An account of how the “dual carbon goal” developed has been published in China Science Daily.
Here is the translation as published by the CAS under https://www.cas.cn/cm/202506/t20250613_5072924.shtml
How to reduce emissions by nearly 80% in 40 years? The scientific brain behind the “dual carbon” goal
On September 22, 2020, at the 75th United Nations General Assembly, China solemnly promised to the world to strive to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. For a time, the world turned its attention to China, wanting to see what this developing country with a population of 1.4 billion would do to fulfill its promise.
A few days later, in the office building of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Sanlihe, Beijing, several scientists sat in a small conference room. The initiator of the meeting was Ding Zhongli, then vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhang Tao, an expert in the energy field and then vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sat next to him. The participants were mainly well-known experts from research fields such as energy, chemistry, ecology, resources and environment.
“We must first clarify one question: to what extent can emissions be reduced to achieve carbon neutrality?” someone said.
If you calculate carefully, to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, my country needs to reduce emissions by nearly 80% in the next 40 years. However, my country’s energy endowment is mainly coal, and its per capita GDP has just crossed the $10,000 mark. The whole society still needs to complete a lot of infrastructure construction. As the largest developing country, my country has a tight timeline, great pressure, and heavy tasks to achieve this ambitious goal.
Faced with the difficult problem of balancing emission reduction and development, at the end of 2020, after preliminary preparation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences deployed a major consulting project “Research on China’s Carbon Neutrality Framework Roadmap” (hereinafter referred to as the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project) led by three academicians Ding Zhongli, Zhang Tao and Gao Hongjun. The goal is to draw a feasible carbon neutrality roadmap, so that my country can safeguard its own development rights and interests while demonstrating its responsibility as a major country, and solve the major scientific problems behind policy making.
“Hot” consulting report
On May 30, 2021, at the academic report meeting of all academicians at the seventh academic annual meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ding Zhongli’s report, which was broadcast live on the entire network, attracted the attention of relevant departments of the State Council.
In the report, Ding Zhongli introduced the background, significance, key scientific issues, task design and existing preliminary understanding of the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project, a major consulting project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as the consulting project team’s five suggestions on the path to achieve carbon neutrality in my country in the future.
In Zhang Tao’s impression, since then, various departments of the State Council have often come to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for research and exchanges to understand the specific content of the carbon peak and carbon neutrality recommendation report. He himself has also often received report invitations from various industry departments to popularize the carbon neutrality technology system.
After comprehensively considering the opinions and suggestions of all parties, on September 22, 2021, the “Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Completely and Accurately Implementing the New Development Concept and Doing a Good Job in Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality” was issued. Immediately afterwards, on October 26, 2021, the State Council issued the “Carbon Peaking Action Plan before 2030” and gradually formed a “1+N” policy system for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality to promote China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals in all directions.
In November 2021, the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project recommendation report was finalized. The report not only gives a detailed answer on how my country will achieve the carbon neutrality goal step by step, but also gives a specific technical path to achieve the goal. At this time, it has been just one year since my country made a commitment to the world to “achieve the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals”.
In order to meet the needs of strategic decision-making on carbon peak and carbon neutrality at all levels and let more people know the results of the “carbon neutrality” consulting project, the consulting project team, while serving the decision-making and actions of ministries and provincial administrative regions, also strives to popularize the consulting research results. In September 2022, based on the research results of the “carbon neutrality” consulting project, the consulting project team published the monograph “Carbon Neutrality: Logical System and Technical Requirements” (hereinafter referred to as “Carbon Neutrality”), which was selected as a key publication of the Central Propaganda Department’s 2022 theme publication, providing an important reference book for government staff, practitioners in related industries and scientific researchers.
Once, Zhang Tao met an entrepreneur in the financial investment industry during a meeting. The entrepreneur found Zhang Tao holding the 500,000-word “Carbon Neutrality” and excitedly opened the book and said: “So you are one of the authors of this book! Look how many red lines I drew!”
“Since then, I found that many people outside the science and technology community are reading this book, wanting to understand what carbon neutrality is, how to achieve carbon neutrality, as well as the global situation and China’s measures.” Zhang Tao recalled.
