Opportunity and Future of Zero Carbon City: Energy Transition within Carbon Neutralization Goal

Following "carbon peak 2030 and carbon neutralization 2060" set at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2020, the 14th Five-Year Plan has set specific targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And the policy executors who control carbon intensity and total carbon emission include key industries and enterprises as well as "qualified places".

Indeed, urbanization is likely to be one of the most important human activities affecting global climate change. Although cities are important carriers of economic development and human civilization, accounting for less than 2% of the global surface area, they consume more than 60% of fossil energy and produce more than 70% of human carbon emissions.

Under the goal of "2030 carbon peak, 2060 carbon neutralization", China will work hard to move from carbon peak to carbon neutralization in 30 years, which is a very difficult task. The United Kingdom, for example, in 1972 has achieved its own carbon peak, but the plan to achieve carbon neutralization time is 2050, lasted nearly 80 years. This means that China urgently needs a new urban development model, from the high dependence on the high-carbon industry, to low-carbon, sustainable development transition.

A "zero-carbon city", also known as an "eco-city", is an environmentally friendly city that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. There are mainly two ways to achieve zero-carbon cities: one is to offset urban carbon emissions by planting trees or purchasing carbon credits; the other is to require cities to rely entirely on renewable energy for operation and realize zero carbon emissions through zero carbon and independence of urban functional systems such as "zero-carbon transportation", "zero-carbon buildings", "zero-carbon energy" and "zero-carbon families".

Influenced by social economy, technical level, physical geography and policy culture, the carbon emission of different cities in our country has a big gap in total amount, structure, and peak action. In this context, the design and implementation of urban carbon peaks, carbon neutralization actions need to be differentiated.

Potentials and Challenges of Urban Type Transformation

The carbon peak types of Chinese cities can be divided into five categories: low-carbon potential cities, low-carbon model cities, floating cities, disabled cities, resource-dependent cities, and traditional industrial transformation cities. Among them, low-carbon potential cities and traditional industrial transition cities are the key to China's implementation of the 2030 Peak Action.

As for low-carbon potential cities, their economy is still in its infancy but growing rapidly, and the industrial structure has not formed the heavy industry path dependence, we can plan to establish low-carbon industry system, develop innovative green economy.

As for cities in the transition period of traditional industries, they rely on traditional industries and are in the transition period of industrial structure and can actively apply low-carbon technologies to transform and upgrade traditional industries and accelerate the elimination of backward production capacity. Concrete measures could include: first, the effective use of low-carbon industrial technologies and recycling technologies; second, the guidance of industrial structure to low-carbon strategic emerging industries, such as high-end equipment manufacturing, new materials, and modern service industries to transform.

Conclusion

With the gradual widening of the zero-carbon city track, our country may also have cities competing to join. However, from the international practice, the promotion of zero-carbon cities is faced with many difficulties, such as land planning and systematic planning differences, innovative practitioners and vested interests, transitional planning, and short-term climate pressure differences.

Every city should, according to its own conditions, find its own sustainable development path, follow the law, step by step to contribute to global sustainable development. Of course, at both the national and urban levels, achieving carbon neutrality depends on the synergy and co-creation of many stakeholders, including governments, financial institutions, industries, businesses, and even residents.