Zou Ji, CEO and President of Energy Foundation China (EF China), was invited to the first in-person Summer Davos since the pandemic, or the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023, hosted by the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, an industrial port city near Beijing. More than 1,500 business, government, civil society, academic, and international organization leaders from over 100 countries attended the three-day meeting between June 27 to 29. Zou Ji spoke at the roundtable for China’s energy transition, discussed how to improve the carbon market, talked about digitalization-enabled sustainable value chains, and shared best practice of green industrial parks.

He expressed his great confidence in China’s energy transition and green growth. Citing the example of a 90 percent decline in renewable power generation cost over the past ten years, Zou Ji said he believes that innovation and the market will drive remarkable economic growth in China and help establish a modern energy system with much higher renewable penetration in the next 20 years. Innovation can be propelled by a carbon price that is higher than the cost of carbon mitigation, according to him, who also said that connecting the carbon market with the financial market will ensure sufficient capital inflows to the carbon market, stimulate decarbonization, and encourage investment and technology advances. Enterprises are the venue to nurture innovation, which requires a formula of favorable policy, solid research, and financial inputs, said Zou Ji. EF China is happy to strengthen the exchange and cooperation with the business sector to accelerate China’s transition toward the goal of carbon neutrality, he emphasized.