BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 13. COP29 provides an excellent platform for exchanging best practices for achieving Net Zero in China, said Dr. Qingpeng Wei from Tsinghua University at a panel discussion on "IAC: Illustrating Zero Carbon: The Debut of the Zero-Carbon China Storybook" at COP29, Trend reports.
"In recent years, China has introduced many methods to significantly cut CO2 emissions in construction, industry, transportation, and other sectors," Dr. Wei said. "I want to mention two examples. The first is the 'desert community' at the Sailing Center in Qingdao, a city with a similar climate to Baku. Like Baku, winters are cold, and solar radiation is not intense, but the summer days are sunny. Qingdao, with a population of over ten million, is home to the Olympic Sailing Center, which has a similar structure to our local complexes," Dr. Wei said.
The Olympic Center includes ten types of buildings, such as congress halls, hotels, offices, and small structures.
"Initially, the carbon intensity was around 52 kg CO₂ per square meter per year. We are confident that achieving carbon neutrality requires not only reducing energy consumption but also increasing the share of renewable energy. Several strategies were adopted: enhancing building energy efficiency through high-performance insulation materials and improving building airtightness, which is especially important in windy winters like those in Baku. These measures reduced heating demand to about 0.2 gigawatt-hours per square meter per year," he added.
Dr. Wei also noted that gas boilers had been replaced with heat pumps.
"A seawater-based heat pump system was used, which is highly efficient, with a performance coefficient of more than five kilowatts. This means that for every kilowatt-hour of electricity, five kilowatt-hours of heat are generated for building heating. These approaches have reduced energy consumption and CO₂ emissions for heating by 70 percent compared to the original level," he said.
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