China's economy is currently in a critical phase of recovery and transformation. Achieving stable growth in key industries is essential to addressing various economic risks and challenges and laying the foundation for the high-quality development of the industrial sector. This suggests that the ten major industries with steady growth action plans should organize industry-specific long-term carbon-neutrality strategic studies.

China’s steel industry faces internal and external pressure to reduce emissions. In this context, incorporating the steel industry into the national carbon emission trading market, and leveraging carbon costs to drive steel production enterprises towards adopting lower-carbon manufacturing processes and procedures, will be an effective approach to address both external emission reduction tasks and internal emission reduction demands.

This policy brief takes a close look at coal power development in Guangdong Province, which has a strong economy and is known for generating a significant amount of energy using coal. It looks at the driving forces and policy rationale behind expansion in this industry and assesses the validity of current transition strategies. Finally, it puts forward policy recommendations to facilitate Guangdong’s power transition to meet China’s dual carbon goals.

For China to meets its dual-carbon goals, its coal resource-based regions will have to transition away from coal as the dominant local industry. This complex task will impact the local economy, the energy sector, the natural environment and society. Ensuring a just transition will need to address four key areas: high-quality economic development, people’s livelihoods and security, clean and safe energy, and environmental protection.

The climate actions being taken by China's provincial regions vary due to the vast differences in levels of economic development, energy supply structures, industrial structures, and resource endowments. Tracking all these actions is necessary to have an accurate picture of the changes on the ground that are driving progress toward China’s national climate goals. This report also provides a series of Figures and Tables that illustrate subnational carbon emission and mitigation trends, regional implementation capacity by tracking progress on subnational energy and climate goals between 2015-2020, and whether the policies currently in place will be sufficient to achieve subnational dual carbon goals.

This report provides an overview of subnational climate actions in China’s provincial regions. It aims to understand carbon emission trends and mitigation progress in each provincial region, track how each provincial region is implementing the nation’s dual-carbon goals, assess regional implementation capacity by measuring how subnational energy and climate goals were implemented between 2015-2020, determine whether the policies currently in place will be sufficient to achieve subnational dual-carbon goals, and identify gaps and opportunities to enhance subnational climate actions.

This abbreviated version of our analysis of China’s second NDC captures every key finding in the larger report. It compares China’s 2015 and 2021 NDCs, and contextualizes China’s climate plans within the country’s broader development agenda.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the emission reduction commitments China makes in its second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)—a country’s stated climate goals under the Paris Agreement—will provide direction for domestic climate actions and inform international climate cooperation efforts. In a recent Green Development Program report, we examine how China performed under its 2015 NDC and reflect on the targets and supporting policies we might expect to see in its second NDC. The good news? We see huge potential for China to go bigger and bolder in its climate action.

This report is an updated version of our 2019 report on China’s NDC. It reviews the new international and domestic sustainable development trends since the last report and discusses the implementation of China’s first NDC. The second part of the report draws on newly issued strategic plans and policies during the 13th and 14th Five-Year plan periods to explore the climate policy options that may shape China’s second NDC.