Special Feature | Zero-Carbon Parks: A New Track in the Trillion-Yuan Windfall

Driven by national policies, zero-carbon parks are set to enter a new phase of explosive growth and large-scale development.

 

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Construction of Zero-Carbon Parks" (NDRC Environmental Resources [2025] No. 910), initiating the construction of national-level zero-carbon parks and providing important work guidelines for the coordinated and orderly development of zero-carbon parks.

 

The concept of zero-carbon parks was proposed several years ago, generally referring to an industrial park where the total direct or indirect carbon dioxide emissions within a certain period (usually one year) are fully offset through clean technology support, carbon capture technology, energy storage and exchange, thereby achieving "zero carbon emissions" throughout the year in a modern industrial park.

 

The 2024 Central Economic Work Conference called for the "establishment of a batch of zero-carbon parks," and the 2025 Government Work Report made clear deployments again, proposing to solidly carry out the second batch of national carbon peak pilots and establish a batch of zero-carbon parks and zero-carbon factories. Driven by policies, China's zero-carbon parks will experience explosive growth and large-scale development.

 

 

 

A New Track Driven by Policy

 

 

Zero-carbon parks refer to parks that reduce carbon dioxide emissions from production and living activities within the park to "near zero" through planning, design, technology, and management, and have the conditions to further achieve "net zero." Zero-carbon parks do not mean completely no greenhouse gas emissions but achieve net zero carbon emissions (net carbon emissions refer to the difference between carbon emissions generated and carbon absorption by carbon sinks within the park over a certain period).

 

The evolution of zero-carbon parks is divided into three stages: low-carbon parks, near-zero-carbon parks, and zero-carbon parks. Low-carbon parks refer to parks that effectively control total carbon emissions within park boundaries through green planning, energy saving, and carbon sequestration technologies, striving to keep emissions below their carbon quota (meeting national requirements for this stage of carbon reduction); near-zero-carbon parks have net carbon emissions close to zero, allowing slight fluctuations; zero-carbon parks strictly achieve dynamic net carbon emissions less than or equal to zero. Zero-carbon parks mean the park's dynamic net carbon emissions during production and living processes are zero, which can also be understood as zero carbon emission intensity, excluding emissions from initial construction or renovation.

 

Parks, as important carriers of national production and living, provide a large amount of energy production activities and basic service facilities, and are also significant sources of carbon emissions. With clear physical boundaries, independent ecosystems, and clear operational management rights, parks become natural testing grounds for carbon neutrality. First, the main bodies for national-level zero-carbon park construction are provincial-level and above development zones. Provincial-level development zones should generally be included in the latest "China Development Zone Review Announcement Directory" and may be extended to newly built emerging industrial parks or high-tech parks approved by provincial-level or higher governments or authorities. The construction scope can be the entire park or a "park within a park." Applications in the form of "park within a park" must have clear boundaries, with construction and management handled by the park's management agency or local government. Second, they must have a certain foundation in energy consumption and carbon emission statistics, accounting, measurement, and monitoring. Third, no major safety, environmental accidents, or other adverse social impact events have occurred in the past three years.

 

The construction of zero-carbon parks requires meeting one core indicator and five guiding indicators. The core indicator is the essential goal that must be achieved for park construction and is the primary condition for park acceptance evaluation. Parks that do not meet the core indicator requirements are generally not allowed to apply for acceptance. Guiding indicators play a path-guiding role during construction and serve as reference indicators for park acceptance. Parks unable to carry out related work due to objective conditions may explain the reasons in the application materials, and the related indicators will not be included in acceptance requirements.

 

The construction of zero-carbon parks is a systematic project that requires efforts in energy, buildings, transportation, carbon sinks, and management, summarized as eight key tasks including energy structure transformation, energy saving and carbon reduction, and optimization of park industrial structure.

 

 

The National Development and Reform Commission will coordinate the promotion of zero-carbon park construction, following the overall plan of "planning a batch, building a batch, operating a batch," determining the first batch of national-level zero-carbon parks, and providing active support in pilot exploration, project construction, and funding arrangements. First, understand the baseline and advance stepwise (currently, China has 2,543 provincial and national-level parks, including 552 national-level development zones and 1,991 provincial-level development zones, covering 80% of industrial enterprises, generating 50% of industrial output, 90% of innovation, 60% of energy consumption, and 31% of carbon emissions). Second, plan scientifically and conduct detailed demonstrations. Third, deepen reforms and strengthen guarantees. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will guide regions to promote low-carbon transformation of industrial parks and encourage qualified industrial parks to build zero-carbon parks. The National Energy Administration will guide regions to strengthen the construction and reform innovation of green energy supply systems in zero-carbon parks and promote changes in park energy supply and consumption models.

