The Paris Agreement has set a goal to limit the global average temperature rise to within 2 degrees C from the pre-industrial level. This study aims to explore the possible pathways to achieve this challenging goal by using the Global Energy and Environmental Policy Analysis module (GEEPA) of the China's Climate Change Integrated Assessment Model (C(3)IAM). Results show that a target temperature of 2 degrees C dramatically reduces global CO2 emissions in the future. Under model parameters, by the end of this century, total global CO2 emissions will fall below 5 Gt, and cumulated CO2 emissions will be reduced to less than 1000 Gt. The key to meeting the 2 degrees C target lies in the low-carbon transformation of energy and electricity systems. Implementation of climate policies and technical measures will progressively reduce conventional fossil energy consumption and replace it with low-carbon energy solutions. The electricity structure will gradually shift from dominance by conventional fossil energy to low-carbon energy, and even to zero-carbon electricity generation. We found that emission reduction pathways that include large amounts of fossil fuel power generation with CCS merely relying on subsidies may create higher GDP loss, but also that later penetration of negative emission technology can increase the carbon emission budget in the early stage.

A strategy that informs on countries’ potential losses due to lack of climate action may facilitate global climate governance. Here, we quantify a distribution of mitigation effort whereby each country is economically better off than under current climate pledges. This effort-sharing optimizing approach applied to a 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming threshold suggests self-preservation emissions trajectories to inform NDCs enhancement and long-term strategies. Results show that following the current emissions reduction efforts, the whole world would experience a washout of benefit, amounting to almost 126.68–616.12 trillion dollars until 2100 compared to 1.5 °C or well below 2 °C commensurate action. If countries are even unable to implement their current NDCs, the whole world would lose more benefit, almost 149.78–791.98 trillion dollars until 2100. On the contrary, all countries will be able to have a significant positive cumulative net income before 2100 if they follow the self-preservation strategy.

Because free-riding behavior is an inherent characteristic of climate change, how to protect the economic benefits of the emission reduction regions and prompt the noncooperative region to join the emission reduction coalition is particularly important. In this study, we use a global multi-region multi-sector CGE model to compare the impacts of border carbon adjustment (BCA) and two unified tariff mechanisms based on different implementation principles on USA. The results show that the BCA is more effective in reducing carbon leakage in USA than the uniform tariff mechanisms. However, for GDP and welfare losses, the scenario Tariff-carbon-reduction results in greater GDP and welfare losses in USA, which is more conducive to prompting USA to implement carbon reduction policies than the BCA measures. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of carbon price levels and key substitution elasticity further confirmed the results.

From 2002 to 2017, China’s coal consumption underwent a significant change, from a rapid growth to slow decline. Aimed to provide some suggestions for the further coal removal, this study focuses on this significant change and analyzes the coal consumption in supply chains using structural path analysis and structural path decomposition models. Coal consumption driven by fixed capital formation constituted almost 50% or more of coal consumption for the critical 59 paths. Except for coal intensity, production structure was another main mitigating factor of this growth from 2007. The decline in coal consumption caused by coal intensity (2002–2012) and production structure (2007–2012) could only partially offset the increased consumption caused by other factors; thus, coal consumption had the most rapid growth in 2002–2012. In 2012–2017, the decline caused by the coal intensity, production structure, and commodity structure fully offset the increase mainly due to final demand per capita; therefore, there was a historical decrease in coal consumption, breaking the continuous growth trend since 1980. Coal intensity reduction and production structure adjustment should be the key target for short-term control of coal consumption. Meanwhile, the structures should be adjusted toward items that have lower coal consumption in the long-term.

More and more literature are investigating the energy efficiency performance at provincial level. However, there are many problems in provincial energy balances in the officially released yearbooks, such as inconsistencies of statistical scope, the large gap between national data and sum of provincial data, and nontransparent data revision. Using yearbook data directly may result in errors and even some contradictory-to-actuality conclusions. Given this, based on the national economic census, this paper systematically revises and adjusts the 1995–2014 energy balances at province level. A four-dimension (province, year, sector, and energy type) energy dataset is constructed, which supports the structural energy efficiency research at provincial level.

