Abstract
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a core component for post-2020 global climate agreements to achieve the 2 °C goal in addressing climate change. In the NDC, China has declared to lower carbon intensity by 60–65% from the 2005 level by 2030 and achieve the peak of CO2 emissions around 2030. In the context of the 2 °C goal, this study assesses China’s CO2 mitigation targets in the NDC using fair ranges of emissions allowances as calculated from an effort-sharing framework based on six equity principles (and cost-effectiveness). Results show that understanding the fairness of China’s NDC would rely heavily on selected equity principles. If the 65% target is implemented, China’s NDC would position within full ranges of emissions allowances and align with responsibility–capacity–need based on comparisons in 2030, and with responsibility–capacity–need and equal cumulative per capita emissions based on comparisons during 2011–2030. Implications of the NDC on China’s long-term CO2 mitigation targets beyond 2030 are also explored, which indicate that China’s energy system would need to realize carbon neutrality by 2070s at the latest in the scenarios in this study.
Highlights
The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that global climate change has been an extremely severe challenge faced by humanity [1]
In accordance with China’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), this study considers CO2 emissions
In the NDC, China has announced to lower carbon intensity in 2030 by 60–65% below the 2005 level and peak CO2 emissions around the same year
Summary
The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that global climate change has been an extremely severe challenge faced by humanity [1]. Based on diverse equity understandings and methodologies, a broad spectrum of effort-sharing schemes (e.g., contraction and convergence, equal cumulative emissions per capita, greenhouse development rights) has been proposed in the literature since the Kyoto Protocol [5,6,7]. These schemes would like to promote worldwide satisfactory efforts and avoid the tragedy of the atmosphere as a global commons. The lack of a commonly agreed interpretation of equity principles has resulted in the tendency of countries to select effort-sharing schemes that are favorable to them, and has failed to provide a specific solution to split global mitigations across countries
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