ENERGY TRANSITION IN CHINA

Cities and urban conurbations account for about 70% of final energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and therefore. Thus, cities play a decisive role in promoting and achieving the energy transition.

This is particularly true for China. Whilst 54% of the Chinese population live in cities today, the degree of urbanisation will rise to 70% by 2030, which implies strong increases of the building stock and development of new infrastructure. Promoting the urban energy transformation is therefore an important issue for China and policymakers should aim for newly built and refurbished urban areas to conform to high energy and environmental standards due to the long-lived nature of such investments. Cities must realise their energy saving potentials and at the same time supply as much of their energy demand from renewable sources as possible. This way, cities can make a crucial contribution to achieving the Paris Agreement and by fostering new industries around the energy transition, can enrich the local value chain and create new jobs. In addition, comprehensive solutions for the municipal energy transformation across power, industry, heating, and transport would also help to improve the purity of the air, thus improving health and quality of life.

Integrated municipal energy and climate protection concepts are a decisive instrument for this. Solutions and measures are tailored to local circumstances and implemented locally. Within the scope of Sino-German energy cooperation projects at GIZ, we share German experience and best practices towards a sustainable and low-emission energy transformation on local level, for example in energy efficiency demonstration projects in cities and industry parks.