WASHINGTON, December 18, 2018—The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved a US$8.2 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to support China’s efforts to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions from the freight sector, a major consumer of energy, with the highest growth rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions among all sectors in China.
Freight transport accounted for over half of total transport CO2 emissions in 2013. As one of the most freight intensive economies in the world, for China to maintain healthy economic growth while fulfilling its commitment to global carbon reduction and environmental sustainability, developing a competitive, efficient and green freight transport system is a national strategic priority.
“This GEF project will contribute to China’s efforts in meeting or exceeding its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement well before 2020. It aims to improve the efficiency of multimodal freight transport, so that long-distance freight will be shifted from roads to greener transport modes such as railways and waterways. It will also promote green urban logistics to reduce emissions,” said Tan Hua, World Bank Senior Transport Specialist and task team leader of the project.
The GEF Efficient and Green Freight Transport Project will seek to improve institutional capacity by focusing on two priority areas at the national level: promotion of multimodal freight transportation system, and optimization of urban freight distribution. The project will also pilot key policy, strategy and analytical tools at the local levels in two provinces (Guangdong and Hubei) and three municipalities (Yantai, Weifang and Xiamen). The project will engage key industry players in the formulation of sector policies at both national and local levels.
“This project will introduce and pilot innovations in the development of China’s first macro-logistics freight model, applying big data analytics to inform policy formulation, and piloting of public-private partnerships to facilitate better rural-urban freight distribution and accelerate rural economic development,” added Yang Yi, World Bank’s Operations Analyst and co-task team leader of the project.
Knowledge and experience gained from the project will be disseminated within China and in World Bank’s client countries through TransForm, a knowledge platform jointly developed by the Chinese Ministry of Transport and the World Bank to learn and spread China’s experience and good practices in transport development and transformation.
The GEF was established on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to help tackle our planet’s most pressing environmental problems. Since then, the GEF has provided over $17.9 billion in grants and mobilized an additional $93.2 billion in co-financing for more than 4500 projects in 170 countries.
For more information on GEF, please visit: https://www.thegef.org/
For more information on this project, please visit: www.worldbank.org/projects
For more information on the World Bank program in China, please visit: www.worldbank.org/china
For more information on TransFORM, please visit: www.transformcn.com/en/index.htm
