Chinese authorities have asked that state companies reduce their energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared to 2020 levels as part of China's plan to have its CO2 emissions peak before the end of this decade.
State-controlled firms in China must slash their energy consumption per 10,000 yuan ($1,570) of output value by 2025 to 15 percent below the levels seen in 2020, Reuters quoted the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) as saying in a statement on Thursday.
Carbon dioxide emissions at state-held firms per 10,000 yuan of output value must also decline by 2025, by 18 percent compared to 2020, the asset supervision body said.
China, which targets to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, has an interim goal to see its CO2 emissions peak before 2030.
Earlier this year, Chinese authorities ordered heavy energy-intensive industries such as oil refining, steelmaking, aluminum production, and cement manufacturing to make sure that more than 30 percent of their production capacity met stricter standards of energy efficiency.
Despite the commitments to reduce emissions and large investments in renewable energy capacity, China continues to rely on coal as its economy recovered from the 2020 COVID-induced slump faster than expected. China continued to add coal capacity in 2020, much to the indignation of climate campaigners.
The economic rebound from the pandemic is taking coal power generation to a new record high this year, with global coal demand likely hitting another new high next year, undermining net-zero efforts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual Coal 2021 report earlier this month.
According to the agency, the 2020 collapse in coal demand turned out to be smaller than anticipated, as China's recovery began sooner than expected and turned out to be stronger than initially forecast. Over the next two years, global coal demand could even see new record highs as emerging markets led by China and India will lead consumption growth which is set to outpace declines in developed economies, according to the IEA.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprcie.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More