Peak volume and time of energy-related CO2 emissions in Jiangsu Province, China based on long-range energy alternatives planning system model

Abstract

China has put forward CO2 emissions reduction target (committing to achieve CO2 emissions peak or plateau by 2030) to prevent global climate change. With Jiangsu Province as a case, we explored whether China could achieve the 2030 CO2 emissions reduction target. We predicted the peak volume and time of CO2 emission in three scenarios, i.e., quick scenario, medium scenario, slow scenario, respectively, based on the long-range energy alternatives planning system (LEAP) model and the logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition approach. The results showed that, during the period 2000 to 2015, the economic scale effect was the most important driver, whose contribution to the increase of total CO2 emissions was as high as 147.4%. The technology progress effect was the main mitigation factor for CO2 emissions, which caused CO2 emissions to decrease by 60.4%. In addition, the contributions of energy structure effect, industrial structure effect, per capita income effect and population scale effect to CO2 emissions were -5.3%, 9.7%, 11.0%, and 0.6% respectively. In quick and medium scenarios, the peak CO2 emissions of Jiangsu Province would be 701 million tons in 2025, and 795 million tons in 2029, respectively. In slow scenario, however, Jiangsu Province could not achieve the 2030 CO2 emissions reduction target. To achieve the 2030 target, Jiangsu Province needs to adopt some strategies, including actively developing the tertiary industry to balance the economic structure, continuously promoting energy saving and emissions reduction technologies to reduce energy consuming intensity, and vigorously deploying clean energy to optimize the energy consuming structure.