The popularity of “Carbon Neutrality” is related to the professionalism, foresight and high quality of the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project. Zhang Tao, who has participated in many consulting projects and has been in charge of the work of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said with emotion: “This is the largest consulting project I have ever experienced.”
A simple “scientific battle”
Back in the spring of 2021, after the Chinese Academy of Sciences clearly stated that it would do a “carbon neutrality” consulting project, a “scientific battle” covering 5 professional departments of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and hundreds of academicians and experts was launched.
Long before the country proposed the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, many research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences spontaneously carried out research related to carbon emissions. After the goal was proposed, the scientific and technological forces scattered in various research institutes were organized.
This “battle” started in the simplest way – Zhang Tao’s mobile phone had the contact information of many relevant top scientists in China. His first call was to Liu Zhongmin, director of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics) and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
“The department has launched a ‘carbon neutrality’ consulting project, and I hope you can participate in it.” Zhang Tao said.
On the other end of the phone, Liu Zhongmin immediately agreed. He realized that the technology and data accumulated for a long time in the past could finally be put to greater use.
Like Liu Zhongmin’s reaction, every scientist who received Zhang Tao’s call responded positively. “It takes a long time to participate in the consulting work. As long as everyone is called, they are very active and willing to participate no matter how busy they are. I feel very touched.” Zhang Tao recalled.
Soon, academicians and experts from the Department of Earth Sciences, the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine, the Department of Technical Sciences, the Department of Mathematics and Physics, and the Department of Chemistry and their teams formed a consulting project team of more than 100 people. They came to Beijing from all over the world to discuss consulting strategies.
The consulting project team first clarified a principle – establish first and then break. “We must achieve the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, but we cannot sacrifice the quality of life of the people and the country’s economic development at the expense of the cost.” Zhang Tao said.
They decided to start from science and dialectically grasp the relationship between “establishment” and “break” to make the process of achieving the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality more in line with China’s reality.
Under the leadership of Ding Zhongli, everyone quickly determined the general framework of the technical system after heated discussions. The core expert team believes that achieving carbon neutrality requires the establishment of a “three-end joint effort” system. Among them, the “power generation end” uses non-carbon energy such as wind, light, water, and nuclear to replace coal, oil, and gas; the “consumption end” uses electricity, hydrogen energy, geothermal energy, etc. to replace coal, oil, and gas through industrial processes and process reconstruction; the “carbon fixation end” uses carbon sequestration technologies such as ecological construction and carbon capture-utilization-storage to artificially fix carbon dioxide on the surface, products, or strata.
On this basis, the consulting project team set up 9 research topics from the three major aspects of emissions, carbon fixation, and policies, focusing on the technology list and policy needs, covering the technology demand list research in the power supply system, energy consumption field, ecological and anthropogenic carbon fixation fields, as well as the historical trend and current status assessment of carbon emissions.
In addition, the project team also reversed the goal of achieving carbon neutrality in 2060 and divided the next 40 years into four development stages: carbon control stage, carbon reduction stage, low carbon stage and neutralization stage.
“Stand the test of history”
After the framework was set up, hundreds of academicians and experts took charge of or participated in corresponding special research tasks based on their professional expertise.
Liu Zhongmin and his team were responsible for studying the “technology demand list in the field of energy consumption” in order to find an energy technology development route for the goal of carbon neutrality.
“We need to analyze and compare thousands of technical routes, select reasonable technical directions, and finally form a systematic technical roadmap.” In Liu Zhongmin’s view, this is the biggest difficulty in doing strategic research. “All sectors of society are very enthusiastic and have proposed many technical routes, some of which are short-term, some are long-term, and many technologies are even contradictory. We must be based on reality and take into account the long-term; we must not only achieve emission reduction effects, but also be economically feasible; we must not only consider the maturity of technology, but also leave room for future technologies and disruptive technologies. There are many variables, but the fundamental purpose of emission reduction is to achieve better development, which is a hard truth. The general direction of technology cannot be wrong, and once the viewpoint is put forward, it must stand the test of history.”
