Sharing mitigation burden among sectors in China: Results from CEEPA

Abstract

Based on the China Energy and Environmental Policy Analysis model which takes into account the current characters and potential reforms of energy markets in China, and from the perspective of economy-wide cost-effectiveness, this study aims to analyze how carbon mitigation burdens should be shared among key emission sectors in China, as well as how these sectors would behave to meet their burdens. This study finds that in general, allocating mitigation burdens based on historical emissions could realize the national target in a cost-effective way. However, some adjustments should be made to the coal, electricity, and transportation sectors. The mitigation targets for all sectors, especially for the coal sector, should not be set too high in the short-term. And the burden shared by the electricity sector should increase if electricity pricing is deregulated; meanwhile, energy efficiency and the energy input structure should be improved in the electricity sector.

Keywords:

• China
• climate change
• computable general equilibrium
• mitigation burden sharing
• sectoral mitigation behavior

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and corrections which significantly improved the content of this research.

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Key R&D Program (Grant No.2016YFA0602603), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71521002, 71642004, 71322306 and 71573013), and the “Strategic Priority Research Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05150600).

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the “Strategic Priority Research Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05150600), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (71521002,71322306 and 71573013).