IPCC published the Working Group III Report of its 6th Assessment on 4th April, 2022. The report pointed out the gap between current climate governance activities and targets, and called for immediate and comprehensive transitions in economic, social and technological systems. There are extensive interactions between climate governance, economic and social developments and public governance. Enhancing the coordination of multi-dimensional, multi-level and multi-objective policy tools, including laws and plans, national and sub-national actions, regulatory and economic policies, direct and indirect climate policies, is crucial for achieving an in-depth low-carbon transition. Under the guidance of the long-term transition path, strengthening the co-benefits of climate policies on health, economic growth, income distribution, social concepts and extensive participation will help to maximize the comprehensive effect, to minimize the resistance, so as to build a good policy environment for climate governance. As for China, it’s important to harmonize cross-system, cross-department, and multi-level policies aiming at carbon peaking and neutrality, and to coordinated economic, social, ecological developments and climate governance. Key activities include connecting carbon market with other relevant policies; encouraging and guiding regional actions and strengthening national support as well as inter-regional coordination; exploring ways to promote high-quality development with low-carbon transition; and planning the long-term path for carbon mitigation, sinking and decarbonization from a perspective of coordinated regional developments.

Urban systems play an important role in climate change mitigation. Chapter VIII of Working Group III (WGIII) contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), ‘Urban Systems and Other Settlements’ provides a systematic and comprehensive assessment on how urban systems can help in the mitigation of climate change. It includes co-benefits and trade-offs of urban mitigation strategies, urban systems and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, urban mitigation options, governance, institutions and finance, and a roadmap of mitigation strategies for different urbanization types. The report shows that the growing concentration of people and activities by urbanization is an opportunity to simultaneously increase resource efficiency and decarbonize at scale. The urban share of global GHG emissions is substantive. It continues to increase, with much inter-region variation in the magnitude of the increase. In 2030, the construction of new, and upgrading of existing urban infrastructure will result in significant emissions. The increase in urban land areas will also create significant implications for future carbon lock-in. There is an urgent need to integrate urban mitigation strategies to address climate change, given the dual challenges of rising urban GHG emissions and more frequent extreme climate events. Deep decarbonization and systemic transformation are critical for cities to achieve net zero GHG emissions. Based on the report’s conclusions, China needs to pay more attention to climate change mitigation in urban systems. Three broad urban mitigation options can be used, including spatial planning and infrastructure, electrification urban energy systems, and enhancing carbon stocks through urban green and blue infrastructure, to achieve sustainable urbanization from a multi-dimensional and across-sectoral nexus perspective. In addition, China needs to develop urban-scale mitigation goals and carbon peaking pathways and strengthen cooperation and linkages between cities, in order to achieve climate change mitigation.

IPCC AR6 WGIII report was published in April 2022. Similar to previous IPCC assessment reports, one of the chapters is long-term mitigation pathways, which play an important role in every assessment report process. Long-term mitigation pathways provide basis for understanding on warming levels or warming targets, and support the international collaboration on GHG mitigation. AR6 again made assessment on emission scenarios published by 2021, majority of these emission scenarios were taking warming targets in Paris Agreement. This report focused on assessment on pathways, policies, cost-benefit and linking with SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) under the Paris Agreement warming targets. This paper presents the key findings from the Chapter 3 of the report. Achieving the warming targets in Paris Agreement, global emissions need to peak before 2025, and then make rapid decrease. Negative emission technologies are needed in future, and effective emission reductions in all sectors are essential, and the mitigation could bring negative effects on economy development.

Climate change is a significant challenge facing the world. It has become a general consensus that dealing with such a challenge requires international cooperation. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of Working Group III (WGIII) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents an independent chapter (Chapter 14) which reviews the progress of international cooperation on climate change since the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), and systematically assesses the progress based on the proposed evaluation system. According to the report, the most important progress in climate change cooperation since AR5 is the model of nationally determined contribution (NDC) global actions established under the Paris Agreement; in addition, various forms of international cooperation mechanisms have been established, among which the Climate Club has become a new hotspot for climate change cooperation research. As for the Paris Agreement, there are two opposite views in the international community on its effectiveness, and whether it can achieve its stated goals depends on the ability to strengthen the next step of global collective climate action goals and implementation.

