Could China's long-term low-carbon energy transformation achieve the double dividend effect for the economy and environment?

Ling He,Qi Cui,Hao Chen,Wanting Xu,Bangpei Wang

doi:10.1007/s11356-021-17202-1

Abstract

Exploring the low-carbon energy transformation pathway is vital to coordinate economic growth and environmental improvement for achieving China's carbon peak target. Three energy-target scenarios are developed in this paper, considering the targets of energy structure, electrification rate, and carbon mitigation towards 2030 announced by the Chinese government. A dynamic multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium model, CHINAGEM, is employed to examine the economic and environmental effects under different pathways of long-term low-carbon transformation. It detects that China's energy structure would substantially transfer to the low-carbon and clean one, whereas CO2, SO2, and NOX emissions in 2020-2030 would vastly abate along with all three energy-target scenarios. Different pathways would produce varying positive impacts on China's macro-economy and achieve the different extent of double dividend effects. It is highly conceivable for China to peak its carbon emission at 12.4 GtCO2 by 2028 if it serves the comparatively more stringent low-carbon transformation pathways.

Highlights

Low-carbon development, a chief means to mitigate global warming, has led the world economic development trend
Unlike previous researches that only focused on adopting CO2 mitigation measures and renewable energy development, this study develops three scenarios, representing various low-carbon transformation pathways, to figure out which pathway could achieve the most beneficial synergistic effect for the economy and environment
The structure of China's primary energy consumption remains dominated by coal consumption in 2020-2030 under the three energy-target scenarios, the share of coal consumption decreases gradually, with its withdrawn part to be substituted by non-fossil energy

Summary

Introduction

Low-carbon development, a chief means to mitigate global warming, has led the world economic development trend. The excessive use of fossil energy has led to a continuous increase in global carbon emissions and environmental pollution (Zhou et al, 2019; Rajbhandari and Limmeechokchai, 2020; Monjardino et al, 2021). China successively proposed the "13th Five-Year Energy Development Plan" (NDRC, 2016a) and "Energy Production and Consumption Revolution Strategy (2016–2030)" (NDRC, 2016b), which clearly stated the future energy transformation pathway by reducing fossil energy consumption and carbon emissions. With the proposal of carbon neutrality commitment by 2060 (Mallapaty, 2020; Su and Urban, 2021), it is urgent and necessary to accelerate China's long-term low-carbon energy transformation (Huang and Zhai, 2021; Zhou et al, 2021)

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Conclusion