China continues to optimize energy consumption structure, promote green, low-carbon development

China continues to optimize the energy consumption structure, and promote green and low-carbon development to a new height, said a senior official in Beijing on Thursday.

Since the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress in 2012, China has made a new leap in the level of energy security and stable supply, while continuously optimizing the energy consumption structure, said Zhang Jianhua, director of the National Energy Administration.

From 2013 to 2023, the total production of primary energy rose 35 percent. The installed wind power generation capacity increased by nearly five times, and the installed photovoltaic power generation capacity increased by over 30 times, said Zhang.

The official also said that China has established the world's largest charging infrastructure system. Over the course of 10 years, the proportion of coal consumption has dropped by 12.1 percentage points, while the proportion of consumption in non-fossil fuel sources such as wind power, solar power, hydropower, and nuclear power has increased by 7.7 percentage points. As a result, the "green content" of economic development has significantly improved.

So far, China is one of the world's advanced countries in terms of energy technology modernization.

In the future, the country will coordinate energy security and low-carbon transformation, reduce the consumption of fossil fuel energy, and continuously promote the transformation and upgrading of energy utilization.

Meanwhile, China is intensifying its efforts in the development of non-fossil energy, while coordinating the advancement of nuclear power, hydropower, and new energy development and utilization, aiming to promote high-quality development of energy.

"By 2025, approximately 12 million charging facilities will be established nationwide. Efforts will be made to increase the electrification level of end-use energy to around 30 percent by 2025. We will continue to expand the scale of green electricity consumption and increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption by one percentage point every year," said Zhang.

China continues to optimize energy consumption structure, promote green, low-carbon development

The Chang'e-6 mission made three major technological breakthroughs and a world-first accomplishment, an official of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said at a press conference about the lunar exploration mission in Beijing on Thursday.

Vice Administrator of CNSA Bian Zhigang noted that the Chang'e-6 mission is a lunar exploration mission adopted with most advanced technologies to date in China's space exploration endeavors.

"The Chang'e-6 mission made breakthroughs in lunar retrograde orbit design and control, intelligent sampling on the moon and lunar ascent from its far side, and realized the first unmanned automatic sample collection and return from the far side of the moon in the world, setting another world record for China's aerospace program," Bian said.

Samples collected from the far side of the moon may help mankind further study the planet, said Li Chunlai, deputy chief designer of the Chang'e-6 mission, at the press conference.

"The samples collected from the South Pole-Aitken Basin may be very different from the samples collected from the front side, which is conducive to a more comprehensive understanding of the geological evolution history of the moon," Li said.

The mission also carried out cooperation with the European Space Agency, France, Italy and Pakistan on four scientific payloads to obtain valuable first-hand scientific data.

"We promised the orbiter and lander will each reserve a volume of 10 kg for international payloads. We fulfilled the promise and accumulated experience for us to perform more complex tasks in the future," Hu Hao, chief designer of the Chang'e-6 mission, told reporters.

CNSA official on Chang'e-6's major breakthroughs