China, People's Republic of : Ningbo Green and Low Carbon Development Project

Energy / Energy efficiency and conservation - Energy utility services - Renewable energy generation - biomass and waste

Finance / Finance sector development

Information and communication technology / ICT industries and ICT-enabled services

Ningbo has a developed industrial economy with secondary industry accounting for 48% of its GDP in 2021 with petrochemical, textile, machinery, metallurgical, electronic, and building materials as its main industries. There is a large demand for heat/steam and power from the industry sector with coal as the main source. Coal consumption for power generation and heat/steam supply maintained around 94% of the total coal consumed from 2011 to 2021, higher than the national level of 74.5% in 2021. The 14th Five-Year Plan for Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas Development of Zhejiang Province set the target of reducing the share of coal for power generation and heat supply to 85% by 2025. As a result of its heavy dependence on fossil fuels, carbon emissions increased by 22%, from 77.8 million tons to 100.1 million tons from 2011 to 2020 in Ningbo. Therefore, one of the challenges in Ningbo is how to advance its economy without further increasing fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

Cooling is widely used in public buildings and industry sectors. The PRC's Green Cooling Action Plan sets the targets of a 25% improvement in cooling energy efficiency by 2030. In Ningbo, cooling sector accounts for over one-fourth of the electricity demand, and most of cooling systems were installed 2030 years ago with low efficiency using hydrofluorocarbons as refrigerants, which deplete the ozone layer and have global warming potential several thousand times that of carbon dioxide. A large proportion of the cooling systems is owned by small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have strong asset collateral, which makes it difficult for them to obtain affordable financing. Since retrofits of obsolete cooling systems are small in scale, it is difficult to achieve economies of scale, and thus they do not attract investors. Also, financiers' lack understanding of policies on green financing for retrofits limit interventions to traditional loans requiring large assets as collateral.

Carbon emission peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060 achieved

Inclusive, low carbon, and environmentally sustainable development in Ningbo promoted

Institutional capacity in climate mitigation and green financing in Ningbo strengthened

Climate financing platform to support new low carbon technologies, MSE, and ESCO established

Green insurance system piloted

Digital carbon accounts for enterprises with large carbon emissions established