Expert Commentary Article No. 3 on the “Action Plan for Implementing the Comprehensive Conservation Strategy” | Steadily Advance the Comprehensive Conservation Strategy to Provide Solid Resource Support for High-Quality Development

Conserving resources is a major task for safeguarding national resource security, advancing ecological progress, and achieving high-quality development. Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the "Action Plan for Implementing the Comprehensive Conservation Strategy" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), which lays out a systematic framework for comprehensive conservation efforts during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

I. Deep Understanding of the Significant Importance of Implementing the Comprehensive Conservation Strategy

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has deeply implemented the comprehensive conservation strategy, significantly reducing energy, water, and land use intensity, vigorously developing the circular economy, and promoting frugality and opposing waste throughout society, yielding positive results in the efficient and intensive use of resources. At the same time, it must be clearly recognized that China's economic and social development continues to face substantial rigid demand for resources. Pressures on energy supply, imbalances between water supply and demand, challenges in protecting arable land, risks to mineral resource security, and shortcomings in recycling waste materials are all intertwined, making resource constraints a prominent bottleneck hindering high-quality development.

From the Perspective of Ecological Civilization, resource development and utilization are closely linked to the ecological environment; excessive resource consumption often leads to pollutant emissions and ecological damage. Promoting comprehensive resource conservation to reduce resource extraction and waste generation at the source is an intrinsic requirement for synergistically advancing carbon reduction, pollution control, green expansion, and growth. From the Perspective of High-Quality Development, resource efficiency is a core indicator for measuring development quality. Shifting resource use from extensive to intensive and efficient practices drives industrial structure optimization and upgrading, helps lower overall production costs, fosters new green growth drivers, and achieves profound transformations in development models. From the Perspective of Social Norms, implementing the comprehensive conservation strategy helps uphold the traditional Chinese virtues of diligence and thrift, advocates simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon lifestyles across society, enhances public ecological literacy and civilizational standards, and builds a sustainable social governance system.

Promoting comprehensive resource conservation hinges on accelerating a fundamental shift in how resources are utilized—producing higher-quality economic and social benefits with less resource input, thereby achieving coordinated progress between development and protection. The "Plan" adheres to a systems-thinking approach, balancing utilization with conservation, development with protection, the whole with the part, and the short term with the long term. While maintaining bottom-line thinking and stringent oversight, it also fully considers the practical needs of economic and social development, providing robust resource support for economic growth and improved living standards.

II. Implementing the CPC Central Committee’s Decisions and Focusing on Six Key Areas of Resource Conservation

Standing at the new historical starting point of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the "Plan" focuses on six major resource categories—energy, water, food, land, minerals, and raw materials—and further outlines plans for comprehensive conservation over the next five years.

(I) Deepening Energy Conservation Efforts to Provide Solid Support for Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality. In line with the CPC Central Committee and State Council directives this year on energy conservation and carbon reduction, the "Plan" prioritizes energy conservation in achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, further enhancing its supporting role for these initiatives. The "Plan" stipulates strict enforcement of energy-saving reviews and carbon emission assessments for fixed asset investment projects, requiring new (or renovated/expanded) high-energy-consuming, high-emission industrial projects to implement carbon emission replacement at equal or reduced levels. Targeted energy conservation and carbon reduction upgrades will be carried out industry by industry, aiming to reduce energy consumption per unit of added value in large-scale industries by more than 10% by 2030 compared to 2025.

(II) Further Strengthening Water Conservation to Foster Water-Saving Production and Lifestyle Patterns. Although China has steadily improved its level of efficient and intensive water use, challenges remain, including imperfect water-saving systems and acute structural water shortages. The "Plan" emphasizes determining urban planning, land use, population size, and industrial layout based on available water resources, fully implementing rigid water resource constraints, adopting differentiated water-use intensity controls, and establishing water budget management systems. It calls for enhanced water efficiency in agriculture, water reduction and emission cuts in industry, and loss reduction in urban areas, incorporating non-conventional water sources into unified allocation. By 2030, the effective irrigation water utilization coefficient for farmland will rise to 0.60, and water consumption per ten thousand yuan of industrial added value will drop by 10% compared to 2025.

(III) Strengthening Whole-Chain Food Conservation and Loss Reduction to Ensure Food Security. Food conservation not only carries forward the traditional Chinese virtues of diligence and thrift but also offers a practical path to reducing food waste and safeguarding national food security. The "Plan" requires embracing the principle that saving and reducing losses equals increasing production, strengthening conservation and loss reduction in production and storage stages, and launching initiatives to upgrade green grain storage facilities. It aims to minimize losses during transportation and processing, vigorously develop multimodal grain transport, and implement the National Whole-Grain Action Plan. Additionally, it seeks to resolutely curb catering waste through intensified supervision and inspections, encouraging online platforms to promote smaller portion sizes, and guiding the public to reduce food waste at the consumption end.

