Enabling zero-carbon transition in the Yangtze River Delta region

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) regional integration plan has been elevated to a national strategy and transitioning to a zero-carbon economy, which presents a significant opportunity for the YRD region. An opportunity in that is the commercialization of low and zero-carbon solutions, including clean energy technologies, which can further catalyze an important emerging market and support the transformation of the economy.

The Paris Agreement has provided new impetus for the zero-carbon transition. Different countries are moving at different speeds, and the result is a gradual shift in the energy mix from fossil fuels to renewables. Zero-carbon sources of energy supply are falling in price and some are within reach of the point where they can be competitive without subsidy.

Failure to shift from highercarbon to lower- and ultimately zero-carbon sources of energy supply could pose a major risk to the integration of the YRD.

China has been scaling up pollution control to substantially cut the total emissions of major pollutants and lower the intensity of resource consumption. The push to develop a roadmap for zero-carbon transition in YRD coincides with the Three Critical Battles which China has determined to fight.

Notably, having a longer-term vision, and trying to prepare years ahead, is actually in line with China’s interests and its political and social priorities.

Reforms are needed to ensure that the policy and regulation framework will support the zero-carbon transition of the energy system and the rebalancing of the economy. This is a complex task, requiring comprehensive and mutually supportive policy actions.

It is critical that governments, industry, the research community, and financiers work together to ensure the broad introduction of zero-carbon transition, making it part of a sustainable future that takes economic development, energy security and environmental concerns into account.

As we are all important stakeholders in this effort, we should join this journey and make it a success. Overall, I’d like to make only one, but farreaching, recommendation: that the YRD should, act as a pioneer of the country and the world, develop a roadmap for zero-carbon transition in a bid to reduce ecological footprint and accelerate the transition to a new open economy.

The zero-carbon roadmap should lay out a set of strategic objectives intended to help develop a robust and successful domestic zero-carbon transition industry. This roadmap will be an information source and a planning tool to help industry, government and other stakeholders evaluate promising new zero-carbon technologies and solutions, and to serve as a guide for R&D and demonstration decisions being made today. Achieving the objectives would result in the eventual development of zero-emissions in China and thus economic, environmental and social benefits for all Chinese.

Zero-carbon transition is both feasible and achievable and the technologies are available today.

According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there are three pillars for the zero-carbon transition of energy system:

Energy efficiency and conservation: Lowering the energy consumed per unit of GDP (energy intensity) by technically improving products and processes, including waste