Pan'an county – administered by Jinhua city in East China's Zhejiang province – is moving to transform itself into a zero carbon county by 2025, under measures recently issued by the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission to support the high-quality development of the region.
The commission issued the measures in June and it is understood that this is the first time the province has set out the development goal of creating a zero carbon county.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Zhejiang's energy consumption per 10,000 yuan ($1,543) of industrial added value is targeted at 0.52 tons of coal, while Pan'an will aim to have that figure well within 0.5 tons, said Chen Chuliang, an official with the Pan'an county development and reform bureau.
In 2019, Pan'an's energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of industrial added value was 0.38 tons of coal, half the provincial average of 0.76 tons.
Over the past three years, the county's environmental protection and business departments have eliminated and rejected more than 100 industrial projects that did not meet the requirements of environmental protection – the equivalent to giving up more than 5 billion yuan ($770.6 million) of investment and more than 400 million yuan in tax revenue.
Pan'an is understood to be promoting the establishment of a carbon asset operation and management platform. It will also continue to explore the environmental transformation path of investing progressively in carbon sinks – things that absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release, such as forests and plants – in the future.
