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Discussion keeps the world turning. This is Roundtable. Hello, welcome to Roundtable, where we serve up piping hot debates on the issues that sizzle in China and beyond. I'm Niu Honglin.
Offshore wind farms, e-bike charging stations, green curriculum in kindergartens. These are happening across China's pilot low-carbon cities. As June 25 marks National Low-Carbon Day, we explore how communities are balancing high-tech ambition with grassroots participation in the battle against climate change.
For today's show, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yunqi in the studio. Hello, Yunqi. Hello, both of you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So, Yunqi, what do you do when you're not on Roundtable discussing these fascinating topics?
So I've been recently been on a business trip to Shenzhen, explored the green practices in Shenzhen. And I guess that's probably the reason why I am invited and pulled over to the show today. And I look forward to sharing my experiences and thoughts on not Shenzhen, but also China in general, our green efforts. Yunxi cannot wait. So for all of us, grab your virtual compass and follow us to the heart of the discussion.
June 25th, 2025 marks this year's National Low-Carbon Day, and its theme is "Carbon Pioneers, Green Future." On the road towards its carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, China has released two batches of pilot cities seeking to peak carbon dioxide emissions in recent years.
Yet these are just a few examples. Imagine 1.2 million EVs on Shenzhen's roads. Imagine 3,000 or 300,000 students in Beijing learning points or earning points for green behavior. Imagine a farmer earning 2,000 yuan a month from solar power. Now imagine all of these happening at scale. Today, we'd like to pick out certain examples, learn about how people or what are people doing to
try to mitigate the problem that we human beings, the very of us created and we'd like to see what is happening. And I think today is a good day to do that because as we already mentioned, June the 25th marks the National Low Carbon Day. So what exactly is the National Low Carbon Day?
This is a day that falls on June 25th, National Low Carbon Day. The theme, Carbon Pioneers, Green Future, as you mentioned. And starting back from 2013, the third day of the week, it's set to be this day.
And the goal is to uphold this people-centered philosophy and also just strengthen public education on climate change adaption, also on disaster prevention and reduction, and just learn what we can do as a group of humans to make this planet a better place for us to be.
If you take a look at the history of all this, we've already talked about there is a week, this week, actually, the week for this year is June 23rd to June 29th. It marks the National Energy Saving Promotion Week. And the history of the promotion week goes all the way back to 1990s. So from there, we started to realize, huh, human beings are consuming too much energy and too much energy at
that time would mean of course bad for the environment but also bad for the financial situation we need to save the energy save some money do things about you know live a better lifestyle and
the idea of a low carbon day actually happened in 2012. So after two decades, people started to realize that carbon is a different issue. Saving energy is not only about saving money. It's not only about
making wise decisions financial-wise, but it's also about lowering the carbon consumption and be nice to the environment. Absolutely. And China's been headed in the right direction for quite some time, as a matter of fact. There was a report on CCTV News not so long ago, and it talked about the cumulative decline in China's energy consumption intensity. I'm going to tell you what that means in just a sec, but that has exceeded...
26% since 2012. And that is the equivalent of saving about 1.4 billion tons of standard coal and also reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 3 billion tons. China has become one of the fastest countries in the world to
to reduce energy consumption intensity. All right, so let's talk about what that is just very quickly. That is a way to measure how much energy is used to do something. So you could think about it in terms of fuel efficiency for a car. For example, if a car can go 50 kilometers on one liter of gas,
that doesn't use very much gas to go that long distance. So that would be considered low energy intensity. But, for example, an Italian racing car might only go six kilometers on one liter of gas. Well, that's not very good. That would be high energy intensity. Again, China has been doing a great job with their energy consumption intensity. Again, it's exceeded 26% since 2012, the cumulative decline.
And when we talk about these issues, the reason we're having these kind of topics more and more on Roundtable is not only because the issue is pressing, but also that people's awareness is gaining, is increasing, because we started to more and more realize how important it is
to lower our carbon emission, to make the temperature a bit better, a bit more pleasant. These days in Beijing, it's really just scorching hot. And we realize that we're not only doing this for ourselves, but for our kids, for the future generations. That is why CGTN Radio has also dedicated in discovering the issue of low carbon consumption.
goals, neutrality and peaking. How are we doing? And Yunji is part of that campaign. Can you tell us more about that specific projects? Yeah, so it perhaps may be the best, one of the best days in a hot summer day like today to raise people's awareness on the importance of green efforts, a
Because the UN Environment Program has been releasing the emissions gap report each year. And if we recall that years ago, we set a target to raise the global temperature within, to control the temperature rise within one and a half degrees.
