Prediction of China’s Carbon Peak Attainment Pathway from Both Production-Side and Consumption-Side Perspectives

Tao Song, Xinling Zou, Nuo Wang (), Danyang Zhang, Yuxiang Zhao and Erdan Wang
Additional contact information
Tao Song: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xinling Zou: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Nuo Wang: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Danyang Zhang: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yuxiang Zhao: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Erdan Wang: School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: To achieve global sustainable development and actively respond to climate change, China, as the world’s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, needs to save energy and reduce emissions without delay. By constructing LEAP-China production-side and LEAP-China consumption-side models, we predict the carbon emissions of China’s production side and consumption side in different scenarios from 2020 to 2050, respectively. The results show that under the current policies, neither the production side nor consumption side can achieve targeted peak carbon emissions by 2030, which is contrary to China’s current carbon emission policy. Under the sustainable development scenario, China’s production-side CO 2 emissions would peak at 10,462.2 Mt in 2029, and China’s consumption-side CO 2 emissions would peak 3 years later compared to the production side at 9904.3 Mt in 2032. Therefore, to achieve the peak for both the production and consumption side, we need to coordinate various policies and actively promote industrial restructuring and energy structure optimization. In terms of trade structure, China’s existing import and export trade structure should be adjusted to reduce the export of industrially manufactured goods and increase the proportion of technology-intensive products in foreign trade to realize the transformation from a high-carbon trade structure to a low-carbon trade structure.

Keywords: production-side emissions; consumption-side emissions; trade-implied carbon; LEAP model; carbon emission peaking; trade structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/4844/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/4844/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:6:p:4844-:d:1091913

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().