Abstract
As China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter and has the characteristics of significant regional disparity, the issue of regional low-carbon development strategy is of vital importance for the achievement of the country’s long-term emission targets. This work focused on China’s long-term carbon emission abatement from the perspective of regional disparity. We firstly analyzed the national emission trajectories consistent with the current Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), 2 °C, and 1.5 °C goals in two economic growth pathways by 2050 using a linear programming model, then classified the provinces into three categories, and compared results of different scenarios of regional disparity patterns, economic growth rates, and emission targets. Results showed that different regional patterns led to different required carbon reduction targets for all categories, and the regional emission reduction measures had to be stronger in a higher growth rate or a more stringent emission target, especially for the developed areas. A scheme of regionally coordinated low-carbon development was then recommended for the formulation of long-term regional emission targets, and carbon reduction strategies for categories were proposed in terms of energy mix optimization, industrial transformation, and technology innovation, which is of great policy implication for China in regional development and national emission targets enhancement.
Highlights
As climate change can induce great risk to human sustainable development, the Paris Agreement, adopted by parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, proposed the goals to keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 ◦C relative to the pre-industrial level and pursue efforts to stay below 1.5 ◦C by 2100
The controlling ranges of CI have been enlarged for available solutions of the linear programming (LP) model in the 2 ◦C and 1.5 ◦C target scenarios, indicating that in the long-term, energy structure adjustment should contribute more to carbon reduction than that confined in the initially narrower controlling ranges
In the Fast growth scenario, carbon emissions peak later with higher quantities, and energy consumptions are much larger than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) growth scenario, which shows an obvious effect of lower growth rate on energy and carbon reduction
Summary
As climate change can induce great risk to human sustainable development, the Paris Agreement, adopted by parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, proposed the goals to keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 ◦C relative to the pre-industrial level and pursue efforts to stay below 1.5 ◦C by 2100. As the largest developing country and GHGs emitter, accounting for approximately 25% of global emissions [1], China promised in its INDCs to peak carbon emission around or earlier to 2030 and decrease its carbon emission per unit of GDP by 60–65% in 2030 compared to the 2005 level, which has attracted extensive attention worldwide. China’s long-term carbon emission and low-carbon policy has attracted much attention due to its significance to the global reduction in recent years. There are still limited studies on China’s long-term carbon reduction pathways concerning the Paris Agreement goals or total carbon emission quantity target, the most probable direction in which China’s INDCs will be reinforced in the near future
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