Alibaba’s fintech arm Ant Group has announced plans to become carbon neutral by 2030, following a government call for companies to use advanced technologies to reduce emissions.

Ant Group will set up a fund to fund research and development of renewable energy and other green technologies, and will explore ways to use emerging blockchain technology to track its carbon reduction process in order to reach the proposed target, the company said in a statement released on Friday.

In a separate WeChat post issued the same day, Hangzhou-based Ant Group said that it will modify its existing buildings to raise their energy efficiency level and construct new facilities in accordance with China’s green building standards in efforts to meet its 2030 goal.

Meanwhile, an incentive mechanism will be established to encourage employees to follow low-carbon work practices, and technologies like liquid cooling will be used to reduce emissions in its data centers, Ant Group said in the WeChat post.

In September last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China would reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.

Besides Ant Group, many other companies, especially those in the tech sector, have also promised to contribute to the realization of the Chinese government’s environmental goals.

In January this year, internet giant Tencent unveiled plans to use its artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies to reduce carbon emissions in its office buildings and data centers.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: China’s Iron Ore Futures Sag on Steel Curbs, Carbon-Cutting Worries

At the start of 2021 people are already looking ahead to the U.N. Climate Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November in Glasgow. The meeting was postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic. Countries are expected to work out solutions for some of the unresolved issues left by the 2019 gathering, such as details on global carbon trade and capital commitments to support emission cuts.

2020 may have focused minds on the need to deal with climate change. The global mean temperature between January and October last year was around 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline, according to the World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations. That made 2020 one of the three warmest years on record, and it made the decade the hottest.

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that China will reach peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. At the December Climate Ambition Summit, Xi made further commitments that the country will lower its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 65% from the 2005 level in 2030, increase the share of nonfossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 25%, and bring its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to more than 1.2 billion kilowatts.

China’s ambition to reduce emissions reflects the country’s own struggles with air pollution and extreme weather events like this summer’s disastrous flooding in the Yangtze River basin. China has been battling air pollution caused by excessive emissions. In 2013 as the country started to monitor air pollution caused by fine particles, 71 out of the 74 cities monitored reported high levels of pollution.

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Contact editor Marcus Ryder (marcusryder@caixin.com)

JD iCity, a unit of ecommerce company JD focusing on smart cities, has applied its artificial intelligence-driven control system to a thermal power plant in North China with the aim of improving efficiency and cutting pollution. The latest news rides the wave of ongoing government encouragement to build cities powered by cutting-edge technologies including AI, big data and the internet of things.

The system, which is being used in the power plant located in Langfang in Hebei province is able to monitor multiple core variables for boilers in real time including temperature, coal feeding processes and air distribution for the purpose of optimizing combustion efficiency and reducing coal consumption, according to a company statement released on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the system can also make operational plans for the plant’s workers based on big data, reducing spend on high-level professionals who would previously have made such judgements, the statement added.

Hebei province is notorious for chronic air pollution as the result of a large concentration of highly polluting industries, with environmental challenges intensifying every winter when coal is used to meet much of the region’s heating needs.

In recent years, the provincial government has ramped up efforts to get rid of the stigma of being associated with some of the worst pollution in the country, including capping steelmakers’ output and urging wider use of clean energy. These are also part of the country’s wider efforts to meet the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2060.

China’s other tech giants including Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have also put forward plans and solutions to help local governments across the country build intelligent cities.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: JD.com Among Bidders for Japanese Skincare Brand Fancl’s Asian Business: Reuters

Affordable furniture retailer Ikea will start selling a plant-based version of its iconic Swedish meatballs at its China locations later this month as part of ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Made of yellow pea protein, oats, potatoes, onions and apples, the vegetarian-friendly meatballs have a carbon footprint that is 25 times less than that of the Swedish company’s classic pork-and-beef ones, according to Anders Lennartsson, sustainability manager at Ikea China.

The move is part of Ikea’s broader plan to reduce its carbon footprint which includes using renewable and recyclable materials in all furniture sold in China by 2030, said Anna Pawlak-Kuliga, CEO and president of Ikea China.

Ikea has promised to become “climate positive” by reducing more greenhouse gases from the environment in absolute terms by 2030 than the entire Ikea value chain emits.

