industrial production to construction and transportation.

Over the past decade, the energy consumption per unit of added value of industrial enterprises with an annual revenue of 20 million yuan ($2.81 million) and above has dropped by more than 36 percent. Comprehensive energy consumption per unit of product in the steel, electrolytic aluminum, cement and glass has lowered by more than 9 percent on average.

In 2023, the total output value of the energy conservation service industry exceeded 500 billion yuan, doubling that of 2013.

As China is in the middle of the world's largest urbanization process, it has implemented higher energy-efficiency standards for new buildings and is steadily advancing the energy-saving retrofit of existing buildings.

By the end of 2023, the floorage of energy-efficient buildings had surpassed 32.68 billion square meters, accounting for more than 64 percent of the total urban buildings, up nearly 30 percentage points from 2013. Buildings with ultra-low or near-zero energy consumption had surpassed 43.7 million square meters.

By the end of 2023, China had over 20.4 million new energy vehicles, and almost 8.6 million charging facilities and over 450 hydrogen fueling stations nationwide.

The comprehensive energy consumption per unit load for railway transport in 2023 dropped by about 19 percent compared with 2013.

The country has also actively fostered green models of energy consumption, with efforts to encourage the consumption of renewable energy, advance the electrification and low-carbon transition of final energy consumption, and adopt green and low-carbon ways of life.

Both the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023 utilized 100-percent green electricity, said the white paper.