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Considering the enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions generated in China, the country's fulfillment of its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) is essential in achieving the goal of mitigating global climate change delineated in the Paris Agreement. In order to forecast the future development of China's carbon-related INDC indicators, this research uses a segmented quadratic equation to fit the relationship between economic level and CO 2 emissions and a hybrid trend extrapolation model to forecast the emission-related indicators. The empirical analysis shows that China's CO 2 emission peak appeared in 2018 with an emission amount of 9.36 billion tons. The future CO 2 emissions after 2018 will present a fluctuating and slowly decreasing trend. As to the carbon intensity, China will meet the INDC target (lower by 60-65% from the 2005 level) in 2022-2023. At that time, China's CO 2 emissions will be 8.43-7.96 billion tons and GDP will reach 109.71-125.39 trillion yuan. Furthermore, the empirical analysis also shows that even if China's carbon intensity target is successfully realized, it will still have considerable potential for further reduction.

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The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region is a top urban agglomeration of China but has the problem of severe environmental pollution. Most of the current researches on the sustainable development of this region only concentrate on the environmental pollution itself and ignore its relationship to the socioeconomic development. In this research, an entropy-based coupling model, a polynomial equation with partial least squares algorithm, and socioeconomic and environmental data in 2006–2015 were used to measure and fit the above relationship. Empirical analysis led to the following conclusions. (1) Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei presented similar socioeconomic development modes but different environmental pollution modes. (2) The social economy of the BTH region has been developing at the expense of environmental pollution, but the environmental cost has been decreasing year by year. (3) At present, the BTH region has huge potential to improve its environment. (4) Increasing the investment in the treatment of industrial pollution in Tianjin and mitigating the soot (dust) emissions in Tianjin and Hebei are the major environmental policy directions. (5) Controlling the development of smelting and pressing of ferrous metals and other building material sectors in Hebei is the major economic policy direction.

Thermal power is the main source of China's electricity supply. Improving total‐factor generation performance (TFGP) is essential for the development of this industry in the current deteriorating operating environment. This study adopts the meta‐frontier nonradial direction distance function approach to measure the static and dynamic TFGPs of the thermal power industry in China's 30 provinces in 2011–2019, and then discusses the regional distribution characteristics and the impact factors using spatial econometric model and Tobit regression method, respectively. Empirical results show that: (I) The TFGPs in central and west China are relatively close, but both are remarkably lower than that in east China. (II) The TFGPs in central and west China have generally remained stable since 2011, whereas that in west China has declined mainly because this region is more susceptible to the situation of electricity supply‐demand. (III) A significant spatial positive correlation exists among provincial TFGPs. High TFGP provinces are mostly in the eastern seaboard region and low TFGP provinces are in southwest China. (IV) Economic development, power structure, fuel prices, and environmental regulation have positive impacts on China's TFGP, while the impacts of technological innovation and energy endowment are not significant.