3) Upgrading the industrial structure and technology, including mandatory local industrial energy efficiency and low carbon industrial zone pilots;

4) Optimizing the energy consumption structure, including total energy consumption control, total coal consumption control, and increasing the share of renewable power and distributed generation resources;

5) Reducing energy consumption in buildings, including establishing standards and labelling for existing and new buildings codes and appliances, promotion of green buildings and an increased level of use of renewable energy in buildings;

6) Developing low carbon urban transport, including private vehicle use control, raising the share of public transport in motorized travel, promotion of walking and cycling for commuting and leisure, subsidies for electric vehicle and infrastructure construction of charging stations, and green freight transport.

7) Smart urban forms and urban boundary development, including integration of low carbon development into city master plans and land use plan, higher population density and mixed land use.

8) Promoting carbon sink and waste management projects, including increased coverage of urban forests and establishment of more green land, and a waste minimization system including waste reduction, recycling and reuse.

Based on an analysis of actions and policies taken in the nine APPC cities, it has become possible to achieve benchmarking of their low carbon actions against international best practices, and preliminary results suggest there is great room for improvement in the following areas:

1) Cities need develop integrated quantitative analysis to understand the carbon mitigation potential across sectors, which allows policymakers to prioritize actions based on cost effectiveness;

2) Peer learning and encouraging competition to reach the top mechanism level should be developed to disseminate best practices among cities;

3) Policies and standards in transportation, buildings and urban planning should be at least as strong as global leading practice, given the considerable challenge of maintaining current energy use levels while improving living standards;

4) Energy efficiency improvement has the biggest mitigation potential in the short term; however, it is also important to prepare the infrastructure for long term clean energy technology deployment;

5) Most importantly, a smart financing platform needs to be developed that introduces a new economic driving force for capturing carbon mitigation potential.

These are the most practical solutions as China enters a period of slower economic growth.

The author is a senior analyst of Innovative Green Development Program

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.