Coal consumption in China has been almost equal to the consumption of all other countries since 2011, and influenced not only global climate change but also domestic air pollution control, energy production and consumption revolution. Coal consumption is closely related to China's whole economy, and its cap control should be based on comprehensive understanding of different economic agents' interactions. Therefore, this study uses the input-output model to identify key relationships to be adjusted which have their significant direct and indirect effects on coal consumption. We find that fixed capital formation in construction having a significant indirect impact on coal consumption in all main coal-intensive sectors, and most of the important production relationships in a sector involve inputs of basic raw materials or fuel, such as building materials in construction. From the perspective of fine structure adjustment to control coal effectively, some non-basic inputs need massive restrictions, such as substantially reducing pesticide and fertilizer application in agriculture, and construction expansion should be limited to a rational growth through reducing short-lived buildings, constraining low-level redundant construction of roads and buildings, and minimizing the vacancy rate and incremental construction area. Moreover, export of coke, chemicals, and chemical products should be discouraged from the perspective of coal control, and urban households should consume daily chemical and pharmaceutical products more rationally.

A series of global actions have been made to address climate change. As a recent developed climate policy, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) have renewed attention to the importance of exploring temperature rise levels lower than 2 °C, in particular a long-term limit of 1.5 °C, compared to the preindustrial level. Nonetheless, achieving the 2 °C target under the current INDCs depends on dynamic socioeconomic development pathways. Therefore, this study conducts an integrated assessment of INDCs by taking into account different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). To that end, the CEEP-BIT research community develops the China’s Climate Change Integrated Assessment Model (C 3 IAM) to assess the climate change under SSPs in the context of with and without INDCs. Three SSPs, including “a green growth strategy” (SSP1), “a more middle-of-the-road development pattern” (SSP2) and “further fragmentation between regions” (SSP3) form the focus of this study. Results show that after considering INDCs, mitigation costs become very low and they have no evident positive changes in three SSPs. In 2100, a temperature rise would occur in SSP1-3, which is 3.20, 3.48 and 3.59 °C, respectively. There are long-term difficulties to keep warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts toward 1.5 °C target even under INDCs. A drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed in order to mitigate potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. This work contributes on realizing the hard link between the earth and socioeconomic systems, as well as extending the economic models by coupling the global CGE model with the economic optimum growth model. In C 3 IAM, China’s energy consumption and emissions pattern are investigated and refined. This study can provide policy makers and the public a better understanding about pathways through which different scenarios could unfold toward 2100, highlights the real mitigation and adaption challenges faced by climate change and can lead to formulating effective policies.

Yi-Ming Wei a,b,c, , Rong Han, Qiao-Mei Liang, Bi-Ying Yu, Yun-Fei Yao, Mei-Mei 4 Xue , Kun Zhang , Li-Jing Liu , Juan Peng , Pu Yang, Zhi-Fu Mi, Yun-Fei Du 5 , Ce Wang, Jun-Jie Chang, Qian-Ru Yang, Zili Yang,Xueli Shi, Wei Xie, Changyu 6 Liu, Zhongyu Ma, Jinxiao Tan,Weizheng Wang, Bao-Jun Tang, Yun-Fei Cao , 7 Mingquan Wang, Jin-Wei Wang, Jia-Ning Kang, Ke Wang, Hua Liao * 8 9 10 Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, 11 Beijing 100081, China 12 School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology,Beijing 100081, 13 China 14 Beijing Key Lab of Energy Economics and Environmental Management, Beijing 100081, 15 China 16 The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London, 17 WC1E 7HB, London, UK 18 Department of Economics, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 19 13902, USA 20 f The National Climate Center of China Meteorological Administration, Beijing100081, China 21 g School of Advanced Agriculture Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China 22 The National Information Center of National Development and Reform Commission, 23 Beijing100045, China 24 Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 25 201210,China 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Abstract: 33