Ikea’s new food offering comes as food and beverage giants such as KFC and Starbucks have rolled out their plant-based menus in China to provide more dining options. Meanwhile, faux meat makers have also eyed the lucrative market with U.S.-based Beyond Meat starting to move some of its production lines to the country with an estimated 50 million vegetarians.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: Plant-Based Faux Meat Maker Beyond Meat Shifts Production Lines to China

China has made dramatic air quality improvements in recent years as the government has relocated and retrofitted heavily polluting coal and oil plants.

Unfortunately for residents of many industrial cities, the country’s steel mills continue to belch out health-harming particulates, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides. But that is now changing as hundreds of firms upgrade their factories to meet strict emissions targets, according to Jiang Wei, the deputy Communist Party secretary of the China Iron and Steel Association, an industry group.

Some 228 companies accounting for more than 60% of total crude steel production capacity “are implementing the transformation to ultra-low emissions,” Jiang said Friday at an industry conference.

China, the world’s largest steel producer, aims to bring 60% of steel capacity in “key regions” in line with so-called “ultra-low” emissions standards by the end of this year and do the same across 80% of national capacity by 2025.

Read full story here.

Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)

Beijing is getting tough on e-commerce and food delivery firms in the Chinese government’s campaign aimed at protecting the biodiversity of the Yangtze River.

The Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation summoned representatives from six companies including e-commerce giant JD.com, food delivery titan Meituan and short video platform Douyin for a meeting, telling them to crackdown on the illegal sales of products from no-hunting areas of the Yangtze River and from other unknown waters, according to a statement released Friday.

To that end, the regulator ordered the six companies to take all necessary measures including adding key words such as “fresh water products from the Yangtze River” and “wildlife from the Yangtze River” to their respective prohibited goods lists and tightening up on the verification of sellers’ qualifications, the statement said.

It added that operators of short video apps, which double as e-commerce livestreaming platforms, should enhance their oversight of content related to sales of products from the Yangtze River.

In July, Beijing kicked off a one-year campaign aimed at combating the illegal sale of Yangtze River products in response to the Chinese government’s 10-year ban on fishing in key areas of the river issued in January. The ban aims to work towards the protection of the region’s biodiversity.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: What Killed the Yangtze River?

Don’t count out hydrogen-fueled cars just yet in China’s move to cleaner vehicles.

That’s the word from Beijing, where the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has just rolled out its latest draft regulations governing the transport and storage of the hydrogen fuel that powers such cars. The latest document has added language that could pave the way for transport and storage of liquefied hydrogen that is cheaper than pressurized gas now most commonly used.

Experts estimate that in the current market, the hydrogen needed to power a fuel cell car in China costs about 70 yuan ($10) per kilogram. But they estimate that needs to come down to less than 40 yuan before hydrogen-powered cars can be truly competitive with traditional gas-powered ones.

That’s where liquefied hydrogen comes in, offering potential major savings that could sharply reduce the price of hydrogen fuel. Researchers at China’s National Development and Reform Commission estimate the cost of transporting such fuel in liquid form is just one-eighth that of transporting it in the pressurized gas form now most widely used. Transport of liquefied hydrogen is already widely used in developed nations like the U.S., Germany and Japan.

The Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ministry isn’t the only one tackling the issue. Last year, a national committee solicited comments on draft technical requirements for the safe transport and storage of liquid hydrogen. A person involved with that effort told Caixin the draft is still being modified due to delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

China is working hard to put more clean energy vehicles on its roads in an effort to clean up the nation’s polluted air. Most of that effort has focused on electric and hybrid vehicles, though that sector has moved into the slow lane these days after Beijing sharply reduced government subsidies last year in an effort to make producers more self-sufficient.

Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)

Related: Toyota to Develop Hydrogen Fuel Cell with Chinese Companies

Amazon has announced its first renewable energy project in China as part of ongoing efforts to reduce its carbon emissions.

The U.S. ecommerce giant’s China project will be a 100 megawatt (MW) solar power farm in the eastern province of Shandong, which is expected to generate 128,000 megawatt hours of clean energy every year, according to a company statement released last week.

Apart from the China project, Amazon also said that it will build a 105 MW solar farm in New South Wales, Australia, and three in the United States, of which two will be located in Ohio with respective capacities of 200 MW and 80 MW. There will also be a facility based in Virginia with 130 MW of capacity.

