China’s provincial-level governments have now all published their 15th five-year plans – economic and social development blueprints for 2026-2030.
These provincial plans reaffirm the overall trajectory of China’s energy transition, but reveal regional differences, based on economic and geographic considerations.
Provincial plans are a critical mechanism for showing how high-level targets from the central government will be translated into action.
For example, binding indicators set at national level include reductions in carbon intensity – carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit of economic output – and the proportion of non-fossil energy in total consumption.
Subsequent targets are then set for each province and tied to the performance evaluations of top local officials, who are ultimately responsible for delivery.
Similarly, provincial plans also build on qualitative policy directives in the national-level plan, such as further developing new-energy vehicles (NEVs) and hydrogen industries.
Specific policies, such as boosting production capacity, appear in several provincial-level plans.
Below, Carbon Brief analyses what the 31 documents say about energy and climate.
What do the provincial plans say about climate goals?
At the broad level, the new provincial plans follow China’s overarching climate goals. All 31 provincial-level jurisdictions in mainland China have pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030.
Every plan also mentions the core elements of China’s energy transition strategy, including solar, wind, hydrogen, energy storage and upgrading the power grid.
While solar features in every plan, specific interests in the technology vary from province to province.
Some set goals to add new solar capacity by 2030. Zhejiang province aims to add 90GW of solar capacity, while Shaanxi plans to “accelerate” construction of wind and solar bases in the north of the province, as well as “solar+” models – such as “forest-solar” and “tea-solar” – in the south. Several plans mention developing offshore solar farms in the next five years.
However, others instead choose to focus on recycling old solar panels or strengthening solar R&D.
The chart below shows the frequency with which key climate and energy terms appeared in the 31 provincial-level five-year plans.
Almost every plan mentions growing consumption and production of NEVs. Growing the NEV industry is seen as an essential step to China becoming “a leading power in automobiles” and “a key strategic move” to address climate change, according to a plan for the sector’s development issued by the State Council in 2020.
Around 15 provinces pledge to promote NEV uptake. Jilin set a target for NEVs comprising more than 50% of new car sales by 2030, although its current rate is already thought to be 47%.
While the central government is issuing directives to limit “overcapacity” in the sector, more than 20 provinces say they will continue developing their NEV industries, with many aiming to generate hundreds of billions – or even trillions – of yuan in value.
Among them are established NEV manufacturing bases such as Shanghai and Chongqing.
Meanwhile, 24 provinces will prioritise developing renewable power “direct connection” models, in which renewable generators supply industrial users via a dedicated line – a system that could boost consumption of clean energy.
Provinces diverge in terms of what other technologies they name and how detailed their plans are.
For example, offshore wind and nuclear are mentioned by 11 and 12 provinces respectively, with both technologies mostly targeted to be built in coastal provinces.
Inland provinces, such as Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang, instead focus on developing wind and solar farms across desert regions.
But in general, variation reflects more than just geography or resources endowment, says Anders Hove, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
“The differences between provinces reflect primarily differences in economic development capabilities and industrial structure,” he tells Carbon Brief.
Yang Li, deputy executive director at the Beijing-based thinktank Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP), echoes this, stating that the variation reflects differences in the resources available to provinces and their own strategic positioning.
Provinces are also increasingly discussing how to manage the decommissioning of solar and windfarms.
Around 19 provinces have set out plans to recycle old clean-energy equipment, a topic that featured in few plans in the previous five-year cycle. While most of the plans that mention the goal only briefly flagged the issue, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Qinghai have pledged to create dedicated recycling parks or industrial clusters.
How do provinces talk about fossil fuels?
Almost every province has pledged to peak coal and oil consumption, in line with similar language in the national-level plan.
However, 17 local governments also pledge to produce more fossil fuels – trying to peak consumption while also expanding output, opening new reserves or lifting production limits.
Most of these are western and northern regions designated as national energy-supply bases, including Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang.
Yang tells Carbon Brief this pattern reflects the “two dimensions of China’s [energy] transition”, namely a national-level push for peaking fossil-fuel consumption and a desire for energy security by provinces rich in energy resources.
