The Effects of Clean Energy Development on China's Carbon Dioxide Emissions Control

Abstract

Climate change is becoming an acute global issue that should be taken seriously by all human beings instead of ignoring it. China, as the world's largest CO2 emitter, its move is vital for the world to deal with the climate change issue. In order to tackle this issue, China announced its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) stating the objective of peaking its CO2 emissions by 2030 while making its best efforts to achieve an earlier peak. To achieve this, various carbon reduction actions need to be implemented and their priority and effects are worth studying. This paper employed a bottom-up modeling approach to examine how different technologies in both the end-use sector and energy supply sector will affect China's future carbon dioxide emissions' trends and in what priority we should deploy them. Results indicated the development of clean energy supply technologies are of great importance to achieve China's carbon reduction goal and should be prioritized. Some other technologies that could potentially contribute to carbon mitigation were also discussed and their impacts were analyzed.