Once operational, the five solar power facilities will supply nearly 1.2 million megawatt hours of renewable energy to the company’s fulfillment networks and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, the statement said, without providing details on when the construction will be completed.

In September 2019, Amazon announced a massive commitment to combat climate change officially named The Climate Pledge, under which the company aims to reduce its carbon emissions with the ultimate target of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040.

So far, Amazon has unveiled 31 utility-scale wind and solar renewable energy projects and 60 solar rooftops on its fulfilment and sorting centers globally. U.S. tech giant Apple has also previously announced plans to invest in solar and wind power production in China.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (dingyi@caixin.com)

Related: Alibaba Cloud Consolidates Market Share But Struggles Against Western Peers

Beijing and Shanghai have witnessed dramatic improvements in air quality so far this winter but progress has slowed and even reversed in many other parts of China, according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an environmental research organization.

An uptick in coal and oil consumption as well as rising industrial output drove pollution increases outside the greater Beijing and Shanghai regions, which the government considers high-priority areas for air quality. In particular, southern and northeastern provinces saw significant increases in PM2.5, ultrafine particles that can pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and damage organs in the human body.

The report surveys year-on-year changes in air quality from October through December 2019, the first three months of China’s official winter season. It comes as China grapples with an economic slowdown that has spurred a fallback onto coal-fired power generation and other highly polluting industries.

“As coal and oil consumption have increased in the past two years, progress on air quality has relied entirely on better filters and moving industrial production away from priority areas. Continued improvements require accelerating the clean-energy transition,” said CREA lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later today.

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Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)

Related: China’s Big Cities Get Cleaner Air, But at What Cost?

China’s government is reportedly considering scaling back or even abolishing subsidies to the offshore wind power sector in 2022, in the latest sign that Beijing intends to cut financial support to renewable energy firms as their technology becomes more commercially competitive.

However, while national subsidies for new offshore wind farms might be scrapped, Beijing would still encourage regional-level governments to subsidize construction of local offshore wind farms, state-run media outlet Shanghai Securities News reported Tuesday. Those projects are typically built in shallow coastal waters with steady winds.

Previously, China subsidized various forms of renewable energy to offset their higher costs compared to traditional forms of energy such as coal and gas. But that money is becoming less relevant as the costs of renewables continues to fall and the industry becomes more economically competitive. Last year, the central government cancelled subsidies for the solar power industry.

An analysis by BloombergNEF published in October found that global benchmark prices for offshore wind energy had fallen 32% in the year prior.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later.

Contact reporter Yutong Lu (yutonglu@caixin.com)

Related: Solar Power Fades With End of State Support, but Seen Stabilizing in 2020

China’s agriculture ministry said Monday it plans to grant biosafety certificates to two domestically produced, genetically modified (GM) corn varieties and one soybean variety, the first time in 10 years that the country has issued such certificates to staple food grains.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) said it intends to issue the certificates to an insect- and weed killer-resistant corn strain known as DBN9936, which is produced by Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, and a similar variety, called “double-stacked 12-5,” co-developed by Hangzhou Ruifeng Biotech and Zhejiang University.

The weed killer-resistant SHZD32-01 soybean, developed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, will also become China’s first GM soybean crop to obtain the biosafety certificate, as long as the plan passes unscathed through a 15-day period of public consultation.

The decision to issue the certificates to the different crops, hints that Beijing is moving ahead with plans to commercialize GM crops. The country has plowed vast sums of money into GM research and awarded biosafety certificates to several corn and rice varieties in 2009, but has avoided a push to commercialize them amid safety concerns from consumers.

Also on Monday, MARA approved a new variety of U.S.-developed GM soybeans for import, a step that could be a boon in upcoming trade negotiations with Washington.

Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)

Related: China OKs Imports of More Genetically Modified Crops

PetroChina is looking to produce 12 billion cubic meters of shale gas next year and is predicting 7.8 billion to 8 billion cubic meters of output for 2019, the company's vice president Li Luguang said at an energy conference Thursday.

The Chinese government wants to increase annual production capacity of the fuel to 30 billion cubic meters by 2020, according to a plan published by National Energy Administration in 2016.

Shale gas deposits lie underground within layers of rock and require extraction using methods such as “fracking,” where high-pressure liquids are injected into the earth to blast the rocks apart. Beijing has been pushing the use of the method in recent years in an effort to increase the country’s energy security, providing support that includes a 30% tax cut for shale gas producers for the April 2018 to March 2021 period.

