THE 2022 Carbon Peak and Neutrality Forum and Shenzhen International Low Carbon City Forum kicked off Monday with renowned experts, representatives from research institutions and companies sharing their views on green development, according to Shenzhen Economic Daily.

“The digital and green economies are two engines for China’s economic development,” said Liu Shijin, deputy director of the Economic Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, at a roundtable session of the forum.

Liu suggested that many products that haven’t met peak demand can be replaced with green energy ones. He also observed that China’s economy will maintain medium growth over a time period in the future so it will have a larger market demand than developed countries, which is very important to expand the financial market for green products.

Cheng Huiming, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, suggested at the roundtable session that materials are very important basis to realize carbon peaking and neutrality goals.

As per the city’s development plan on the hydrogen energy industry (from 2021 to 2025), the scale of Shenzhen’s hydrogen energy industry will reach 200 billion yuan (US$28.66 billion) in 2035. At present, Shenzhen has over 150 supply chain companies involved in hydrogen energy.

Shenzhen Das Intellitech Building in Nanshan District became the city’s first green building to realize carbon neutrality. The building received the honor at a parallel forum of the 2022 Carbon Peak and Neutrality Forum and Shenzhen International Low Carbon City Forum. The energy consumption per unit area of the office buildings in the nearly past year was 85kWh/(m2.a), which is lower than the 95 limit value in Shenzhen and meets the city’s green standards of office buildings.

In another development, a WeChat miniprogram named Blue Planet (低碳星球) will complete the transaction of emission reductions accumulated by users on Shenzhen ETS and will be refunded to users in the form of Metro train tickets.

Over 1 million citizens used the app to accumulate their carbon points last year. Citizens can redeem Metro train tickets when reducing carbon emissions by 12 kilograms, as reported by Shenzhen Special Zone Daily.

(Wang Jingli)