In recent years, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), as one of the key technologies to address climate change, has attracted extensive attention from the international community. The Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) has repositioned CCUS, and assessed carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilization (CCU), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) systematically and comprehensively, with focusing on mitigation potential and cost, comprehensive benefits and application prospects. The results show that CCUS is an indispensable combination of emission reduction technologies for the realization of global climate targets, which has the potential to achieve cumulative hundred-billion tons reduction effects by the middle of the 21st century. However, the current maturity of CCUS technology is overall at the demonstration stage and the cost is high, with mitigation potential to be further released. Considering CCUS can effectively reduce the risk of huge amount of stranded assets and has good social and environmental benefits, it’s necessary for China to regard CCUS as a strategic technology under the context of its own resource endowment. To promote the development of CCUS, China should coordinate top design, accelerate the construction of technology system, explore market incentive mechanism, and strengthen international cooperation.

The Working Group III of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of IPCC conducted a comprehensive assessment of the low-carbon transition in global industry, including the status quo of carbon emissions, mitigation pathway, technology and policies, etc. Industry is the sector with fastest growth in carbon emissions since 2000. To achieve net zero CO₂ emissions from the industrial sector is possible but challenging. It is needed to keep promoting energy efficiency and also deploying multiple available and emerging options on material efficiency, electrification and fuel switching, CO₂ capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), etc. The conclusions of the report could be helpful for industry’s low-carbon transition in China.

The Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of IPCC emphasizes climate change mitigation. The Chapter Transport has provided an overview-based feasibility assessment of the measures to mitigate transport-related greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. The transport sector had been growing since 1990 and became the fourth largest source in 2019, only after electricity, industry, and the agriculture, forest and land use (AFOLU) sectors. The report focuses on reduction in traffic demand, decarbonization options for land-based transport, shipping and aviation, aiming to reduce transport-related GHG in developed countries and control its growth in developing countries. The different fuel and power technologies evaluated are at different levels of commercialization, with different application timings and scales in the future. Based on the multi-level perspective (MLP), the strategy of demand reduction and efficiency improvement is at the Meso-regime level and has not yet become mainstream. The strategy of land transportation electrification is shifting from the Meso-regime level to the Marco-landscape level. Alternative fuels for marine and aviation are only at the Micro-niche level, requiring deployment targets, regulatory changes, research and development programs and demonstration trials. For the first time, the IPCC separates the shipping and aviation sectors to discuss their GHG emissions trends and the decarbonization opportunities and challenges they face. In the medium to long term, all sectors need to emphasize the management of demand for transport services and the improvement of transport efficiency. Scenario literature suggests that global warming targets require economy-wide emission reduction measures, and the mitigation potential of transport electrification in particular depends heavily on the decarbonization of the power sector. Compared to 2010, transport-related emissions could increase by 65% in 2050 without mitigation measures while could reduce by 68% if the mitigation strategy is successfully deployed, which is also in line with the 1.5℃temperature rise target. These mitigation measures are of great significance for transportation in China to achieve emission peak and carbon neutrality.

