What next for clean heating in rural China?

(China Dialogue, 25 May 2023) Ten years after the launch of a campaign to clean up heating systems, improved subsidies, district heating and retrofits should be considered.

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of a government campaign to clean up China’s heating systems.

Until 2013, rural households in northern China generally burned coal for heat, with each stockpiling hundreds of kilograms in the run-up to winter. Burning coal in small domestic stoves can create ten times as much pollution as doing so in a power plant. Household burning of the fuel was also a major cause of winter smog.

So, in 2013, the State Council released an action plan to reduce air pollution. A decade later, the reduction in smog is clear to see. In China as a whole, small particulate matter (PM2.5) levels have fallen by 57%, and the number of poor air quality days is down 92%, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

In 2020, China announced it would peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The pledge led to the intensification of work on lowering rural coal use. Swapping coal for electricity or natural gas was no longer enough. Now, lower-carbon sources of energy – geothermal, bioenergy and solar – were to be used to help reduce carbon emissions.

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China Dialogue, 25 May 2023: What next for clean heating in rural China?