Provinces that host significant fossil-fuel economies are also the most likely to mention carbon capture and storage, as well as curbs on non-CO2 greenhouse gases.
Carbon capture and efforts to deal with methane, another potent greenhouse gas, appear in 14 plans.
All the provincial plans mention gas. Unlike consumption of coal and oil, which almost every province has pledged to peak, no province has proposed capping gas use.
Several provinces set explicit targets to expand gas production. Sichuan aims for annual gas production of 70bn cubic metres, while Inner Mongolia is targeting 32bn cubic metres by the end of 2030.
Others plan on generally expanding gas extraction, utilisation and infrastructure. Guangdong plans to build several new gas-fired power plants while Henan and Hubei will “accelerate” exploration for and development of oil and gas fields.
Provinces such as Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Chongqing and Tianjin will expand gas storage and pipeline connectivity, framing the fuel as a way to ensure energy security.
Gas occupies a small position in China’s overall energy mix, accounting for 8-9% of primary energy demand and 7% of CO2 emissions. It nevertheless remains a relatively large source of energy for some provinces, such as the industrial hub of Guangdong.
It has often been referred to as a “bridging fuel” that can help countries move away from coal use, with several of China’s policies in the 2010s encouraging coal-to-gas switching. However, in China its growth has slowed in recent years in the face of unreliable supplies and large additions of wind and solar capacity.
Provincial plans to expand gas output, Yang argues, reflect China’s aims to increase overall energy supply under its energy security strategy.
As such, she says, it “should not be viewed as a simple trade-off” between China’s climate and energy security goals. Instead, it is an “inevitable stage” in the country’s “build before breaking” strategy for the energy transition, through which China “maintains a certain level” of fossil-fuel production in the “short- to medium-term” while further developing clean-energy capacity.
What do provinces say about AI and hydrogen?
With the national government preparing to spend trillions of yuan on datacentres for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry in the next five years, provincial officials are also tying AI to their energy systems.
More than 20 aim to use AI to help manage coal mines, power grids, oilfields and forecasting renewables output.
Sichuan, for example, has pledged to apply AI “large language models” across “power grids, power generation, coal and oil and gas”. Shanxi states that it will build a dedicated AI model “for the energy industry”, as well as AI systems for forecasting grid loads and controlling coal mining equipment.
Yang says that “AI+energy” represents a desire by policymakers to use AI to enhance energy governance, but adds that “large-scale commercialisation [of the technology] still has some way to go”.
Hove compares current mentions of using AI in the energy system to similar references in previous plans to concepts such as big data and “Internet Plus”.
Such language, he argues, is “uncontroversial” and its inclusion can be accepted by a wide range of different groups. But he adds that, in his view, AI will not resolve the institutional barriers and market incentives that are currently restricting broader consumption of renewable energy.
Unlike AI, all provincial plans mention hydrogen, which is named as a “future industry” in the central-level five-year plan.
For example, Hunan calls for promoting hydrogen trucks and rail transport and developing “renewable energy-based” hydrogen production, while Shandong pledges to focus on technological breakthroughs around hydrogen transport and storage, as well as production of green hydrogen.
Similarly, 12 provinces name the other energy-related future industry – nuclear fusion, which remains an experimental technology – as a priority for the next five years. These provinces include Anhui, Guangdong, Hebei, Hubei and Shaanxi.
The post Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy?
Cleaner cooking projects in the UN carbon market will have to set aside a share of their credits to insure against the risk that the trees they save are lost to fire, drought or logging, after the market’s regulator rejected calls to exempt the sector.
The requirement is part of a new rulebook that the Paris Agreement carbon market regulator – the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body – approved last Friday for programmes that aim to cut emissions by distributing new and cleaner cookstoves in regions that still burn wood or charcoal for cooking.
These are the UN mechanism’s first rulebooks for cookstoves, one of the carbon market’s most popular credit types and also one of its most criticised for overstating climate benefits.