Cities are important bases of economic development. It is essential to explore carbon mitigation efforts at the city level, particularly in developing countries with large quantities of energy consumption and carbon emission. This study has focused on the impacts of carbon pricing on sectoral prices and the carbon price transmission mechanism across sectors and along price-transmitted paths, taking the city of Beijing, China, as a case. A two-region social accounting matrix for China in 2012 was built, with one region being Beijing, and the other region representing the rest of China (ROC). The SAM price model and structural path analysis were employed to calculate both the extent of and the detailed price transmission of each sector in Beijing when carbon pricing was implemented just in Beijing or in the whole of China. The results show that the growth of prices is not serious and that the Electricity & Heating Production and Supply Sector in both Beijing and the ROC contributes most to the price growth in almost all sectors in Beijing. The price-transmitted paths starting from Non-metallic Mineral Products and Smelting and Pressing of Metals in ROC transmit the carbon price quickly and directly by the shortest paths. While the price-transmitted paths routed by Electricity & Heating Production and Supply Sector, Transport Service, and Other Services will show far-reaching effect.

To deal simultaneously with the environmental problems caused by the current high-intensity exploitation and extensive use of coal resources, it is necessary to perform a scientific prediction of the trend and, especially, the peak of China’s coal demand. Based on the historical data on coal consumption and four primary factors (economic growth, energy structure, investment, and industrial structure) during the period of 1981–2015, this study established a hybrid model for coal demand prediction, using particle swarm optimization and cointegration methods. According to the prediction results combined with the actual statistics, in the business-as-usual scenario, China’s coal demand had peaked in 2014, then a downward trend started with an average annual decline rate of 5.85% for 2016 to 2020. However, future coal demand will keep increasing in the pessimism scenario. And in the optimism scenario, coal demand will decline much faster than the business-as-usual scenario. Sensitive analysis on four influential factors shows that coal demand is more sensitive to changes in investment and industrial structure, and more emphasis should be put on the supply and the demand side of coal industry.

The electric power sector is one of the primary sources of CO2 emissions. Analyzing the influential factors that result in CO2 emissions from the power sector would provide valuable information to reduce the world's CO2 emissions. Herein, we applied the Divisia decomposition method to analyze the influential factors for CO2 emissions from the power sector from 11 countries, which account for 67% of the world's emissions from 1990 to 2013. We decompose the influential factors for CO2 emissions into seven areas: the emission coefficient, energy intensity, the share of electricity generation, the share of thermal power generation, electricity intensity, economic activity, and population. The decomposition analysis results show that economic activity, population, and the emission coefficient have positive roles in increasing CO2 emissions, and their contribution rates are 119, 23.9, and 0.5%, respectively. Energy intensity, electricity intensity, the share of electricity generation, and the share of thermal power generation curb CO2 emissions and their contribution rates are 17.2, 15.7, 7.7, and 2.8%, respectively. Through decomposition analysis for each country, economic activity and population are the major factors responsible for increasing CO2 emissions from the power sector. However, the other factors from developed countries can offset the growth in CO2 emissions due to economic activities.

Solid fuels are still widely used in rural China though the living standard has improved greatly. Energy poverty is an obvious indicator of poverty, which has serious effects on economic development, environment, and health. In this paper, we conducted a detailed analysis on fuel choice and usage behavior of different end-use activities in rural residential energy consumption. Using 717 household observations from micro-survey data in two counties of Shandong and Hebei province in 2016, we find that biomass is the dominant fuel used for cooking among all energy sources despite of obvious decreasing trend in recent years, accounting for 44%. Clean energy used to cook increased markedly with a proportion of nearly 50%. Solar energy is an ordinary fuel used for water heating except for biomass. Almost 90% of households rely on coal for space heating in winter, and one-third of households have space heating for fewer than two months. Ownership of home appliances for basic needs is higher than that for hedonistic needs, and usage behaviors of some appliances are economical. Fuel accessibility of commercial energy have improved noticeably in rural areas, and the high proportion usage of biomass is affected by family income, usage habits, local resources, environmental recognition, education, and age. Since the negative effects of using solid fuels, it is urgent to cleanse biomass, develop new energy, and improve residents' cognition about the consequences of using solid fuels.

