In February 2022, the government released guidelines&nbsp; promoting the High-Quality Development of the Iron and Steel Industry and that required to reach peak CO2 emissions by 2030. In July, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved a plan to oblige companies in steel, building materials, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metals, consumer goods, equipment manufacturing and electronics sectors with an annual revenue of CNY20m (US$2.9m) or more to slash energy use by 13.5% from 2020 levels in 2025, and to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030.</div><div>

The plan was introduced by a notice from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the National Development and Reform Commission. According to this plan, new-build public buildings and factories in town and cities should be covered at 50% by solar panels by 2025.

This document provides guidelines on leveraging the role of fiscal policies to achieve the country's carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, set in 2021 in the "1+N" Action Plan. According to the guidelines, the country will update its financial policy framework by 2030 to support green and low-carbon development, notably making use of market mechanisms like carbon and pollution discharge trading.&nbsp; According to its stated objectives, a first step in the enrichment of fiscal policy tools as well as the tax policy framework will be reached by 2025. This should cover all regions and industries. Before 2030, the fiscal and taxation policy system will be finalised, enabling the carbon-peaking threshold. A long-term mechanism to promote green and low-carbon development will be gradually established. Before 2060, the policy system of financial support for green and low-carbon development will enable to reach carbon neutrality.

<div>This document sets the government strategy to boost low-carbon hydrogen supply in the country and notably decarbonise high-energy-consuming and high-emission industries.It explicitly favours green hydrogen over grey hydrogen. By 2025, the plan hopes that China will enjoy a relatively complete system and policy environment for the development of the hydrogen energy industry, significant improvements in industrial innovation capability, a mastering of core technologies and manufacturing processes, and a relatively complete supply chain and industrial system. It also sets directional goals to the 2030 and 2035 horizons. The plan further seeks to:</div><ul><li>Coordinate and promote the construction of hydrogen energy infrastructure</li><li>Actively carry out international cooperation in hydrogen energy technology innovation</li><li>Build a storage and transport system</li><li>Develop planning of hydrogen refueling network</li><li>Ppromote the diversified demonstration application of hydrogen energy</li><li>Promote fuel-cells medium and heavy vehicles</li><li>Explore alternative applications in the industrial field</li><li>Accelerate the improvement of hydrogen energy development policies and institutional guarantee systems</li><li>Establish and improve the hydrogen energy policy system</li><li>Establish and improve the hydrogen energy industry standard system</li><li>Promote pilot demonstrations</li><li>Strengthening fiscal and financial support</li><li>Carry out the publicity and implementation of safety regulations and safety standards for hydrogen energy production, storage, transmission and use, enhance the safety awareness of the main body of enterprises, and build a solid foundation for the safe utilization of hydrogen energy.</li></ul>

This plan explicitly mentions global climate governance and the ongoing low-carbon transformation of the energy and industry sectors. It seeks to coordinate measures to improve national energy security and achieve carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 to ensure a high-quality economic and social development. It adheres to the national people-entered development philosophy. It also reasserts the regulating role of coal and the goal of boosting national production of natural gas. It enshrines into national policy the goal of supporting developing countries with green energy while not supporting any new overseas coal power projects. The plan calls for a speed up of the adjustment of the energy sector. It seeks to:<ul><li>Strengthen power security and electricity greed in particular</li><li>Improve energy network security management and control.</li><li>Strengthen risk management and emergency management.&nbsp;</li><li>Sets a number of energy targets and development of non-fossil energy for 2025</li><li>Accelerate the promotion of green and low-carbon transformation of energy (chapter 4).</li><li>Enhance power coordination and optimised operation capability</li><li>Improvement of wind and photovoltaic power forecasts</li><li>Accelerate the large-scale application of new energy storage technologies</li><li>Promote the development of power-side energy storage</li><li>Improve power load flexibility</li><li>Strengthen the construction of power demand side response capacity</li></ul>

This law was enacted to strengthen wetland protection, maintain wetland ecological functions and biodiversity, ensure ecological security, promote the construction of ecological civilization, and achieve harmonious coexistence between man and nature (art 1). Article 39 of the law states that scientific studies shall be performed and measures taken accordingly to the local conditions of the original and degraded wetlands to ensure a restoration of their ecological functions. It further charges local governments to take measures relative to water body management, land improvement, vegetation restoration, and animal protection to enhance functions and carbon sink capabilities.

This law aims to guarantee and promote the development of the electric power industry, safeguard the lawful rights and interests of investors, companies and consumers of electric power and to guarantee safe operation. Article 5 stipulates that the State encourages and supports the generation of electricity through the use of renewable and clean energy resources.

