Technology will be crucial to helping China achieve its goal of carbon neutrality before 2060, but the country faces a major challenge in developing and deploying low-carbon solutions quickly enough, according to a report released on Monday by Tsinghua University's Institute for Carbon Neutrality.
Titled "Technology Perspectives on China's Carbon Neutrality Pathway", the report examines more than 300 key technologies across six major categories: zero-carbon electricity supply; zero-carbon heat and sustainable fuel supply; end-use electrification; low-carbon fuel and raw material substitution; energy efficiency improvement; and carbon capture, storage and negative emissions.
The report estimates that China's carbon neutrality technology system could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 12.5 billion metric tons by 2060, providing the technological foundation for achieving the country's carbon neutrality target.
Zero-carbon electricity production and consumption will be central to the transition. Zero-carbon power supply and end-use electrification together are expected to account for 71 percent of total emissions reductions. In hard-to-abate sectors, including complex industrial processes and long-distance transportation, zero-carbon heat and sustainable fuels, low-carbon fuel and raw material substitution, and carbon capture, storage and negative emissions are expected to jointly contribute about 23 percent of the reductions.
However, the technology system remains far from mature. Of the 134 technology subcategories assessed in the report, about 25 percent have reached the mature application stage, 28 percent are in early application, and nearly half remain at the experimental or demonstration stage.
Progress also varies considerably across sectors.
More than 93 percent of energy-efficiency technologies have reached either mature or early application, while the corresponding proportion for low-carbon fuel and raw material substitution technologies is less than 20 percent.
China has only 30 years between its carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets. Reducing annual emissions from about 12 billion tons to less than 1 billion tons within that period will place enormous demands on research, development and commercialization, said Zhang Qiang, Communist Party of China secretary of the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University and convener of the report.
China aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
Zhang, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, noted that technologies typically take about a decade to move from the laboratory to the market, followed by another decade to achieve a dominant market share. China must therefore accelerate research and demonstration of emerging technologies while ensuring that innovation, deployment and emissions-reduction needs are aligned at different stages of the transition.
The report projects that the average marginal abatement cost per ton of carbon dioxide will rise to about 327 yuan ($49) by 2060, from 287 yuan in 2035.
Technologies whose deployment costs are lower than those of conventional alternatives are expected to account for about 6.8 billion tons of emissions reductions, or 54.6 percent of the total, the report said. Meanwhile, hydrogen-based steelmaking, the substitution of green hydrogen for conventional fuels and feedstocks in the chemical industry, low-carbon aviation fuels, and carbon capture, utilization and storage will continue to face relatively high costs.
The development and deployment of carbon-neutral technologies are also expected to drive major industrial transformation and create substantial investment opportunities. Cumulative investment in such technologies is projected to reach 180 trillion yuan by 2060, the report said.
However, barriers remain, including high costs during the early stages of commercialization, uncertain and lengthy investment payback periods, weak market incentives, inadequate infrastructure and insufficient system integration.
Zou Ji, CEO and president of Energy Foundation China, said China's emissions trajectory had entered a new phase, in which technological innovation is increasingly replacing declining demand as the main driver of decarbonization.
On the demand side, he noted that as the economy's growth drivers shift, demand from traditional industries has weakened, and emissions from these industries are growing more slowly or have even begun to decline in absolute terms. Electricity demand, however, has continued to rise, driven by AI computing centers, household consumption and the electrification of services.
At the same time, the rapid development of nonfossil energy technologies, including wind and solar power, energy storage and grid optimization, has made it increasingly possible to expand electricity supply without increasing emissions over the past decade or so, Zou said.
Against this backdrop, he stressed that over the next five to 10 years, or even 20 to 30 years, emissions reductions may need to shift away from relying primarily on declining demand and toward driving emissions downward through technological progress, innovation and deployment, until the goal of carbon neutrality is achieved.
houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
