Will China achieve its 2060 carbon neutral commitment from the provincial perspective?

Abstract

China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. However, the significant variations of provincial carbon emissions make it unclear whether they can jointly fulfill the national carbon peak and neutrality goal. Thus, this study predicts the emission trajectories at provincial level in China by employing the extended STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model to see the feasibility and time of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. We found that most provinces can achieve peak emission before 2030 but challenging to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, even considering the ecological carbon sink. The provincial neutrality time is concentrated between 2058 and 2070; the sooner the carbon emission peaks, the earlier the carbon neutral will be realized. The aggregated carbon emissions at provincial level show that China can achieve its carbon emission peak of 9.64–10.71 Gt before 2030, but it is unlikely to achieve the carbon neutrality goal before 2060 without carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). With high CCUS development, China is expected to achieve carbon neutrality in 2054–2058, irrespective of the socio-economic scenarios. With low CCUS development, China's carbon neutrality target will be achieved only under the accelerated-improvement scenario, while it will postpone to 2061 and 2064 under the continued-improvement and the business-as-usual scenarios, respectively.