(Yicai) Aug. 10 -- At the 2023 Zero Carbon Summit hosted by Yicai Media Group in Shanghai yesterday, experts, scholars, and entrepreneurs in the green and low-carbon fields discussed how China can maintain a reasonable economic growth rate while achieving the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality.

Chen Sijie, Yicai Media’s chief executive, pointed out that the environmental crisis has become a widely perceived phenomenon, so achieving the dual carbon goals is becoming more urgent and the key is change and innovation.

Huang Zhen, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and dean of the Research Institute of Carbon Neutrality at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said that in order to achieve the dual carbon goals, China should give full play to the role of the electricity market as an “invisible hand,” enabling it to effectively promote the construction of a new power system with new energy resources as the mainstay.

Dai Yande, former director of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, noted that carbon neutrality is the third key choice on China's development path. To achieve it, economic development and energy consumption need to be gradually decoupled from carbon emissions, and new economic growth drivers need to be found, he said.

Liu Jie, general manager of the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange, said China has built the basic framework of a national carbon trading market, the key parts have been initially finished. In the future, the market will focus on introducing institutional investors, and more industries including electrolytic aluminum, cement, and steel will be included, he said.

Wu Shengwen, chief technology officer of solar inverter maker Aiswei Technology, said solar will become one of the main energy sources in the future and is a very important means to support zero carbon. China accounts for 35 percent to 40 percent of the world’s annual installation of photovoltaics, and this is just the beginning, he said.

Editor: Dou Shicong