Assessing the Policy gaps for achieving China\u2019s climate targets in the Paris Agreement

Kelly Sims Gallagher,Fang Zhang,Robbie Orvis,Jeffrey Rissman,Qiang Liu

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09159-0

Abstract

China committed to peak its carbon emissions around 2030, with best efforts to peak early, and also to achieve 20% non-fossil energy as a proportion of primary energy supply by 2030. These commitments were included in China’s nationally-determined contribution to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. We develop and apply a mixed-method methodology for analyzing the likelihood of current Chinese policies reducing greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with China’s Paris commitments. We find that China is likely to peak its emissions well in advance of 2030 and achieve its non-fossil target conditional on full and effective implementation of all current policies, successful conclusion of power-sector reform, and full implementation of a national emissions-trading system (ETS) for the power and additional major industrial sectors after 2020. Several policy gaps are identified and discussed.

Highlights

China committed to peak its carbon emissions around 2030, with best efforts to peak early, and to achieve 20% non-fossil energy as a proportion of primary energy supply by 2030
These are two of the targets that were contained in China’s nationallydetermined contribution (NDC), which was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat under the Paris Agreement in June 20151
We find that China is likely to peak its emissions well in advance of 2030 and achieve its non-fossil target based on current policies, conditional on full and effective implementation of all current policies, successful conclusion of power-sector reform, and full implementation of a national emissions-trading system (ETS) for the power and additional major industrial sectors after 2020

Summary

Introduction

China committed to peak its carbon emissions around 2030, with best efforts to peak early, and to achieve 20% non-fossil energy as a proportion of primary energy supply by 2030 These commitments were included in China’s nationally-determined contribution to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. 1234567890():,; This paper examines whether or not existing Chinese climate change policies are sufficient to enable China to peak its emissions around 2030 and to increase the share of nonfossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 20% by 2030 These are two of the targets that were contained in China’s nationallydetermined contribution (NDC), which was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat under the Paris Agreement in June 20151. The second is the disparity between how policies were designed and how they are implemented

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