China becomes important driving force for global innovations in green, low-carbon technologies

In the last five years, the number of patents for green and low-carbon technologies granted in China has grown at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent, making the country an important driving force for global innovations in green and low-carbon technologies, an official said on Wednesday.

Between 2016 and 2021, a total of 471,000 patents for green and low-carbon technologies were granted globally, of which 34 percent, or 160,000 patents, were granted by China National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA), Ge Shu, head of the Strategic Planning Department of the NIPA, said at a press conference held in Beijing on Dec. 28, 2022.

People visit the booth of Chinese battery producer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited during the 22nd China International Fair for Investment and Trade in Xiamen, east China's Fujian Province, Sept. 8, 2022. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)

Green and low-carbon technologies serve as the foundation for China’s efforts to realize its goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, Ge pointed out.

In an effort to strengthen statistical monitoring of patents for green and low-carbon technologies and boost the industrialization of patented green technologies, NIPA has created a classification system for these patents and carried out statistical analyses of invention patents based on this system, according to Ge.

Statistics showed that the intellectual property (IP) authorities in China, the U.S., Japan, Europe, and South Korea rank as the top five IP authorities in the world in terms of the number of patent filings for green and low-carbon technologies handled between 2016 and 2021, Ge said.

Patent filings for green and low-carbon technologies handled by these authorities during the five years accounted for 75.2 percent of the world’s total, he said. In particular, China’s IP authorities received 379,000 such patent applications during the period, which accounted for 41.2 percent of the world’s total, he added.

China has seen rapid growth in the number of patents in fields related to technologies for hydrogen energy and energy storage, among other technologies, Ge said.

During the five years between 2016 and 2021, NIPA saw the number of patents it granted to patentees in the hydrogen energy industry rise by 20.5 percent annually on average, the highest of all industries, according to Ge.

During the same period, the number of patents granted by the authority to patentees in fields including energy storage technologies, electricity-saving technologies, and oil-saving technologies has maintained double-digit annual growth, he added.

China has contributed to more than three-quarters of the increase in the number of global patents granted for technologies related to hydrogen energy and electricity saving, he noted.

NIPA will continue to establish and improve the mechanism for statistical monitoring of patents for green and low-carbon technologies, actively explore a patent-based evaluation system and method for innovations in green and low-carbon technologies, enhance protection for patents for green and low-carbon technologies, and encourage investment in and industrialization of the relevant innovations, so as to facilitate the acceleration of the green transformation of development mode, Ge said.