China’s CO2 peak before 2030 implied from characteristics and growth of cities

Haikun Wang (), Xi Lu, Yu Deng, Yaoguang Sun, Chris P. Nielsen, Yifan Liu, Ge Zhu, Maoliang Bu, Jun Bi () and Michael B. McElroy
Additional contact information
Haikun Wang: Nanjing University
Xi Lu: Tsinghua University
Yu Deng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yaoguang Sun: Nanjing University
Chris P. Nielsen: Harvard University
Yifan Liu: Nanjing University
Maoliang Bu: Nanjing University
Jun Bi: Nanjing University
Michael B. McElroy: Harvard University

Nature Sustainability, 2019, vol. 2, issue 8, 748-754

Abstract: Abstract China pledges to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 or sooner under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 °C or less by the end of the century. By examining CO2 emissions from 50 Chinese cities over the period 2000–2016, we found a close relationship between per capita emissions and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) for individual cities, following the environmental Kuznets curve, despite diverse trajectories for CO2 emissions across the cities. Results show that carbon emissions peak for most cities at a per capita GDP (in 2011 purchasing power parity) of around US$21,000 (80% confidence interval: US$19,000 to 22,000). Applying a Monte Carlo approach to simulate the peak of per capita emissions using a Kuznets function based on China’s historical emissions, we project that emissions for China should peak at 13–16 GtCO2 yr−1 between 2021 and 2025, approximately 5–10 yr ahead of the current Paris target of 2030. We show that the challenges faced by individual types of Chinese cities in realizing low-carbon development differ significantly depending on economic structure, urban form and geographical location.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0339-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natsus:v:2:y:2019:i:8:d:10.1038_s41893-019-0339-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0339-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().