On July 9, 2026, the State Council of China issued the Action Plan for Achieving Carbon Peaking During the 15th Five-Year Plan Period (2026-2030), setting out a comprehensive roadmap for the country to achieve its goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. The Action Plan comes at a critical juncture in China’s climate strategy, as the nation seeks to build on substantial progress while navigating both domestic transition pressures and a volatile international landscape.
Specifically, the Action Plan outlines five priority tasks, which are specified as follows:
- Accelerate energy restructuring: boost non-fossil energy, enhance grid integration of renewables, deepen clean coal substitution, and optimize oil and gas consumption.
- Green industry transition: shift industrial structures, retrofit traditional sectors for energy saving and emission reduction, build zero-carbon industrial parks and factories, decarbonize computing infrastructure, and apply circular economy models.
- Low-carbon transition in key sectors: improve building energy efficiency, promote low-carbon transport, enhance public-institution conservation, and increase ecosystem carbon sinks.
- Strengthen supporting mechanism: refine laws, standards and statistical systems; bolster technology, talent and financing; adjust pricing policies; and improve market mechanisms.
- Consolidate multi-stakeholder efforts: enforce local responsibilities, launch nationwide public engagement campaigns, and deepen international cooperation.
In terms of standards, the Action Plan calls for improving the overall standards system for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. This includes revising energy and emission caps for key products, launching a campaign to set 100 major energy-saving and carbon-reduction standards, and issuing sectoral decarbonization guidelines. The “leader” system for energy and carbon efficiency will be further enforced, while product carbon footprint accounting standards and a unified carbon labelling certification system will be established. Progress will also be made on a national corporate sustainability disclosure framework.
To translate these priorities into tangible outcomes, the Action Plan establishes six major engineering initiatives. These include inter-provincial power interconnection projects, clean coal substitution projects, energy-saving and carbon-reduction projects for key industries, low-carbon and zero-carbon heating, cooling and green lighting projects, zero-carbon transport corridor construction projects, and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality capacity-building projects.
The Action Plan serves as both a domestic roadmap for China’s carbon peaking target and a new reference point for global climate policy. For EU stakeholders, China’s accelerated efforts in energy transition, green industry and carbon standards may offer scope for cooperation in green supply chains and clean technologies, while also posing certain competitive dynamics. Moving forward, practical dialogue on standards alignment, carbon market linkages and low-carbon innovation could be a constructive area for EU-China climate engagement.
Source: https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/202607/content_7074826.htm