Fracking is controversial due to environmental and health concerns, and the technique has been linked to earthquakes.

A series of deadly tremors that shook Rong county in Sichuan province in China’s southwest earlier this year sparked a public outcry that prompted the local government to suspend nearby fracking operations.

Sichuan sits on what is thought to be the largest deposit of shale gas in the world.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later today.

A previous version of this story wrongly named PetroChina as its controlling shareholder, China National Petroleum Corp.

Contact reporter Yutong Lu (yutonglu@caixin.com)

Related: In Depth: Earthquakes Are the Latest Setback to China’s Fracking Ambitions

China raised its 2025 sales target for new-energy vehicles (NEVs) to a quarter of all car sales from a previously planned 20% as the industry shows signs of slowing after steep cuts to government subsidies.

In a new draft plan on NEV industry development issued Wednesday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) also put forward radically reduced requirements for NEVs’ energy consumption.

According to the draft, the average fuel consumption of new plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles in China is required to drop to 2 liters per 100 kilometers by 2025, and the average power consumption of new purely electric passenger vehicles has to drop to 12 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers. This is the first time for China to measure the power consumption of purely electric cars in terms of electricity consumption. The government previously measured both purely electric cars and conventional cars based on fuel consumption.

The 12 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers requirement is a hard-to-reach target, according to a report by China Automotive Technology and Research Center. The report projects the average power consumption of purely electric cars to drop to about 13.85 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers.

During the first 10 months of 2019, China sold 940,000 million NEVs, which include plug-in hybrids, battery-only electric vehicles and those powered by hydrogen fuel cells. They accounted for 4.6% of vehicle sales, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

The MIIT had aimed to sell a total of 35 million cars per year by 2025, in which NEVs would account for 20%. But industry participants have been pessimistic about the target.

Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com)

An uphill road.

That’s how some executives at a major auto show in South China are describing the task of selling new energy vehicles in China. Beijing is putting huge pressure on the auto industry to sell more such vehicles, mostly electric and hybrids. But consumers just aren’t biting.

Carmakers are racing right now to sell new-energy vehicles, or NEVs, in a bid to conform with new quotas requiring all manufacturers to get certain percentages of their sales from NEVs in the coming years. The problem is that consumer demand just isn’t there yet.

Of the nearly 900,000 NEVs sold in China this year through the end of September, just over 100,000 went to consumers, said Wang Yongqing, president of General Motors’ Shanghai joint venture, speaking at the Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in southern Guangdong province. Most of the rest are going to fleet operators, such as city bus and taxi services.

With government pressure on carmakers now the biggest factor driving the sector’s development, the absence of an NEV component means such manufacturers simply “can’t pass through the gate,” Wang said.

The situation at present looks particularly bleak, with the recent scaling back of government incentives for NEV buyers causing sales to plunge. NEV sales reached just 75,000 in October, down by nearly half from a year earlier, following a 34% decline in September.

Wang said the industry faces several major obstacles, including high battery costs and low resale values. Consumers are unlikely to embrace the technology without changes to those parts of the equation, which could make it “very, very difficult” for the sector to develop, he added.

Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com; twitter: @youngchinabiz https://twitter.com/youngchinabiz)

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The Yangtze River Delta and the Fenwei Plain regions in China should improve their air quality readings by 2% and 3%, respectively, during the 2019-2020 autumn and winter seasons, China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced.

The two regions have been tasked with lowering the average daily concentrations of PM2.5, particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less that can cause a litany of health complaints. The autumn and winter period runs from Oct. 1, 2019 until March 31, 2020, the time of year that typically sees higher pollution due to heating and high industry activity.

Over the same period last year, 10 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region failed to hit their PM2.5 reduction targets, with five cities’ PM2.5 averages actually increasing from the previous year.

The Yangtze River Delta region, which includes cities such as Shanghai, Wuxi, and Hangzhou, and the Fenwei Plain, which encompasses an area of about 150,000 square kilometers across Shanxi, Shaanxi, and parts of Henan provinces, have gotten off easy this year compared with the targets for the 28-city region that includes Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei province and surrounding areas. That region must decrease its average PM2.5 concentration by 4% this autumn and winter season.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later today.

