Exploring China's oil consumption pathways toward 2060 under different climate targets

Abstract

Oil has long been the backbone of our human society since the 20th century. The future evolutionary trends of China's oil consumption have drawn growing interest, given China has planned to achieve the carbon neutrality target by 2060. Using a multi-model comparison framework, we find that China's carbon neutrality target would require reducing its oil consumption, primary energy demand, and carbon emissions by more than 79%, 32%, and 98%, respectively, compared with the reference scenario in 2060. The cross-model averages reveal that the primary energy consumption is 3.87 Gtce, of which oil consumption takes 6.84%, i.e., 190.17 Mt., generating 0.19 GtCO2 under the 1.5 °C scenario in 2060. Given the shift from 2 °C to 1.5 °C, carbon emissions should be reduced by 92.58%. By evaluating China's oil consumption pathways toward 2060, our multi-model comparisons reveal that: a) The oil consumption will gradually increase to 941.32 Mt. in 2060 under the reference scenario. b) The oil consumption will peak at 780.28 Mt. around 2030 and then decline to 483.16 Mt. in 2060 under the 2 °C scenario. c) China's oil consumption will experience a sharp reduction from 744.25 Mt. in 2025 to 190.17 Mt. in 2060 under the 1.5 °C scenario, with certain differences under the multi-model assessment framework. This research provides reliable assessments of oil consumption, energy demand, and carbon emissions for China, which could also contribute to the domestic practice of addressing climate change.