The SPS white paper is the international submission to the China Council on International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) as part of the Special Policy Studies on Major Green Technology Innovation and Implementation Mechanisms. The paper examines how green technologies can help to solve challenges in six key sectors in Chinese cities: energy, building, mobility, land use, food and water, and some cross cutting issues, including the fourth industrial revolution, data governance, circular economy, and gender equality. It analyses the potential impacts of green technologies in terms of lowering emissions and reducing pollution and offers recommendations on how these technologies can be implemented in large scale.
The report follows a brief from the CCICED chief advisors to look for technologies that have the potential to scale within the time frame of the next Five‑Year Plan, and not focus exclusively on particular technologies but also on groups of technologies that can work together in consort, or even standards and concepts that can support or are supported by technology; these could alternatively be conceived as urban innovations.
For each technology there is a description of the innovation in question; an overview of the context or challenges in China that the technology could help to alleviate; a description of the impact the technology could have; and the barriers that could stop it from scaling. This format allowed prioritization and practical recommendations on how to overcome key barriers, which, in turn, helped craft the policy recommendations for the State Council.