The IPCC officially released its Working Group III report, “climate change 2022: mitigation of climate change”, in April 2022. This report builds on the published Working Group I, and Working Group II reports, to assess progress in global climate change mitigation work. Chapter 9 of Working Group III report, provides a systematic and comprehensive assessment of the current trends and drivers of global building sector, technical and non-technical measures to reduce emissions, and quantitative overviews of the potential and costs of global and regional mitigation measures. This report discusses the relationship between mitigation and adaptation measures, sustainable development, and key policy barriers and feasible measures. Global building emissions scenario analysis show that it is possible to achieve net-zero GHG emissions in building sector by 2050 if strong policies for sufficiency, efficiency, and renewable energy are adopted and effectively implemented, and all barriers to decarbonization are removed. If policies are not effectively implemented, there is the potential for decades of high carbon lock-in effect in buildings. There is significant potential for emissions reductions in all regions of the world, in both new and existing buildings. Adopting emission reduction measures in buildings also contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and using buildings to adapt to future climate change. The main findings of the report will be an important reference for global action on climate change in the building sector, and will be very important implications for China’s building sector to achieve its carbon peak and carbon neutral targets.

Demand-side mitigation is a critical pathway to achieving carbon neutrality, wellbeing for all, and social equity coordinatively, since it puts “people” at the center of decision and links various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents an independent chapter (Chapter 5) to address the demand, services, and social aspects of mitigation for the first time. The report links demand-side mitigation with multiple social sustainable development goals and clarifies that the demand-side mitigation targets include not only climate change tackling but also wellbeing and equity improvement. It collects hundreds of demand-side mitigation measures by the “Avoid-Shift-Increase (ASI)” framework and presents the associated mitigation potential. Furthermore, key driving factors of demand-side mitigation, including social culture, psychological activities, technology, and infrastructure, are investigated, as well as the interlinkages among the driving factors. Last but not least, multiple behavioral interventions and policy designs are presented o enhance the motivation and the capacity of demand-side mitigation. This article briefly interprets the main conclusions of IPCC AR6 Chapter 5 and discusses its research and policy implications for China.

The Working Group III of the IPCC announced the summary for policy makers and the underlying Sixth Assessment Report “climate change 2022: mitigation of climate change”, on 4 April 2022. This report comprehensively reviews state-of-the-art assessment of the scientific, technical, environmental, economic, and social issues of the mitigation of climate change by updated developments in the literature since the year 2010. It provides an important scientific basis for the scientific community to have an in-depth understanding of global GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, emission reduction paths at different temperature rise levels, and climate change mitigation and adaptation actions in the context of sustainable development. Based on main conclusions of the report, as well as key scientific issues in terms of regional differences in GHG emissions, mitigation path classification, land use-related emissions assessment and carbon dioxide removal technology assessment, it’s proposed that China should firmly adhere to the “dual carbon” strategic goal in its climate change policies and actions, implement mitigation paths together with the vision of sustainable development, equity and poverty eradication, and accelerate research and development of core science and technology of climate change integrated assessment for enhancement of international influence and voice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the report of Working Group III of the Sixth Assessment Report “climate change 2022: mitigating climate change”. The report accessed and summarized the latest research progress on climate change mitigation since the release of the Fifth Assessment Report, which will provide an important reference for the international community to further understand climate change mitigation actions, system transformation, and the pursuit of sustainable development. The report pointed out that human activities had cumulatively emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of CO₂ from 1850 to 2019, of which 58% was emitted before 1990. In order to control the level of global temperature rise in the future, deep and immediate mitigation actions are required. In both low and minimum emission scenarios, fossil energy needs to be greatly reduced; renewable energy will be the mainstay of future energy supply; achieving carbon neutrality requires relying on negative emission technologies and increasing carbon sinks. Technological progress is one of the key conditions for helping the world combat climate change. Accelerated and equitable climate action is critical to sustainable development. The report’s conclusions once again show that China’s carbon neutrality target is in line with the mitigation path of the Paris Agreement’s temperature rise target of less than 2℃ and striving to achieve 1.5℃. In the future, China should strengthen special research programs on the national concerns and key contents covered in the report. While strengthening scientific interpretation and effective use of the report’s conclusions, it is also necessary to actively participate in the IPCC scientific assessment process, actively contribute Chinese wisdom, and contribute to the international dissemination of Chinese climate governance concepts.