The Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a press conference on October 27. Xia Yingxian, director of the department of Climate Change, stated that China is promoting a comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development and building a modernized society in which human beings live in harmony with nature.

Xia said China has strengthened its climate change targets and is striving to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, which is a strong climate commitment in line with the Paris Agreement.

According to Xia, in 2022, the total amount of China's carbon emissions continued to decrease, the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption reached 17.5 percent in total energy consumption, the installed capacity of renewable energy generation was more than 1.2 billion kilowatts, and the forest coverage rate reached 24.02 percent.

China's new energy vehicle production and sales have ranked first in the world for eight years, and non-fossil energy is developing rapidly, with more than 750 million kilowatts of wind power and photovoltaic installed by the end of 2022, and the level of cleaner utilization of fossil energy is constantly rising, according to Xia.

China's carbon emissions trading market, which is the largest in the world in terms of the scale of coverage of greenhouse gas emissions, launched online trading in July 2021, and currently covers more than 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually. A preliminary institutional framework system was constructed, the first compliance cycle of the national carbon emissions trading market was successfully completed, the second compliance cycle was fully launched, and the high-quality data measuring carbon emissions continued to increase.

Xia said, China has strengthened climate change impact and risk assessment, deepened the pilot construction of climate-adapted cities, and promoted climate change adaptation in vulnerable regions such as the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau and the Yellow River Basin.

(Cover image via VCG)