degrees centigrade by 2030. And after we've set that target every year, the UN Environment Programme has been releasing emissions gap report on how well we are achieving that target. So two years ago in 2023, the report estimated or predicted that the temperature rise will be between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees
And last year, this prediction was...
readjusted and raised to 2.6 and 3.1 degrees centigrade. So not even close to the goal. Each year as it goes, the UN report has been getting pessimistic. And I'm not going to be surprised if in a few years that our prediction may be hitting 4 degrees centigrade rather than keeping it within 1.5 degrees. That's quite far from how we...
originally hoped to achieve. So I think it is a pressing issue and we do see people's awareness becoming more and more aware of how serious this issue is, but it's never enough and we can keep just
introducing and bringing more people to this campaign together. And that is why we're doing this project towards carbon neutrality. We're trying to figure out from different perspectives, from different themes and see whether or not people are aware of the situation. What are people doing in specific areas for different themes?
And also, what are the challenges that we're facing? And that is the whole idea about this special reporter, special podcast. And you were part of it.
Where did you go? So it's quite a long series documentary on China's low carbon efforts. And the angle that I'm taking is low carbon cities. And that really matters to most people, especially the people that are listening to this program, because, you know, people who speak English...
Mostly in the big cities in China, and perhaps we have overseas audiences that are also most likely in the metropolises around the whole world. And the cities around the world, we only occupy 3% of the Earth's land surface, but we are responsible for 70%.
of the carbon emissions. And that tells you what's happening in the world cities, right? Yeah. Lots of energy being used. Yes, I cannot wait to listen to more of those stories. We're going to dig into it a bit later. But I also asked some of our colleagues who have also participated in this campaign, and I asked them whether or not the trip changed or challenged your previous understandings of carbon neutrality in China. And I've got some fun answers. Hmm.
Before this assignment, I didn't even think much about the link between transportation and carbon emissions.
But through this task, I learned that transportation accounts for 23% of global carbon emissions and around 10% in China. That really changed how I see the role of green mobility in the bigger picture of carbon neutrality. So if I had to sum up this trip in one phrase, it would be beauty on the edge.
I mean, Yunnan is such a breathtaking place, you know, the lush forests, singing birds and snow-capped peaks. But actually, everything you see feels like it's just one step away from being lost. And that contrast really struck me.
And there's this incredible harmony between the people and the environment in some places. For instance, Baihua Ling has turned birdwatching into a sustainable livelihood, bringing villagers back home and turning them into conservationists.
but it's also clear how fragile that balance is. I mean, invasive species are slipping in through pet markets, pesticides used in nearby farms are harming birds, and even the rangers I talked to are doing heroic work under intense physical strain and with limited equipment.
So after this trip, you started to realize that biodiversity isn't just about animals and plants, it's about people too, their traditions, their livelihoods, and their choices.
And that tension between preserving natural beauty and surviving in it makes the whole situation feel urgent and deeply human. Before the trip, I had a more abstract view of China's steel carbon neutrality goals, often focusing on top-down policies or headline-making targets.
But seeing the projects on the ground, like the integration of solar panels with fish farming, the development of hydrogen energy infrastructure, and innovative energy storage solutions, made me realize how localized, diverse, and technologically advanced these efforts actually are.
It also became clear to me that carbon neutrality in China is not just about reducing emissions, but about reimagining how industries, energy systems, and even rural communities operate. The scale, ambition, and speed of implementation I witnessed were far beyond what I had expected.
These answers are from Guo Yan, Jiang Tao and Tian Yu and they went to different places respectively. They have we have Guo Yan visiting new vehicle, new energy vehicle companies, seeing how the new EVs are made.
And we have Jiang Tao going to Shanghai and Changzhou in eastern China trying to figure out what are the wind power plants are working, clean energy innovation projects are carried out, and hydrogen energy industrial parks look like. And Tianyu, I liked his answer quite a lot because he talked about bird watching, talked about beautiful environment, and he had the luxury or had the chance to do that because he traveled to Yunnan province in southwestern China and he visited Guizhou.
Kunming and the Galigong Mountains and interviewed local residents, tourists, and they all have their different angles. They all have learned about something. And Tian, well, the reason that, one of the reasons, besides you're a really good host, is
Thank you.