 

The state will coordinate the use of existing funding channels to support zero-carbon park construction, encourage regions to provide financial support, and encourage policy banks to offer medium- and long-term credit support for eligible projects. At the same time, support eligible enterprises to issue bonds for zero-carbon park construction. Support parks in introducing external talents, technologies, and professional institutions through multiple channels to serve enterprises in energy-saving and carbon reduction transformation, carbon emission accounting and management, product carbon footprint certification, etc. Strengthen energy element guarantees, innovate energy-saving review and carbon emission evaluation models for fixed asset investment projects within zero-carbon parks, and explore regional approval or project filing. Strengthen land and sea use element guarantees for new parks, new energy power sources, and power supply facilities.

 

 

 

Innovation in Zero-Carbon Park Construction

and Development Trends

 

 

(1) Technological Innovation. The construction of zero-carbon parks involves technological innovations in renewable energy, energy storage, microgrids, hydrogen utilization, demand-side management, low-carbon buildings and transportation, among others. The construction will provide rich application scenarios for these technologies, encouraging research institutions and enterprises to actively explore cutting-edge technologies, accelerating technology iteration and industrialization. For example, building a zero-carbon park emission reduction system. Carbon reduction methods in parks can be summarized into reducing carbon emissions and enhancing carbon absorption, requiring coordination across "source-grid-load-storage-market" links. The source side focuses on new energy power planning and traditional energy carbon reduction; the grid side focuses on energy networks and coupling equipment construction; the load side focuses on electrification of end-use equipment and user emission reduction potential; the storage side focuses on planning and regulation of various traditional and non-traditional energy storage resources, building a broad energy storage system; and the market side constructs a carbon asset management system under major carbon markets, improving the park energy system's net zero carbon capacity under market guidance.

 

Develop CCUS technologies that align with the actual conditions of the park. The park acquires carbon sinks through two main methods: natural carbon sinks and artificial carbon sinks. Natural carbon sinks are greatly influenced by geographical conditions and can participate through carbon sink trading projects. Among artificial carbon sinks, carbon capture, storage, and utilization devices represented by CCUS have become an effective way for the park to achieve carbon sinks.

 

Vigorously develop thermal energy storage technology. The construction of zero-carbon parks requires transformation of various traditional park sectors and imposes new demands on the park's energy storage technologies. Among many energy storage methods, thermal energy storage compared to conventional electrical energy storage (including physical storage: pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, flywheel storage; electrochemical storage: lithium-ion batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries, lead-acid batteries, flow batteries, etc.; electromagnetic storage: supercapacitors, superconducting storage, etc.) has advantages such as high energy density, high conversion efficiency, low operating cost, large application scale, long service life, and safety and reliability. Meanwhile, the flexible nature of thermal loads complements the rigid electrical loads, forming a balanced and multi-energy complementary system. The synergy between electricity and heat is significant for building flexible power grids.

 

Build an integrated regional smart energy system with electricity-heat synergy. The electricity-heat synergistic regional integrated smart energy system (Virtual Heat Power Plant, VHPP) refers to the use of advanced technologies and management innovations within a certain region to integrate multiple energy sources such as electricity and heat, achieving multi-energy complementarity and efficient coordinated operation of source, grid, load, and storage. It is an integrated smart energy system combining new power systems, new thermal systems, new energy storage systems, and new energy-carbon synergy systems, representing an extension of the virtual power plant, namely the virtual heat power plant.

 

(2) Institutional Innovation. Develop green power direct connection, nearby access to new energy, and incremental distribution networks according to local conditions. The construction of zero-carbon parks is not only an important measure for the green and low-carbon transformation of parks but also a "testing ground" for exploring power system reform. It provides valuable practical experience and policy basis for the deepening of China's power market reform and accelerates the construction of new power systems.

