Economic impact and energy transformation of different effort-sharing schemes to pursue 2 ℃ warming limit in China

Abstract

Pursuing 2 ℃ warming limit, as a global climate target, would not be achieved without the mitigation contribution of each country. At present, possible ranges of regional impact of 2 ℃ climate target mostly focused on multi-model simulation results lack of the comparison of multiple effort-sharing schemes. This paper presents a reginal analysis framework introduced 10 different effort-sharing schemes and SSPs-RCPs mixed scenarios, and finds out how 2 ℃ climate target affects China in economy and energy transformation and balance the trade-offs of each effort-sharing scheme. To measure how to achieve 2 ℃ climate target in China, we developed an improved recursive dynamic CGE model including carbon taxes and CCS technologies. We find that carbon budgets of 2 ℃ climate target in China under various effort-sharing schemes would be 289.8–576.7 Gt during 2010–2050, accounting for 9.5–19.0% in the world. The mitigation cost would range from 0.2% to 2.95%, and the average cost would equal GDP level in 2018. The fossil energy consumption would decrease by 17.1–57.9%, equaling the consumption level before 2010. Differentiated emission pathway with similar the carbon budget, per capita convergence (PCC) would have less economic cost than grandfathering rule. We develop an evaluation algorithm to take economy, energy and emission reduction into account, and find that PCC and ability to pay (ATP) rules would be accepted for China.