Yeah, so Shenzhen is at the front line, the pioneering cities to make the city life, urban life more green and sustainable. And if you're going to cut, break down, like what a green city will look like, you can probably break it down by different sectors, like the energy, how we produce and consume electricity and transport, how sophisticated, how convenient is the
city urban transportation systems that will encourage people to use less private cars, but to take more public transportation. And in terms of the most important, perhaps the most important one is how we use electricity and how we produce them.
And this is actually not so much about Shenzhen itself, but actually it's more dependent on the whole country, how it kind of rebalances natural resources across different geography locations. Because on China's western part, there are much...
smaller population whereas on the east the coastal areas just like most other cities countries around the world we have very high density of population yeah but a lot on the west side of China correct me if I'm wrong that's where a lot of the natural resources are exactly solar resources in provinces like in places like Xinjiang and in Shenzhen's case so Shenzhen
is using 70% of its electricity from external ones. And a large part of that are actually hydropower plants.
that have been transmitted almost 2,000 kilometers away from Yunnan, which is where Tianyu, actually Tianyu, another reporter from a different angle, they visited for biodiversity. And so the electricity that goes to Shenzhen for the households there are actually largely from Yunnan and Guizhou, clean, hydropower, 100% renewable and clean. And this actually kind of pushed China to develop a world-class electricity
technology. It's called ultra high voltage transmission. And that's actually on the same level on par with China's high speed trains. We actually talk a lot about high speed trains in this program. And a lot of people... It's faster than the high speed trains. Yeah. Electricity. Yeah. It's much faster. But it doesn't... It hasn't earned the reputation as high speed train has. Yeah. I remember... Sorry to interrupt. But we talked about...
that energy transmission on Roundtable many, many, many episodes ago. And it's a really grand project. But that was one of the issues, right? Is that you have these really densely populated tier one cities, tier two cities in China, and you need to provide a lot of energy for those cities to run on a daily basis, right? And when you...
When you're looking for renewables as 100% of your energy source, there are plenty of challenges that come with that. And then if you've got the materials in the other parts of the country, you have to get them to these cities, right? China is such a vast country. There's no easy solution for all of this. When you visited Shenzhen, one of the goals, I guess, or is it, for the city to be...
self-sustainable so that they don't have to get energy from other locations? Are they working on that? Do you know? I think in general, the general aim, the big picture, will definitely be less destructive
dependent. Yeah, having the energy nearby, right? As opposed to having to move it so far. Yeah, because to be energy self-dependent or be able to produce all the electricity within the city itself will mean that we probably have to bump up
fire power plants to burn the coals. But the clean way, the more sustainable way is actually to bring these 100% clean energies from far, 2,000 kilometers far away from Yunnan and Guizhou. And yeah, so that's quite important because for city planning itself, sometimes it's actually these sustainable efforts are not just about
the mayor or the regional practices, but it will depend on a larger whole picture. And China had the power and the vision like the China's southern power grid and a lot of services, electricities, they are part of the China's southern power grid services.
And they are responsible, they have this high voltage, actually ultra high voltage company that's responsible for developing the technologies necessary and introducing those electricity and inject them into Shenzhen. And when the energy is there in Shenzhen, they have a network featuring 310,000 charging stations, 5,100 5G storage knots.
6,000 e-bike battery charging and swapping cabinet and almost 500 supercharging sites and over 70 MW of virtual power plant capacity. Meaning that instead of thinking about whether or not we're creating the energy for the entire city, that is perfectly
perfectly clean, we think about the consumption of the energy. The consumption or the energy that we consume should be clean energy and we give them the possibility and also the facilities to use it.
And this actually reminds me of Guizhou province as well, because we went there recently and we realized that it's a similar situation. That is, in Guizhou, people find different, very novel ways to consume greener energy. And when we think about whether or not this factory is really energy intensive when it comes to the energy consumption,
There are two things we need to do. First is to bring down the energy consumption in total that is from the surface level. But another thing is to give it enough energy that are green energy that would not harm the earth the way traditional path might lead us to. So different ways of doing things for sure.
And I also went on to the official websites of the country's energy-related and also environment-related department's website. And I realized that every year, we are also selecting examples of new, novel ways of consuming energies or good examples of how
what are they doing to cut down the carbon emission? And they fall into four categories. First would be a low-carbon industrial park. The parks find different ways to be a zero-carbon emission park. And also the communities in different places, either bigger cities or smaller towns, they find different ways to live a better and healthier, by saying healthier, I mean healthier for the planet kind of life. And also energy.
