An Approach to Quickly Establish Regional Carbon Management System

Chaoyong Zhu,Peidao Gao,Yang Zhang,Bo Chen

doi:10.3389/fenrg.2022.857136

Abstract

Local governments are the main actors in achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. The existing carbon management system is mainly for the country, industry or enterprise, and there is no carbon management design method for local governments. Therefore, from the perspective of local governments, a regional carbon management approach based on carbon-electricity intensity and carbon efficiency is proposed. First, based on electricity consumption data, combined with regional industry energy statistics, a carbon-electricity intensity indicator is established to estimate the carbon emissions of enterprises, and then different carbon emission reduction strategies are constructed using carbon efficiency indicator. This study proposes two types of emission reduction strategies, marginal opt-out and collective action, and conducts scenario simulation analysis using a case study from a city in southeastern China. The baseline scenario shows that although the marginal opt-out strategy has the lowest economic cost, the emission reduction rate is also lower, while the collective action strategy can achieve the emission reduction target faster, but only at a higher economic cost. This approach is suitable for the construction of the initial carbon management system in areas dominated by electricity consumption, taking into account the two dimensions of economy and environment, and can be applied to various decision-making scenarios, which is beneficial for local governments to quickly start the carbon management system.

Highlights

Since the signing of the Paris Agreement, with the further deterioration of the climate issue, major global emitters, including China, are actively building national-level carbon emission management systems
The narrow fluctuation range of carbon-electricity intensity (CEI) is due to the fact that the main emission source of these enterprises is electricity, and the proportion of other energy consumption is relatively low
In terms of carbon emissions, these companies are small and medium-sized emission entities and are unlikely to be included in the carbon trading market

Summary

Introduction

Since the signing of the Paris Agreement, with the further deterioration of the climate issue, major global emitters, including China, are actively building national-level carbon emission management systems. In September 2020, the Chinese government announced that it would take strong policies and measures, and strive to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 (Zhou and Hu, 2021). In July 2021, China’s carbon trading market was officially launched, including 2,162 key emission units in the power generation industry, covering an annual greenhouse gas emission of about 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, making it the world’s largest carbon market. The implementation of carbon neutrality goals and carbon trading markets has brought enormous opportunities and challenges to the transformation of the energy system (Xie, et al, 2021), and brought many uncertainties to the development of local economies. Local governments urgently need to build effective carbon management systems.

Methods

Results

Conclusion