Contact reporter Ren Qiuyu (qiuyuren@caixin.com)

Related: China’s Big Cities Get Cleaner Air, But at What Cost?

As China’s e-commerce giants generate hundreds of billions of yuan in sales from Monday’s “Double 11” shopping extravaganza, environmental groups are reminding consumers that online shopping comes at a cost to the planet.

The country’s e-commerce and express delivery sectors used a whopping 9.4 million tons of packing materials last year, with the courier sector producing an estimated 13 million tons of carbon emissions, according to a report by three environmental NGOs whose release was timed to coincide with the world’s largest shopping fest. A business-as-usual scenario will see both sectors churn out an estimated 41.3 million tons of packaging annually by 2025, the report said.

Although some 80% of paper-based packaging waste gets recycled, plastic packaging is not recycled 95% of the time, the report found. In urban areas, most plastic mixes with other kinds of solid waste and ends up in either landfills or incinerators.

The report, co-published by Greenpeace East Asia, Break Free From Plastic China, and the All-China Environment Federation, also takes aim at the “limited” efforts made by e-commerce and delivery companies to address their mounting waste problems. “Superficially” green initiatives like narrowing the plastic tape used on parcels and rolling out digital ordering systems “obviously do not get to the core of the issue,” the study found.

The report makes a number of recommendations on how to reduce packaging waste. Lawmakers should speed up legislation demanding or incentivizing sustainable packaging practices like reusable containers, and the introduction of national standards could clamp down on wasteful behaviors like overpackaging and the use of harmful or single-use materials, researchers say.

In addition, they suggest that companies recognize they are responsible for the entire life cycles of the packaging materials they use, and that consumers actively seek information about the sustainability of the delivery services they use.

Tang Damin, a Beijing-based plastics campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia, urged Chinese tech companies to adopt more creative approaches to packaging waste. “I’m curious who will be the first to step forward with a bold idea,” he told Caixin. “Chinese people aren’t the consumerist stereotype that ‘Singles Day’ sells,” he said, using another name for Double 11. “They want something more.”

Tang also called on the government to adapt its direct approach to nudge the e-commerce sector toward greener packaging practices. “The state’s hands-on role will be a huge factor in industry response,” he said. “Currently, there’s no real requirement for e-commerce or delivery companies to address this waste problem.”

When asked about the environmental impact of its packaging waste, Cainiao, the Alibaba-controlled logistics affiliate that handles deliveries for the e-commerce giant’s shopping platforms, told Caixin that the company values sustainability and is working to make the sector more environmentally friendly.

Cainiao has already rolled out a number of successful initiatives to combat packaging waste, including its self-developed smart-packaging algorithm, e-shipping labels, and cooperative agreements with merchants to reduce plastic use, the company added.

JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce company, declined to comment directly on the study. But it referred Caixin to an October announcement that the company had joined the Science Based Targets Initiative, a global campaign designed to promote corporate action on climate change.

Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)

Related: Alibaba Increases Stake in Cainiao Network to 63% From 51%

China’s hundreds of electric car makers, already fighting for survival, must now dedicate resources to the post-consumer process.

China’s industry regulator called on manufacturers of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) and others to set up and standardize recycling plants for batteries of electric cars. These facilities will be shared by NEV manufacturers, battery makers, wrecking yards, integrated companies and more.

Guidelines published Thursday (link in Chinese) by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) outline two types of recycling facilities that the industry must establish, depending on the need, although they must both be located in administrative areas where companies sell electric cars – starting at prefecture-level cities.

Smaller, “collection-style” recycling centers are for temporary storage and are limited to holding a total of 5 tons of batteries, whereas larger “concentrated storage-style” plants will have a minimum capacity of 30 tons and are designed for long-term storage. The larger centers are required in areas where NEV companies keep more than 8,000 vehicles or where existing recycling facilities lack storage capacity and safety standards.

Dedicated electric car battery recycling facilities are required to collect, sort, store, package and ship worn-out units, though they are forbidden from disassembling them for any purpose aside from conducting safety inspections. They are also expected to use digital tools to trace and collect data on their inventory and hand the information over to manufacturers, which must in turn report recycling data in a “timely fashion,” the ministry said.

Existing facilities were given six months to meet the guidelines’ requirements.

