Abstract
Although the average CO2 emission for a person in China is only about 1/4 that of a person in the US, the government of China still made a commitment to ensure that CO2 emissions will reach their peak in 2030 because of the ever-increasing pressure of global warming. In this work, we examined the effects of coal switching, efficiency improvements in thermal power generation and the electricity consumption of economic activities on realizing this goal. An improved STIRPAT model was developed to create the scenarios. In order to make the estimated elasticities more consistent with different variables selected to construct the formulation, a double-layer STIRPAT model was constructed, and by integrating the two equations obtained by regressing the series in each layer, we finally got the equation to describe the long-run relationship among CO2 emissions (Ic), the share of coal in overall energy consumption (FMC), coal intensity of thermal power generation (CIp) and electricity intensity of GDP (EIelec). The long term elasticities represented by the equation show that the growth of CO2 emissions in China is quite sensitive to FMC, CIp and EIelec. After that, five scenarios were developed in order to examine the effects of China’s possible different CO2 emission reduction policies, focusing on improving FMC, CIp and EIelec respectively. Through a rigorous analysis, we found that in order to realize the committed CO2 emissions mitigating goal, China should obviously accelerate the pace in switching from coal to low carbon fuels, coupled with a consistent improvement in electricity efficiency of economic activities and a slightly slower improvement in the coal efficiency of thermal power generation.
Highlights
Coal consumption and electricity production contribute significantly to environmental change and CO2 emissions worldwide, which are considered the major sources of global warming
Based on the above analysis of elasticities of P, GDP/P, FMc, EIelec, CIp and IS to CO2 emissions, five different scenarios were developed to track the CO2 emissions trend in China in 2013–2040, which can be described as Current scenario (C): In this scenario, the current energy savings and emissions reduction policy mechanisms will be the same as in previous years and China will not make greater efforts to improve the energy efficiency of electricity production and consumption and switch from coal consumption, so we assumed coal intensity of thermal power generation, electricity intensity of GDP, and the coal proportion in aggregate energy consumption will drop at the same rates as the average level throughout the period of 1980–2012, which were 1.38%, 1.00% and 0.215% annually
We assumed that in this scenario, the electricity intensity of GDP and coal proportion in aggregate energy consumption will develop at the same rate as in 1980–2012, which decreased by 1.00% and 0.215% annually, while the coal intensity of thermal power generation will drop by 2 times the historical average level, which was 2.07% per year before the level of 275 gce/KWh achieved, and after that it will decrease by 0.2% every year
Summary
Coal consumption and electricity production contribute significantly to environmental change and CO2 emissions worldwide, which are considered the major sources of global warming. China), to improve the energy efficiency of fossil fuel power generation and electricity consumption are more important than to increase the share of renewable energies in mitigating all sectors’ CO2 emissions. The long-term elasticities of coal switching, energy efficiency improvement in thermal power generation and electricity efficiency of economic activities were estimated, which further guided the development of five scenarios used to trace the trend of CO2 emissions. The remainder of this work is constructed as follows: Section 2 introduces the double-layer STIRPAT model developed to explore the long-term relationship among coal switching, energy efficiency improvement in electricity production and consumption and the CO2 emissions trend in China during. 2013–2040; Section 3 introduces the data processing methods; Section 4 develops the scenarios; Section 5 explains the results and provides the policy implications for China; and the final section concludes this work
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
