China Bets on Electric Cars

California recently announced that all cars in the state must be carbon neutral by 2035, signaling how the trend of electric vehicles is gaining significant momentum in the U.S. and around the world. China, one of the world’s largest carbon polluters, has also recently unveiled a plan to be completely carbon neutral by 2060, and new data shows how the country hopes over half of their passenger vehicles will be electric in the next two decades.

According to data collected by Bloomberg, to achieve China’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2060, 59 percent of all vehicles in the country will be electric by 2040. Just 40 percent will be traditional internal combustion cars, while roughly 1 percent will be a different fuel cell technology. The country has a long way to go, however, as 98 percent of the cars in China are currently internal combustion.

Data also shows how China has increased wind and solar energy capacity over the last decade, laying the infrastructure to continue pushing toward cleaner energies for the future. According to Bloomberg, hydrogen energy is also much cheaper to purchase in China than compared to other countries, suggesting a boom in clean hydrogen energy could be around the corner. Still, the country leads the world in coal demand and new coal plant productions, and that type of fossil fuel will be the hardest to move away from over the next decades.