Addressing climate change requires the efforts of all countries with common but differentiated responsibilities. The mitigation responsibilities one country takes greatly depends on its national emission inventories. As a good complement to the production-based accounting (PBA) principle, consumption based accounting (CBA) principle has been widely concerned. However, few studies focus on emissions equity issues temporally and spatially. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of production based and consumption-based CO2 emissions for 14 major economies through multiple-dimension comparisons to get insight into the emissions equity comparisons among major emitters. In particular, four categories of economies with different dynamic features are divided based on their percentage differences between PBA and CBA emissions. Demographical and economic variables are additionally taken into consideration. The results indicate that France and Russia hold extreme characteristic on evaluating the emission difference between two principles, while China and Chinese Taiwan reveal uniquely increasingly larger gaps between two principle emissions. Besides, the per capita CBA emissions grows more prominently and possesses a more obviously positive correlation with their own per capita GDP which confirms that CBA principle is potentially attractive for estimating national emissions. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The spatial–temporal variations of embodied carbon emissions in international trade at global scope are still unclear. This paper studies the variations of outflows and inflows of embodied carbon emissions at a disaggregated 35 sector level of 41 countries and regions, and an integrated world input–output model is employed. It also examines what would happen if there were no international trade flows in China, USA and Finland, the representatives of three different levels of the global balance of embodied carbon. We find the following: (1) Embodied carbon in global trade increases at about 3 % per year since 1995 World Trade Organization was founded, and East Asia tend to burden more from the net increase in the balance of embodied carbon. (2) China’s export has the largest and increasing outflow of carbon burden, USA’s import the largest and increasing inflow of carbon burden, and Finland’s export and import the decreasing carbon burden. (3) The global trade structure tends to be not so much carbon intensive. BRIIAT (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Australia and Turkey) has the largest embodied carbon intensity in export (about 7.35 kg/$) while NAFTA (USA, Canada and Mexico) the largest embodied carbon intensity in import (about 10.32 kg/$). (4) There existed some inclination of embodied carbon flows including neighbor-centered outflows and country-centered inflows.

This paper introduces the China Energy & Environmental Policy Analysis (CEEPA) system. The core of CEEPA is a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model, in which the interactions among different agents in the macroeconomic system of China are described. The specific characteristics of Chinese labor market and energy market are also taken into account. The corresponding software system is also developed. CEEPA and its related software was designed for providing decision makers a uniform platform to simulate, analyze and compare different energy and environmental policies conveniently, flexibly and immediately. The application of CEEPA is illustrated in a case study which compares the energy, environmental and socio-economic impacts of energy tax and carbon tax. Results show that given the same extent of direct disturbance, carbon tax is able to restrict energy consumption and CO2 emissions to a greater extent, but the general socio-economic cost caused by energy tax is lower.

As China’s energy intensity fluctuated in recent years, it is necessary to examine whether this fluctuation happened at a regional level. This paper establishes a decomposition model by using the structural decomposition analysis (SDA) method at a regional level. Then this model is employed to empirically analyze the changes of Beijing’s energy intensity. The conclusions are as follows: during 2002–2010, except petroleum, the energy intensity decreased and the changes were mostly attributed to the technology changes, while the final use variation actually increased the energy intensity; comparing different periods of 2002–2010, the decline rates of energy intensity for coal and hydropower were decreasing, resulting from the production technology being more energy-intensive than before; the energy intensity changes of petroleum firstly increased substantially and then decreased moderately.