CHINA’S State Council Information Office on Thursday released a white paper titled “China’s Green Development in the New Era.”

The white paper aims to present a full picture of China’s ideas, actions, and achievements in green development in the new era, and to share with the world its experience in this regard.

China has made remarkable progress in promoting the green and low-carbon energy, with proportion of clean energy sources increasing, the white paper says.

To develop non-fossil energy, China has made rapid progress in building large-scale wind and photovoltaic power stations on infertile and rocky terrain and in deserts.

The country has steadily developed offshore wind farms, promoted rooftop photovoltaic power generation in urban and rural areas, and encouraged distributed wind power generation in rural areas. China has built a structured matrix of large hydropower stations in the basins of major rivers, especially those in the southwest.

Meanwhile, China has developed solar, biomass, geothermal and ocean energy, and power generation through urban solid waste incineration in accordance with local conditions. It has developed nuclear power in a safe and orderly manner. Committed to innovation-driven development, China has worked on developing hydrogen energy.

Thanks to these efforts, the proportion of clean energy sources in total energy consumption increased from 14.5% in 2012 to 25.5% by the end of 2021, and the proportion of coal decreased from 68.5% to 56% over the same period, as per the white paper.

By the end of 2021, the installed capacity of renewable energy was more than 1 billion kilowatts, accounting for 44.8% of China’s overall installed capacity. The installed capacity of hydropower, wind power, and photovoltaic power each exceeded 300 million kilowatts, all ranking the highest in the world.

A new type of protected area (PA) system has been set up in China to promote eco-environmental conservation, it says.

China is developing a PA system with national parks as the mainstay, supported by nature reserves and supplemented by nature parks.

The first batch of five national parks — the Three-River-Source National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, and the Wuyishan National Park — has been established.

Scientific eco-environmental conservation red lines have also been developed to ensure national eco-environmental security. More than 30% of China’s land area — including integrated and optimized PAs — is now under the protection of such red lines.

China’s forest coverage ratio and forest stock volume registered 30 consecutive years of growth, making China the country with the highest growth in forest resources and the largest area of man-made forest.

China has accelerated the building of a green transport network, with optimizing the structure of energy consumption and improving the efficiency of organization as its priorities, according to the white paper.

In 2021, the railway and waterway freight volume accounted for 24.56% of the total in China, an increase of 3.85 percentage points over 2012.

China has also promoted the green transformation of transport vehicles. By the end of 2021, the number of China’s registered new energy vehicles had reached 7.84 million, accounting for about half of the global figure, the white paper says. (Xinhua)