 

(3) Business Innovation. Zero-carbon parks can not only achieve extremely low carbon emissions per unit of energy consumption but also provide park enterprises with energy elements that are competitively priced and green. This process involves deep integration across multiple industries and fields such as energy, construction, manufacturing, finance, and operations, inevitably fostering a group of comprehensive energy service providers with integrated competitiveness. These providers need to offer systematic technical solutions and attract more social capital into the green low-carbon field through innovative financial models, operation and maintenance models, and energy service models, forming investment scale effects and promoting profound changes in business models.

 

(4) Development Trends. There are still many challenges in the future construction of zero-carbon parks. Scientifically, it is necessary to clarify the interaction mechanisms among economic development, energy consumption, and carbon emissions, as well as the multi-energy flow–carbon balance mechanism and full lifecycle carbon cycle mechanism of parks under multi-entity collaboration and multi-link integration. Technologically, research on multi-spatiotemporal carbon emission flow modeling methods and development of measurement tools are needed, along with building a layered control system for zero-carbon parks, proposing multi-market coupling mechanisms aimed at the "dual carbon" goals, and studying integrated technologies for broad demand-side response.

 

In the future, the development of zero-carbon parks will show three major trends. First, the standard system will become stricter, expanding carbon emission accounting boundaries from carbon dioxide to all greenhouse gases. Second, technology integration will deepen, with technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital twins empowering refined energy-carbon management. Third, business model innovation will advance, with market mechanisms like green certificate trading and carbon sink development becoming more mature.

 

 

 

Typical Cases and Best Practices.

 

 

Currently, some exploration and applications of zero-carbon parks have been carried out domestically and internationally, each park having its own characteristics. However, overall, the foundational theories and key technologies for zero-carbon parks have yet to be fully established. At present, the main representative zero-carbon parks at home and abroad are as follows.

 

(1) Ordos Zero-Carbon Industrial Park. The world's first park to achieve a full industrial chain closed loop of "wind, solar, hydrogen, storage, and vehicles," with 80% of energy directly from wind power, photovoltaics, and energy storage, and 20% supplemented through smart grid green power trading. It has formed industrial clusters including power batteries, electric heavy trucks, and green hydrogen steelmaking, achieving annual emission reductions of 100 million tons and planning to reach a green output value of 300 billion yuan by 2025. Its integrated "source-grid-load-storage" model and industrial symbiosis network are particularly outstanding.

 

(2) Beijing Goldwind Yizhuang Smart Park. The first domestic park to obtain renewable energy "carbon neutral" certification, building an intelligent microgrid integrating wind, solar, fuel, storage, and charging. Through a 14MW distributed photovoltaic and energy storage system, it achieves 100% green power supply and uses digital twin technology for precise energy-carbon management.

 

(3) Jiangsu Jiangdao Zhili Cube Zero-Carbon Park. The first zero-carbon park project in Nanjing, adopting "photovoltaic-storage-direct-flexible" technology to reduce AC/DC conversion losses through DC distribution. The rooftop photovoltaic annual power generation exceeds 2 million kWh, and combined with an AI energy dispatch system, the renewable energy self-sufficiency rate reaches 85%.

 

(4) Wuxi Zero-Carbon Technology Industrial Park. Jiangsu Province's first technology industrial park themed on zero carbon, constructing an integrated pattern of "one core, nine parks, and two communities" for industry-city integration. It focuses on developing industries such as photovoltaics and hydrogen energy equipment manufacturing. All park buildings meet ultra-low energy consumption standards, and carbon emissions per unit GDP have decreased by 65% compared to traditional parks.

 

(5) Guangdong Zhuangyuan Valley E-commerce Industrial Park. As one of China's first near-zero-carbon pilot parks, it reduces the use of high-energy-consuming facilities such as air conditioning by installing evaporative cooling systems in buildings, achieving an energy-saving rate of 80%.

 

(6) Qingdao Sino-German Eco-Park. By using technologies such as fluorine pump air conditioning and immersion liquid cooling, it reduces the data center PUE value to below 1.25. Combined with 270MW distributed photovoltaics, it achieves an annual carbon reduction of 86,000 tons. Its "passive building + active energy" model has become a model for integrating Germany's Industry 4.0 with China's "dual carbon" strategy.

 

(7) Berlin Orifu Energy Technology Park, Germany. By building an integrated energy management system for distributed energy supply, storage, and consumption, purchasing biogas to meet the park's electricity and heat load demands, and comprehensively constructing a zero-carbon park in transportation, buildings, and carbon sink sectors.