The two highly anticipated policy documents the central government released in October - a working guidance and a 2030 action plan - outline a path for researchers and flesh out for the first time how China plans to achieve its carbon goals. They will need to drop traditional engineering subjects that focus, for example, on coal-fired boiler technology and internal combustion engines, notes Zhang Xiliang, a climate modeller at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which launched its own Institute for Carbon Neutrality in September. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Solar, wind and hydroīut many research institutes have a long way to go in terms of aligning their research departments with the carbon-neutrality goals, says Jiang. Hydrogen fuel cells are tested in a lab at Shanghai ReFire Technology, a start-up that manufactures fuel-cell engines. Establishing the path to “a more just and inclusive transition would be a very important research topic”, he says.
At zero: the final secrets to how to#
Researchers will also need to study which sections of China’s population will be most affected by the transition and learn how to help them cope, says He. These include low-carbon energy technologies, from hydrogen fuel cells to batteries market-based mechanisms to control emissions, such as carbon taxes and trading schemes and modelling that will help local governments and industries set realistic targets for cuts, she says. “There will be a lot of areas needing contribution from researchers,” says Fu Sha, a modeller with the non-profit Energy Foundation China in Beijing. This is a scale and speed that no other country has attempted before, says Gang He, an energy-systems modeller at Stony Brook University in New York, who has studied China’s power system.Ĭhina’s current emissions are more than double the United States’ and three times as big as those of India, which made a similar pledge to reach net zero by 2070 during COP26. She is vice-director of the university’s Research Institute of Carbon Neutrality, which was established in May and has already received about 20 million yuan (US$3.1 million) in funding to work on a broad range of energy technologies, she says.įrom emitting more than 11 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020, China has to drop to net zero within four decades. Significant challengeĪchieving carbon neutrality by 2060 “is a big challenge for China”, says Xie Xiaomin, an energy-policy researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). Once it secures funding for research grants, the institute will focus on the deregulation of the electricity market and climate finance, she says. Wu is also director of the Shanghai Research Institute for Energy and Carbon Neutrality Strategy, a collaboration launched earlier this month by the university and the Shanghai city government. The country is experiencing a “national movement”, says Wu Libo, an environmental economist at Fudan University in Shanghai, as companies, regional governments and academia shift gears. “We start right now,” says Jiang Kejun, a modeller at the Energy Research Institute in Beijing. ‘COP26 hasn’t solved the problem’: scientists react to UN climate dealĪlready this year, more than ten prominent universities and institutions have set up carbon-neutrality-research institutes the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched a centre last month.