Carbon emissions in China: How far can new efforts bend the curve?
Name
Carbon emissions in China.pdf
Size
1.29 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0e5465203cae41e6aeae0e0f5cc9f7b2
Author(s)
Zhang, Xiliang
Karplus, Valerie J.
Qi, Tianyu
Zhang, Da
He, Jiankun
Date Issued
October 2014
Publisher
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Citation
Report 267
Series/Report no.
MIT Joint Program Report Series;Report 267
Abstract
While China is on track to meet its global climate commitments through 2020, China’s post-2020 CO2
emissions trajectory is highly uncertain, with projections varying widely across studies. Over the past
year, the Chinese government has announced new policy directives to deepen economic reform,
protect the environment, and limit fossil energy use in China. To evaluate how new policy directives
could affect energy and climate change outcomes, we simulate two levels of policy effort—a
Continued Effort scenario that extends current policies beyond 2020 and an Accelerated Effort
scenario that reflects newly announced policies—on the evolution of China’s energy and economic
system over the next several decades. Importantly, we find that both levels of policy effort would bend
down the CO2 emissions trajectory before 2050 without undermining economic development,
although coal use and CO2 emissions peak about 10 years earlier in the Accelerated Effort scenario.
Persistent DSpace Link