(IV) Promoting Efficient and Intensive Land Use to Accelerate the Formation of Compact, High-Efficiency Land-Use Models. With a large population and limited land, arable land resources are scarce, while issues such as sprawling expansion of construction land and idle, wasted land persist. The "Plan" specifies strict control over total land area, revitalization of existing stock, structural optimization, and efficiency improvement. Urban development boundaries will be tightly managed, with reclamation prohibited except for major national projects, limiting新增建设用地 during the 15th Five-Year Plan period to no more than 26 million mu. A pilot program will explore managing total construction land according to planning periods, implementing integrated supply of existing and new land, encouraging mixed-use development, and intensifying efforts to dispose of idle land and conduct special rectifications of industrial park land.

(V) Enhancing Mineral Resource Development and Utilization to Accelerate Green, Low-Carbon Transformation of the Mining Industry. Mineral resources are the "food" of industry and a crucial material foundation for high-quality manufacturing development. China's mineral endowment is characterized by abundant low-grade ores and scarce high-grade ones, numerous coexisting minerals but few single-mineral deposits, with high external dependence on certain key minerals. The "Plan" sets requirements for green exploration and mining, as well as green mine construction, strengthening incentives and constraints on key indicators such as recovery rates, beneficiation recovery rates, and comprehensive utilization rates. It calls for deepening re-evaluations of strategic coexisting and low-grade resources, aiming to increase the comprehensive utilization rate of major non-ferrous metal coexisting minerals by 2–3 percentage points by 2030 compared to 2025.

(VI) Strengthening Raw Material Conservation and Recycling to Continuously Improve Waste Recycling Systems. Raw material recycling is a core component of resource circulation and a key lever for closing the loop of "resources–products–waste–recycled resources." The "Plan" advocates adhering to the principles of reduction, reuse, and resource recovery, strengthening green product design and manufacturing, and tightening controls on excessive packaging. It seeks to elevate comprehensive utilization of bulk solid waste, establish full lifecycle management systems for new energy vehicle power batteries, refine regulations for decommissioning and scrapping wind and photovoltaic equipment, and launch initiatives to upgrade recycled material applications. By 2030, annual utilization of bulk solid waste will reach approximately 4.5 billion tons, and annual recycling of major secondary resources will hit 510 million tons.

III. Strengthening Institutional and Mechanistic Safeguards to Ensure Effective Implementation of Resource Conservation Tasks

The "Plan" proposes using the strictest systems and most rigorous rule of law to address deficiencies in standards, policies, regulation, and technology, thereby providing robust support for implementing the comprehensive conservation strategy.

First, Strengthening Whole-Chain Governance for Resource Conservation. The "Plan" integrates conservation requirements across six key sectors—energy, water, food, land, minerals, and raw materials—fully covering production, distribution, consumption, and recycling processes. This promotes strengthened conservation and loss reduction across all stages of resource handling, from production and development to transportation, storage, processing, conversion, and final consumption, maximizing economic output while minimizing resource inputs.

Second, Balancing Rigid Constraints with Incentive-Based Guidance. On one hand, the "Plan" reinforces regulatory roles through laws, standards, and administrative oversight, strictly enforcing rigid constraints on energy and water resources, land-use controls, and standards for energy, water, and material consumption. On the other hand, it emphasizes leveraging economic policies such as differentiated electricity tariffs, tiered water pricing, and green finance to provide incentives and guidance, fully mobilizing business entities' intrinsic motivation to support and participate in resource conservation.

Third, Emphasizing Public Institution Leadership and Society-Wide Norm-Building. The "Plan" rigorously enforces requirements for Party and government organs to practice austerity, encouraging public institutions to play leading roles in water and energy conservation, green travel, and combating food waste. Simultaneously, regular awareness-raising and educational campaigns integrate conservation principles into social norms, advocating simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon lifestyles nationwide.

Resource conservation is a long-term strategy that runs through the entire process of building Chinese modernization. We must remain steadfastly focused on the six key areas of energy, water, food, land, minerals, and raw materials, embedding the comprehensive conservation strategy into planning, industrial development, and project construction. This involves both tapping deep potential for savings in production-oriented sectors like industry, construction, and transportation, and cultivating simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon lifestyles among consumers. It requires effectively combining legal, standard-based, and administrative constraints with market mechanisms to provide solid resource support for high-quality economic and social development. (Gao Hu, Deputy Director, National Center for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction; Shi Xijie, Director, Policy Research Department, National Center for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction)

Source: National Platform for Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Promotion