They consist of two methodologies: one for programmes that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves that burn less wood or charcoal, and a separate methodology for projects shifting households to lower-emissions cookers running on electricity or liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Supervisory Body, said “this decision gives cleaner cooking projects a new pathway under the UN carbon market, with clear rules to ensure that each credit represents a real and credible emission reduction”.
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Exemption push rejected
More efficient cookstove projects earn credits based on the amount of carbon they save by preserving trees that would have otherwise been cut down and burned for fuel. But if those trees later burn in a wildfire or are logged, the carbon stored would be released anyway, erasing the climate benefits of the credits.
Several carbon credit developers, conservation NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) disputed that cookstove projects face this risk, in what critics described as a “coordinated lobbying campaign”.
They argued that, unlike forest protection schemes, this type of credit represents a “flow” of avoided emissions rather than a “stock” of stored carbon that can be released. They also warned that requiring a buffer would impose disproportionate costs and undermine the financial viability of these activities.
But the UN carbon market regulator was not persuaded by the argument. It decided that projects would have to protect against this reversal risk by handing over a percentage of credits to a so-called “buffer pool” instead of selling them.
‘New paradigm’
The amount of credits to be given up is calculated by applying different methods for natural risks, like wildfires, droughts or hurricanes, and human-caused ones, such as logging or land clearing.
For natural risks, project developers will need to apply local risk values derived from new modelling published by a group of independent scientists.
Campaigners have broadly welcomed the decision. Federica Dossi, an expert at Brussels-based advocacy group Carbon Market Watch, said it sets a new paradigm for calculating reversal risk based on empirical data. “This approach is grounded in science and we hope to see this now being adopted by other carbon crediting mechanisms in the voluntary market,” she added.
Backers claim this method is more rigorous than current practice in the voluntary carbon market, which largely relies on expert guesswork.
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Pushback over science
As Climate Home News previously revealed, the same industry and NGO groups that sought an exemption from the “buffer pool”, along with some corporate buyers, criticised the use of a study backed by the UN carbon market’s experts that recommended the new risk assessment approach.
The groups pushed for more flexible rules that would have allowed natural risk values drawn from other sources, including national databases, or from the project developers themselves.
While the Supervisory Body rejected this approach, it gave project developers and countries the option to propose alternative values that would first need to be vetted by the mechanism’s expert panel and then approved by the regulator.
A carbon market expert told Climate Home News that, while it is too early to say how this provision will be used, they expect requests will have to be backed up with solid scientific evidence, lowering the risk of unfounded claims.
Policy discounts questioned
To guard against human-caused risks, projects will need to apply a flat 20% value set by the Supervisory Body, at the bottom of the 20-45% range recommended by its technical experts ahead of last week’s meeting.
That value can be further reduced by up to two-thirds if the host country has an emission-reduction plan covering forests, a long-term climate strategy and a framework for the UN’s REDD+ forest protection scheme.
Injy Johnstone, senior research fellow at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute, said that, while these are important governance measures, their existence does not necessarily demonstrate that the underlying risk of forest carbon loss has been reduced.
“It is important to distinguish between evidence of actual risk reduction and assumptions about the effectiveness of policy commitments,” she added.
Moving target
A UN source told Climate Home News that, under the approved formula, improved cookstove projects must set aside at least 9% of credits linked to saved wood if they operate in the lowest-risk areas and the host country can claim all available discounts. The share of credits rises significantly in regions with high natural risk values, such as Guyana, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste, or that do not have REDD+ programmes.
These factors could change in the future as the Supervisory Body asked its technical experts to recommend revisiting the risk values “should credible new evidence arise”.
Climate change is likely to make forest destruction events, such as wildfires or hurricanes, more frequent and more severe in certain regions. Meanwhile, national policies on forest protection can shift significantly depending on government changes.
Johnstone said the UN carbon market needs periodic reassessment to respond to new evidence showing that previously assumed levels of risk were too low.
“The integrity of credits is not guaranteed simply because a reversal risk tool exists,” she added. “The real test will be whether the mechanism provides equivalent atmospheric protection over time, rather than simply introducing another layer of accounting requirements”.
The post UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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