Enterprises would definitely consume energy and depending on different industries, their consumption of energy would be different for sure, but they can always find some new technology and they can improve their industrial chain to make the consumption of energy
a bit less, less and less every day. And the other one would be a demonstration area, teaching people, educating people, doing a little bit like what we're doing today is to learn about the knowledge and try to figure out as an individual or as a company, or maybe as a school, what can we do to make things better for the globe?
So besides those, there are more efforts China has made to make the country low carbon, including definitely promote renewable energy in different ways. Right. And just one last fun anecdote from my trip. Actually,
Steve earlier mentioned this, like is the city trying to be more self-sufficient in terms of generating its electricity? And for that question, when you are working inside a power grid industry, people have different perspectives. And I spoke with people that work in the coal fire plants in Shenzhen. One of the last remaining ones there, because most of the electricity comes from Yunnan Guizhou Clean Hydro Power. And for them, so electricity...
maintaining and keeping these coal-fired power plants is a matter of energy security.
Because if you think about the renewable energies, solar, wind, they are actually not 100% sustainable. On a bright, sunny day, you might just have clouds coming over and then we'll have no solar power generated. You need a backup system. Yeah, and one thing that people don't really know is that actually the coal-fired power plants in China, they are cleaner than the rest of the world.
And we have these standards for the major pollutants coming from the coal-fired power plants. And in China, and I remember this so well because the people, the owner or the person that's running that coal-fired power plants, he said this with pride that the pollutants releasing from their coal-fired power plants
So in terms of particular matter, we know this word PM2.5, particular matter, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides. So for these three main pollutants coming from the coal fire power plants in Shenzhen is 2, 8 and 9 milligrams per normal cubic meter.
You don't need to remember these numbers, but you just need to know for these numbers, Shenzhen is lower than the standards in China's Greater Bay Area. And China as a whole is lower than the standards in, let's say, Europe or America. And that makes...
the coal-fired power plants in Shenzhen extra, extra clean than most other places around the world. Yeah, I mean China's doing a great job, we know that, but that doesn't mean that there's still not more work to be done. There was a report from Tsinghua in January of this year
that referenced data from the National Energy Administration, the NEA. And it talked about the fact that new power capacity is dominated by renewables. That's 86%. And what that means is that almost all new plants built in China in 2024 were from renewable energy projects.
And it matters because it does show that China's rapidly expanding clean energy infrastructure. But renewables still only provided about 35% of the total electricity. And what that means is that, yes, most new power is green.
But renewables still make up just over a third of the total electricity output. So there's a gap there, right? And one of the reasons for the gap is exactly what you just mentioned, Yunqi, that the renewables like solar and the other ones are intermittent. They can disappear, right? Depending on the weather for that particular day. So headed in the right direction, but still a lot of work to be done.
In that case, we need more and more people bringing up their awareness of the situation, whether or not they're in their house deciding whether or not I should walk to work today or maybe I would have...
hire or call in cab and go to work and they need to make a decision in their job whether or not they shouldn't spend more money trying to figure out the better technology for the line of work they're doing or maybe they should chase profit all the time and by
having the situation of more and more people aware of the importance of a low carbon lifestyle, we see low carbon education in different places are happening, especially in Chinese schools. - Yeah, I mean, you talk about top down, right? But it starts from the bottom up too. And when I say the bottom, I'm talking about small humans. - People like us. - Yeah, exactly. The more we can educate kids in school, then the more opportunity
we can have for that lifestyle change, I would say, right? It starts in the classroom, kids learn. Hands-on experience is always a great thing. The more we learn, then the more you have an opportunity for the kids to make better decisions when they grow up. Yes, and in recent years, schools across Beijing have made significant strides in promoting low-carbon practices. For example, in Xicheng District, it launched a zero-carbon campus initiative, encouraging students to create green inventions and implementations
low-carbon ideas. 30 primary and secondary schools in Xicheng are participating in the effort of becoming a zero-carbon school. In Fengtai District as well, they introduced a carbon reduction love recycle
So cute. Yes. They integrate ecological education with activities such as used items, recycling, AI-based carbon literacy courses, and tree planting. Tree planting, for sure. And those are really important programs. Yeah, they're cute, but they're not just cute because they reach a lot of people. 67 primary and secondary schools and almost 300,000 students in that district. Wow.
So a lot of people are learning about this. And it's not just elementary level, too. University level as well. Peking University, they have ecological civilization courses that they offer to the public via online platforms. That's a great thing.