The directive updates 2018 provisions on NEV battery recycling, in which the ministry also urged the auto and battery industries to jointly build recycling pilot projects in several major Chinese cities. However, this week’s mandate follows a government commitment to phase out subsidies for all types of NEVs, which include all-electric, fuel cell and hybrid cars, to pare back the roughly 500 companies that have sprung up in response to government grants.

BYD, China’s biggest NEV maker, reported an 89% drop in third-quarter earnings and warned that profit could fall as much as 43% in 2019. BAIC BluePark New Energy Technology, China’s biggest maker of all-electric cars, also forecast a 2019 loss.

Contact reporter Dave Yin (davidyin@caixin.com)

Bilateral trade between the United States and China is responsible for 2.5% of global shipping carbon-dioxide emissions and 4.8% of premature deaths caused by air pollution emissions from shipping, according to a new report published in online journal Nature Sustainability.

The research, led by Liu Huan of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, examined trade data, ship emission models, and satellite-observed vessel activities to evaluate shipping emissions and its impact on human health. The paper also developed a methodology for determining the responsibility of trade pairs and ships for carbon dioxide emissions.

The study found that the emissions from shipping between the U.S. and China had contributed to pollution all over the world, with a notable contribution to airborne PM2.5 — particulate matter considered particularly harmful to health — around the coastal regions of China and Japan.

In 2016, approximately 5,700 people died prematurely due to air pollution from China-U.S. bilateral shipping emissions. Of these deaths, 64% occurred in China and only 2% in the United States. The remaining 34% were in Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Liu told Caixin that the very small number of premature deaths in the U.S. is due to low-emission policies for ships entering the area 200 nautical miles around the coast that require ships to switch to clean fuel. China, however, did not establish emissions control zones around its coasts until 2016, so ships were able to use the same fuel as is used out at sea. Additionally, China’s coastal areas are densely populated, leading to a higher number of premature deaths.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later today.

Contact reporter Ren Qiuyu (qiuyuren@caixin.com)

Rising sea levels associated with human-influenced climate change could affect three times more people on the Chinese mainland by 2050 than previously thought, a new study claims, with potentially profound implications for highly urbanized coastal areas like Shanghai, Tianjin, and the Pearl River Delta that includes Hong Kong.

Researchers at the New Jersey-based organization Climate Central used a new and more accurate method of determining land elevation and concluded that by midcentury, “land now home to 93 million people (in China) could be lower than the height of the local average coastal flood.” Previous studies based on less-accurate land elevation readings put that figure at approximately 29 million people.

The paper was published Tuesday in the British peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. The authors’ projections do not factor in future population rises or land lost to coastal erosion.

Researchers looked at predicted sea level rises worldwide and concluded that the greatest effects will be felt in Asia, with people in China most at risk. Three decades from now, central Shanghai — by some estimates the country’s most populous city — would be vulnerable to inundation by ocean flooding without the construction of new coastal defenses.

The same goes both for the northern Chinese municipality of Tianjin, which serves as the main seaport for Beijing, and for the Pearl River Delta region, a densely populated cluster of cities that serves as a key industrial base.

Read the full story on Caixin Global later today.

Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com)

Related: Grassroots Carbon Control Projects Could Help China Beat Paris Pledge: Study

Key cities in northern China will aim to cut the average concentration of PM2.5, a toxic air pollutant, by 4% year-on-year during the 2019-2020 fall-winter period, according to an action plan released Wednesday by the country’s Ministry of Environment and Ecology (MEE).

The plan applies to a group of 28 cities, including the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities, from Oct. 1 to March 31 next year, a period that typically sees high rates of air pollution. The 4% target aims to drive down last winter’s average PM2.5 concentration of 82 micrograms per cubic meter, but does not reference the lower pollution levels witnessed during the winter of 2017-2018, when the average PM2.5 concentration was as low as 78 micrograms per cubic meter, a 25% drop on the year prior.

The plan also sets pollution-control requirements for the industrial, energy, and transportation sectors, including “emergency management” measures to cope with severe pollution. The ministry will classify enterprises into three categories depending on the intensity of their emissions, the Wednesday announcement said.

Stay tuned for more on the action plan coming to Caixin Global later today.

Contact reporter Ren Qiuyu (qiuyuren@caixin.com)

Related: Grassroots Carbon Control Projects Could Help China Beat Paris Pledge: Study