Fortunately, when Liu Zhongmin’s team was working on the “Transformative Clean Energy Key Technology and Demonstration” project, a Class A strategic leading scientific and technological project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, they realized the necessity of strategic research and established an Energy Strategy Research Center at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. “Thanks to the large amount of data accumulated by the center, I dare to take on this task. I don’t have such great ability alone, and I still have to rely on the accumulation and research of the team.” Liu Zhongmin said.
Liu Zhongmin’s team built an intelligent model at the Energy Strategy Research Center and quickly found the “fastest and most practical ‘coordinates'” to clarify the priority of technological development.
“The energy production and consumption process based on fossil energy emits a large amount of carbon dioxide, mainly concentrated in industrial fields such as thermal power, steel, chemicals, non-ferrous metals, cement, and transportation, construction and other industries. To achieve low-carbon energy production and consumption, on the one hand, it is necessary to use non-carbon energy to replace fossil energy power generation and apply it to various fields and industries on the energy consumption side; on the other hand, it is necessary to promote the inherent technological changes and industrial structure upgrades in various industries, and design new process flows that do not emit carbon dioxide from a technical principle, in order to achieve a substantial reduction in emissions. This is an extremely complex and systematic work involving energy revolution, industrial revolution and scientific and technological revolution. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen top-level design and consider many issues such as multi-energy integration and multi-industry linkage carriers (such as energy storage, hydrogen energy) and key technology nodes.” Liu Zhongmin said.
Finally, Liu Zhongmin’s team cooperated with the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electrical Engineering and other teams to come up with a “technical requirements list in the field of energy consumption”, which not only proposed several advanced low-carbon technologies to be developed in the industrial, transportation and construction sectors, but also summarized the key scientific and technological problems that need to be solved, as well as the strategies and technical development routes for achieving low-carbonization of energy consumption.
In the “carbon neutrality” consulting project, there are many teams that participate in the research with the goal of “standing the test of history” like Liu Zhongmin’s team. For example, academicians and experts from the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other units, starting from wind and solar thermal power generation technology, stable power supply, multi-energy complementarity, power grid infrastructure and other aspects, gave a “technical requirements list for new power supply systems”.
Academicians and experts from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other units explored major negative emission technologies such as ecological carbon fixation, carbon capture, storage and utilization, and gave a “technical requirements list in the field of carbon fixation”.
Academicians and experts from Beijing Institute of Technology, Institute of Science and Technology Strategy Consulting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutions, as well as the policy research and strategic intelligence research forces of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made an international comparison of the historical trends and current status of carbon emissions, and compared the sources of carbon emissions in my country at the industry level.
“It is an important responsibility of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to provide strategic consulting advice to the country in a timely and realistic manner. In the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project, we completed the systematic design of carbon peak and carbon neutrality technology, and handed in the answer sheet of the scientific and technological community, so that the realization of carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals can be more effective, content-rich, and step-by-step.” Zhang Tao said.
After completing the “Carbon Neutrality” consulting project, scientists’ work continues. On March 2, 2022, the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued the “Science and Technology Support for Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality Strategic Action Plan” (hereinafter referred to as the “Action Plan”), which specifically deployed and implemented 18 key tasks for the strategic major scientific and technological needs of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. The various research teams that were once gathered together for strategic consulting tasks have returned to their respective laboratories to vigorously tackle key problems to meet strategic major scientific and technological needs.
“We hope to achieve the ‘four ones’ through the implementation of the ‘action plan’, namely, to come up with a technical roadmap to solve the problem of the path to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality; to propose a number of new concepts and theories to solve the principle of carbon reduction and carbon fixation; to break through a number of new technologies to solve the process and equipment problems of emission reduction and carbon sink increase; to calculate a good income and expenditure account to solve the monitoring and accounting problems of carbon sources and carbon sinks.”
Looking to the future, Zhang Tao is full of confidence, “Compared with developed countries, China is using 20 to 30 years to complete what developed countries have taken 100 years to complete. China is a responsible major country. We are solidly and step by step implementing and steadily advancing the carbon peak and carbon neutrality actions to inject strong impetus into the global response to climate change.”
