China Releases Industrial Nitrous Oxide Emissions Control Action Plan

27 August 2025 - Today, China released its Action Plan for Controlling Industrial-Sector Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) Emissions (“Action Plan”), jointly issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. IGSD’s bilingual Chinese-English version of the Action Plan is available here.

This interagency Action Plan tasks MEE to lead the establishment of a comprehensive industrial N₂O management system, strengthen policy and standards, and coordinate with air-pollution reduction and ozone-layer protection agendas. The release of the Action Plan follows the Chinese workshop on controlling emissions of N₂O, convened in September 2024, as described in IGSD’s earlier briefing, here.

Priorities and 2030 Targets

The Action Plan focuses on three N₂O-emitting industrial sectors, including adipic acid, nitric acid, and caprolactam. It promotes industry advancement in source/in-process abatement by operating control equipment with catalysts and encourages tail-gas recovery and purification, especially in the adipic acid industry. It also calls for strengthening the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system for industrial N₂O emissions and supporting the development and deployment of industrial N₂O mitigation and reutilization technologies.

The Action Plan provides that China will further refine its policies on N₂O emissions control in the industrial sectors. Further, the Plan provides for China’s continuous mitigation of industrial N₂O emissions, with the target of lowering N₂O emissions per unit of product in the adipic acid, nitric acid, and caprolactam industries to internationally leading levels by 2030.

Key Policy Measures

The Action Plan identifies key policy measures to strengthen the industrial N₂O management system and promote the deployment of industrial N₂O mitigation technologies, including the following:

• Finance and market incentives: Supporting industrial N₂O mitigation projects under the environment/climate finance system and incentivizing N₂O abatement in China’s voluntary greenhouse gas emissions trading program.
• Technology development and demonstration: Promoting industrial-sector N₂O mitigation technology development and demonstration projects by incorporating these technologies into China’s National Catalogue of Key Low-Carbon Technologies for Promotion.
• Co-control policies: Coordinating N₂O emissions control and nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) control. Explore adding N₂O emission assessment into the environmental impact assessment for key industries and identify measures with co-benefits on pollution control and climate mitigation.
• MRV systems: Establishing an enterprise emissions reporting system, including monitoring and emission-related standards and exploring the automatic monitoring of industrial N₂O emissions.

The Action Plan provides a basis for monitoring China’s future policy action in the above areas and tracking N₂O mitigation progress towards the 2030 emissions reduction goal specified in the Plan.

Additional IGSD Resources:

IGSD’s mission is to build resilience by accelerating fast climate mitigation actions to slow near-term warming and self-reinforcing climate feedbacks, avoid catastrophic climate and societal tipping points, and limit global temperature to 1.5°C—or at least keep this temperature guardrail in sight. This work includes advancing international exchanges and cooperation to reduce the emissions of non-CO₂ climate super pollutants in China and elsewhere around the world, such as N₂O.

• IGSD (12 November 2024) Primer on Anthropogenic Nitrous Oxide: The Last Significant Ozone-Depleting Substance and Greenhouse Gas Not Regulated by the Montreal Protocol.

• IGSD (12 September 2024) China explores opportunities to address nitrous oxide emissions.