Research on China’s CO₂ Emission Pathway under Carbon Neutral Target

Climate change is a major global challenge today. As the largest carbon emitter, China plays a key role in global climate governance. Following the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, China updated and enhanced its medium- and long-term strategic targets at the 2020 UN General Assembly General Debate and Climate Ambition Summit, et al. These targets include trying to achieve carbon peak before 2030, carbon neutrality by 2060, a 65% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030, and a 25% share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption. This series of new milestone goals demonstrate China’s responsibility as a great economy and are inherent requirements for achieving national high-quality development. In order to support the implementation of the national climate change strategy, this paper focuses on carbon peaking and carbon neutrality targets, and uses C³IAM/NET model to study the CO₂ emission pathway from a bottom-up perspective. Through setting different scenarios composed of different economic growth rates and emission reduction efforts, the responsibilities of energy system, carbon capture and storage and carbon sink are analyzed. We find that national CO₂ emissions are expected to peak at about 10.8 Gt by 2025 at the earliest, or by 2030 at the latest. Through the implementation of different emission reduction efforts by energy system and different scales of carbon capture and storage deployment, the energy-related CO₂ emissions will still exist in the range of 0.3~3.1 Gt by 2060, mainly from the power, steel, chemical, and transportation sectors, and will require forest and ocean carbon sinks to absorb. Finally, some recommendations are put forward for key areas and industries such as power, industry, transportation, and building sectors.