When will China fulfill its carbon‐related intended nationally determined contributions? An in‐depth environmental Kuznets curve analysis

Abstract

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.

Industrial Structure Optimization and Low-Carbon Transformation of Chinese Industry Based on the Forcing Mechanism of CO2 Emission Peak Target

“…Opinions in the existing literature generally agree that if certain emission reduction measures are taken, China could achieve the CEPT around 2030 [13][14][15]. Promoting technological progress [16][17][18][19], reducing CO 2 emission intensity [20], adjusting industrial structure [21,22] or energy structure [23][24][25], and establishing CO 2 emission trading mechanisms [26,27] are considered the main measures required to achieve the CEPT. In general, the logic of these researches is a line type positive thinking (as opposed to reverse thinking) that about what measures can be taken to achieve the CEPT.…”