Pursuing green development, China endeavors to protect Earth

The top-level design for China's energy transformation is becoming clear with the legislative progress on the energy law, said Li Junfeng, a senior expert on climate change with the China Energy Research Society.

"Coping with climate change has promoted technological innovation and change in the energy field. The optimization of energy structure and the transformation of energy development, in turn, have promoted the in-depth development of the global response to climate change," he said.

China has vowed to step up efforts to establish a legal and policy framework that promotes green production and consumption and build a sound economic structure that facilitates green, low-carbon, and circular development. The country encourages conservation across the board, promotes recycling and aims to build an energy sector that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient.

By 2018, China had slashed its carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon emissions per unit of GDP, by 45.8 percent from 2005 levels. It has committed itself to further reducing the carbon intensity by 60 percent to 65 percent by 2030.

In 2019, the country generated 2.04 trillion kWh of electricity from renewable energy sources, which accounted for 27.9 percent of the total electricity output, up 1.2 percentage points from the previous year, data from the National Energy Administration show.

China launched the pilot carbon trading markets in 2011. Official statistics show that by the end of October 2019, a total of 347 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalence had been traded in pilot region markets, with an aggregate trading volume of 7.68 billion yuan (about 1.08 billion U.S. dollars).