Approaches toward a low carbon future for China: Scenario analysis about the provincial level plans

Abstract:  As the global warming brings more and more disasters, controlling greenhouse gas emission is one of the main global crucial issues nowadays. As one of the main emitters in the world, China faces more and more international pressure to reduce the emission, so it is urgent to make the transition to a low carbon economy.At the same time, China has been going through the fast urbanization process as shown in the “Northam Curve”, and the current urbanization mode requires the demand of the carbon-intensive consumption, and could lead to the massive carbon emission as well. However, it is contradictory to the long-time sustainable development in China. So, under the current condition, the reduction plan needs to be fit in the Chinese demand, so it is very crucial, and requires innovation and creation to analyze the reduction factor and find the balance point between the urbanization and low carbon development mode. Regarding to the different urbanization rate and economic development modes characters between the East, Central, West part of China, this thesis uses inductive and deductive method to study. Firstly, it chooses one province from each region to investigate. Then it integrated urbanization factor into Kaya equation to study different factors impacts on the carbon dioxide emission in the three sample provinces. It also selected the co-integration econometrics method to study the equilibrium relationship between the carbon dioxide emission and other main factors. Through analyzing the current reduction plan, it explains and forecasts the possible emission in 2015. The result suggests that the anticipated carbon dioxide emission might be able to achieve under the transition to a low carbon economy mode. Different regions should have their own feasible plans through controlling the urbanization rate, slowing the economic development rate and through reducing the energy intensity, improving the energy structure.