This law promotes the development of a circular economy, aims to improve resource usage and protect the environment. It notably seeks to enhance energy efficiency, increase the role of renewable energy sources&nbsp;

The Act aims to strengthen energy conservation, particularly for key energy-using entities, promote efficient use of energy and adoption of energy conservation technology. The term "energy" as used in this Law refers to various sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, biomass energy, electricity, heat, and other resources that process or convert into useful energy (Article 2). There are six substantive chapters to this Law: General Provisions; Energy Conservation Management; Reasonable Use and Energy Conservation (further split into Industrial Energy Conservation, Building Energy Conservation, Transport Energy Conservation, Public Institutions, Key Energy Consumption Units); Conservation Technology Progress; Incentives; and Legal Liability. Under Article 6, the government's of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities must report annually to the State Council on the performance of their energy-saving target responsibilities. The department responsible for energy conservation within the State Council is responsible for the supervision and management of this Law (see Article 10). Article 33 states that the construction of coal-fired power generation units, oil-fired power generation units, and coal-fired thermal power units, which "do not comply with national regulations" are prohibited. There are also provisions requiring relevant authorities to prepare energy efficiency and conservation plans. For example, Article 34 requires construction departments of local government's at or above county levels to formulate building energy conservation plans within their administrative regions. Article 41 also requires the relevant transport department of the State Council to formulate energy conservation plans.

This Act describes duties of the government, business and other users in renewable energy development and use. It includes measures and goals relating to mandatory grid connection, price management regulation, differentiated pricing, special funds and tax reliefs, and sets the goal to realise 15% of China's energy from renewable sources by 2020. The Act requires the government to encourage and support the application of renewable energy in various areas. The Act also requires that the government budget establishes a renewable energy development fund. In terms of monitoring arrangements, it requires that energy authorities of the State Council are responsible for organising and co-ordinating national surveys and management of renewable energy resources, and work with related departments to establish technical regulations for resource surveys. Relevant departments of the State Council, within their respective authorities, are responsible for related renewable energy resource surveys. The survey results will be summarised by the energy authority in the State Council. Energy authorities of the State Council must set mid- and long-term targets for the total volume of renewable energy at the national level, which shall be implemented and released to the pubic after being approved by the State Council. Notice 25/2021 determines the objectives for solar and wind in particular for the year 2021. A <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c30834/201912/2b7568de01944c33b9326c325dcd498f.shtml" target="_blank">report </a>of the Congress' Law Enforcement Inspection Team of the Standing Committee inspecting the implementation of the law was published in December 2019. A draft amendment of the law was published in 2020 for consultation.

China's submission to the global stocktake, Submission to the Global Stocktake from China in 2022

China's Mid-Century Long-Term Low Greenhouse Gas Emission Development Strategy, Long-Term Low-Emission Development Strategy from China in 2021

China First NDC (Updated submission), Nationally Determined Contribution,Adaptation Communication from China in 2021

China. National communication (NC). NC 3., National Communication from China in 2019

China. Biennial update report (BUR). BUR 2., Biennial Update Report from China in 2019

Law on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution

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Last amendment

Entry into force

This law's purpose is "protecting and improving the environment, preventing and controlling atmospheric pollution, safeguarding public health, advancing ecological civilization and promoting the sustainable development of economy and society" (Art 1). It calls for comprehensive measures to be taken against the pollution "caused by the burning of coal, industrial production, motor vehicles and vessels, dust as well as agricultural activities" (Art 2.). The objective is to restrict various sources of atmospheric pollutants, including "air pollutants and greenhouse gases, including particles, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and ammonia etc." (Art 2.) and make information on atmospheric cleanliness more readily available to the public. 
 
The 2015 revisions provide that China should promote clean and efficient use of coal, obliging local governments to ban low-quality coal for residential use (Chapter IV, Section 1). Art 32 calls for "measures to improve energy structure and popularize the production and utilization of clean energy; optimize the utilization of coal to be cleaner and more effective; and reduce the proportion of coal in primary energy consumption and the discharge of atmospheric pollutants during the production, utilization and transformation of coal". 
 
The law provides for the Government to advocate low-carbon and eco-friendly transport. "The ownership of vehicles using petroleum fuels shall be controlled below an appropriate level in accordance with urban planning. Public transport in urban areas shall be vigorously boosted to increase its proportion in overall transport. The State shall adopt measures including fiscal and tax policy and government procurement to popularize motor vehicles and vessels and non-road mobile machineries that save energy, protect the environment and use new energy; to limit motor vehicles and vessels and non-road mobile machineries that feature high level oil consumption and emission; and to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels" (Art 50). The law calls for establishment of a gasoline quality standard matched with the country's restriction requirements for major pollutants (Art 13), including sulfur, olefin, arenes and benzene. 
 
The law calls the relevant state environmental department to "observe and simulate atmospheric conditions and use new technologies of artificial satellites, photogrammetric measurement and long-distance monitoring so as to analyze the sources and future trend of atmospheric pollution in these key areas. The department shall release such analyses to the public" (Art 91). 
 
The law also provides greater environmental transparency to the public. It stipulates authorities of the State Council should evaluate provincial-level governments on their attainment of air quality improvement targets. The law also specifies other items to be disclosed publicly, including air quality standard, catalogue of major polluters, contact information of environmental authorities and supervisors, test results on the emissions of new vehicles, and sources and fluctuations of air pollution in important areas (Chapter III). 
 
Violations or non-compliance with the law may result in fines between 5,000RMB (USD$760) and 1,000,000 RMB (USD$ 152,000), based on severity of offense, type of entity, operation and recurrence of offense (Chapter VII). 
The law was originally adopted on September 5, 1987; amended according to the Decision on Revising the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution on August 29, 1995; revised on April 29, 2000; and most recently revised again on August 29, 2015.

Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution Law

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