Capital Normal University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and also the University of Science and Technology Beijing, they have launched a program rewarding students with points for sustainable behaviors. What kind of behaviors? Things like food conservation and waste sorting and things like that. And when the kids, when the students get points, they can be exchanged for vouchers of campus services,
also helping to encourage active student participation in energy management programs and just a greener lifestyle on campus and off. Yes, I noticed different types of campaigns asking people to live a greener life. Recently, after a business trip, I realized on my app, there is the option of canceling out my carbon footprint by donating...
quote-unquote donating or purchasing a green ticket, by purchasing the green ticket for less than 20 yuan, I would be able to basically donate that money into a project, either planting trees or doing research on greener technologies or just, you know, helping a factory gaining greener energy and
Anyways, the idea is that as an individual, when I have to make a carbon footprint because of it's my life necessity, I can still
buying some green points and the money I spent would be used for this greater cause. It's your own carbon, your carbon offsetting yourself. Yes. Yes. So there are so many different ways of doing that. And this is already the second show of this week that we talk about how to make the earth a better, more conducive place for human beings. But do you think, are you optimistic? Do you think human beings are
would eventually solve the problem. Can we make climate change stop? Can we find a way to lower our carbon emission? Can we create a better future for mankind? I think based on the memory I have from the UN report on our gap, on the emissions gap,
It doesn't look very optimistic, right? Because every year they have been readjusting the prediction for our temperature rise higher and higher. And it is becoming a really pressing issue to bring everybody on this boat. And everybody needs to pitch in. And I think these practices that Hongling and Steve, we just introduced, are very good practices.
practice is to encourage people to join this rather than the traditional type of discouraging type of awareness actions that kind of
that's patronizing and then that criticize people that are not being environmentally friendly and that really pushes people to not join this. That's the criticism, right, of these programs is that you're kind of shoving this information in people's faces and then people get tired of it and they stop paying attention to it. Of course, that's not the goal. And I think the importance of having these programs
in elementary schools is what you're trying to achieve there is making living a greener life possible
something that you live by, not just something that you do because it's a trendy, cool thing. Or you're afraid of getting judged by people. Yeah. And, you know, we didn't, I guess, human beings, we didn't know for a long time the damage that we were doing to the environment. Now we know. And now changes are trying to be made. And...
talking about this like on Roundtable today, having these types of conversations can remind us that we too can contribute. But it's scary, right? Just we too, not we three. Who is lacking behind?
Well, one week. That's another show's topic. Yes. And I ask the same question for our reporters that have participated in the Towards Carbon Neutrality show, because I want to know their ideas. They've went to the places where it's the hardest to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality. They were trying to see whether or not people have the awareness and they faced the challenges. So I ask them the same question.
We have to address any kind of issue, thorny problem in a holistic kind of way. Just as we say in China, you know, it's a concept from Chinese medicine. The worst doctor is he who kills the head of the patient with the headache. That is to say only treating the symptoms, not the root cause.
So what does that mean? I think it really underpins the success story behind Galigong Mountain. From the onset, people didn't go for the symptoms. They addressed the root cause. Back in time, illegal hunting, foraging, they were rampant in the mountains. Well, it's all easy to tell people to give up on their traditional ways of life. But what next? They have a family to support. They have kids to put through university. How to make them see the
Big picture, so to speak, willingly, and how to let them abandon their traditional ways of life without complaining about the loss of identity or simply employment. I think that's the questions we have to ask and how we have to deal with. China's journey toward carbon neutrality is complex, vast, and deeply interconnected.
From restoring dry, degraded landscapes in the northwest to building a massive, alleviated industry in the south, the country is pursuing local solutions to global problems. Ecological recovery, for example, is slow and tough, but
But tailored approaches can yield lasting change. And EVs are promising, yet their carbon impact must be measured across the entire chain. What I've seen gives me hope. Even though the progress is hard, it's happening step by step.
It's happening step by step by Yang Yang, our very own reporter with Roundtable. And I agree with them. It's a complex issue, but it's not an issue that we can decide we want to solve or we don't want to solve. We'll have to take care of this issue if we want a better future for our coming generations.
So we're doing the good deeds and hopefully more and more people will join the act and seeing China getting the 30-60, meaning 2030 we achieve carbon peak and 2060 we achieve carbon neutrality. Hopefully that bright future is right around the corner. For me, this is just my own personal opinion.
Meeting the goals isn't as important as having the goals. It's great to be able to meet those, but if we have them, it means we're trying to achieve, right? And what I mean, I guess, is that if the effort is there, that's just as important perhaps as the result, as long as we're doing things that are headed in the right direction. Definitely.