Study forecasts China investment of $75 trillion in carbon neutrality

Study forecasts China investment of $75 trillion in carbon neutrality

High-tech green overhaul would arguably be the most ambitious investment program in economic history

by David P. Goldman January 11, 2022

NEW YORK – China is projected to invest the equivalent of US$75 trillion (487 trillion yuan) in carbon neutrality financing over the next 30 years, representing five times its 2020 national output, according to a December 2021 study by a consortium of government, academic and private-sector experts.

The 200-page report, which encompasses the whole range of carbon-neutral technology from hydrogen-fuel vehicles to nuclear electric power, was issued by the Research Group of the Green Finance Committee of China Society for Finance and Banking under the direction of Ma Jun, president of the Beijing Institute of Finance and Sustainability, an academic unit under the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Financial Work.

The Green Finance Committee of China Society for Finance and Banking was set up by the PBoC and regulators in April 2015. 

Ma was previously a member of the People’s Bank of China’s monetary policy committee, chief economist of the Research Bureau of the PBoC and head of China economics and strategy at Germany’s Deutsche Bank. The report’s 40 co-authors include economists at Chinese as well as Western financial institutions.

The $75 trillion projection for green investments includes the entire array of high-tech industries that will gradually replace China’s smokestack industries with their high level of energy consumption and carbon emissions. The proposed scale of investment dwarfs the most ambitious Western estimates, including a $16 trillion estimate by Goldman Sachs in a widely-cited January 2021 report to clients.

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