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Allocating China’s 2025 CO2 emission burden shares to 340 prefecture cities: methods and findings

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Abstract

Peak emission is an important policy/scheme for all the countries to respond greenhouse gas mitigation. The key is how to distribute the emission burden shares to its sub-regions. This study aims to develop a prefecture city leveled CO2 emission allocation model by integrating multi-indicators method and benchmark method so that China’s 2025 (end year of 14th Five-Year Plan, FYP) CO2 emission burdens can be allocated to its prefecture cities and provinces. Results show that China’s total CO2 emission will reach 12 billion tons in 2025. The majority of such emission will occur in the east China due to its more developed economy and dense population. Cities with high emissions are usually allocated more emission quotas, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Tangshan, Yulin, Suzhou, and Ningbo. The top five provinces with higher CO2 emission quotas are traditionally high-emission and energy-intensive provinces, including Shandong, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Henan, and Hebei. The national CO2 emission intensity will decrease by 69.35% in 2025 compared to the 2005 level. The CO2 emission intensity reduction rates among the 340 Chinese cities is found to be fluctuating significantly from 16 to 74% during the 14th FYP. Finally, policy recommendations are raised for mitigating city level CO2 emissions by considering the local realities.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the support of Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recovery.

Funding

This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72088101, 71974126, 71810107001).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Carbon Neutrality, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing, 100012, China

    Zhe Zhang, Libin Cao, Bofeng Cai & Lingyun Pang

  2. China-UK Low Carbon College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Zhe Zhang

  3. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Huijuan Dong & Yong Geng

  4. Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recovery, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Huijuan Dong & Yong Geng

  5. School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Yong Geng

  6. School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Yiqi Tang

Authors
  1. Zhe Zhang
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  3. Huijuan Dong
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Contributions

H. Dong and B. Cai designed the research. Z Zhang, H. Dong and B. Cai performed the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. Z. Zhang, L. Cao, L. Pang, and Y. Tang collected and visualized the data. Y. Geng addressed the discussion and revised the manuscript. H. Dong and Y. Geng acquired the funding. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Huijuan Dong.

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Zhang, Z., Cao, L., Dong, H. et al. Allocating China’s 2025 CO2 emission burden shares to 340 prefecture cities: methods and findings. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 90671–90685 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22052-6

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