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The warming of the Earth's surface is mainly caused by the burning of fossil energy by humans and the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases can cause some adverse effects on climate, such as ocean warming/acidification, glacier melting and the formation of some extreme weather. Zhao Changying pointed out that humans need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb the trend of temperature rise. Therefore, the carbon peaking target by 2030 is proposed with the aim of getting CO2 emissions to peak at a low level as early as possible to leave time and space for subsequent carbon neutrality.

Zhao Changying said that at this stage, China is facing many challenges in energy transition, such as a coal-based energy structure and a tight time frame for achieving carbon neutrality.

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Under the condition that China's energy structure is dominated by coal, to speed up the low carbon transformation of the energy system in a relatively short period of time and increase the proportion of renewable energy in the future energy structure is one of the key conditions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and achieve the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. Zhao Changying talked about that under the carbon neutral target, by 2060, the proportion of future non-fossil energy consumption in China will increase from about 16% at present to more than 80% in 2060. The transformation of energy structure needs to rely on advanced energy technologies, and for this, China is currently developing mainly non-fossil energy sources including hydropower, nuclear power, biomass, solar energy and wind energy, and has carried out scientific research layout and R&D research in three major fields: new energy, energy storage and energy internet.

Zhao Changying said that the background of building a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system, accelerating the development of new energy technologies represented by wind and solar energy. However, such new energy technologies are faced with the volatility, intermittency and uncertainty of new energy. Therefore, the intermittent, fluctuating new energy can be stored and re-released energy storage technology, "new energy + energy storage" model came into being.

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However, reaching the goal of carbon neutrality depends not only on the large-scale use of non-fossil energy sources, but also on the effective management of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil energy combustion. According to Changying Zhao, carbon dioxide capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is one of the current technologies that can neutralize CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide capture and storage mainly involves capture technology, resource utilization and geological storage. Among them, capture is mainly concentrated in the coal chemical industry, by the thermal power industry, etc. Geological utilization and storage projects focus on enhanced oil recovery. Several demonstration projects have been carried out for CCUS technology in China, but the high technical cost of the technology has limited its large-scale popularity.

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With the deeper integration of new energy-based energy structures and information technology, Zhao Changying said that an energy network system represented by a smart energy system/energy Internet will be formed in the future, which is dominated by electricity and complemented by multiple forms of energy based on artificial intelligence of big data. In addition, the energy Internet has the basic characteristics of renewable, distributed, interconnectedness, intelligence, openness and commercialization.