Evaluation and Implication of the Policies towards China’s Carbon Neutrality

Abstract

China announced it will achieve a carbon emission peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 to fulfill its international obligations and mitigate climate risk. Related activities and polices were introduced in several sectors before this announcement. The performance and outcome of these activities provide necessary a priori knowledge for the designation and optimization of future policies. In this study, a comprehensive evaluation covering major sectors based on multisource data is proposed. The results show that although China is the largest CO2 emitter for the current stage, the increasing rate of carbon emissions has been significantly mitigated since the 2010s. This reduction in emissions can be accelerated by the carbon-trading scheme in pilot regions. As a substitution for fossil energy, there have been tens of thousands of increases in wind turbines and photovoltaic plants in the past decade. Additionally, an enhancement of the terrestrial carbon sink was detected by time-series remote sensing data. The results of this study demonstrate that China’s carbon activities in the past decade have received reasonable outcomes, which will benefit the optimization of related government policies. The improved legislation and policies of China can strengthen the regulation of emissions while promoting the quantity and quality of carbon sinks. At the same time, the improvement of the carbon emissions trading mechanism, especially the establishment of a marketing regulation mechanism, can significantly motivate interest-related communities and industries to abort high-carbon emissions and ensure the implementation of carbon neutrality in the future.

Artificial intelligence (AI)‐driven strategic business model innovations in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises. Insights on technological and strategic enablers for carbon neutral businesses

“…Businesses adopt energy-efficient practices and technology as a result of government policies that set energy efficiency requirements and restrictions (Kim et al, 2023;S. Wang, Tan, & Xu, 2023).…”

“…By encouraging companies to invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, these regulations help them become less dependent on fossil fuels and lessen their carbon impact. Businesses adopt energy‐efficient practices and technology as a result of government policies that set energy efficiency requirements and restrictions (Kim et al, 2023; S. Wang, Tan, & Xu, 2023). The literature emphasizes the significance of energy labeling regulations, appliance efficiency standards, and building codes.…”

Characteristics of Land-Use Carbon Emissions and Carbon Balance Zoning in the Economic Belt on the Northern Slope of Tianshan

“…After data processing, carbon emissions from land uses, carbon absorptions (CAs) from each of the land-use types, total CEs, total CAs, and net carbon emissions (NCEs) were calculated and analyzed for different time period (Table 5). According to the published works on the division of contributing factors for CEs and CAs [43], among the land-use types, cropland and urban land were mainly contributing factors for CEs, while the other four types were referred for CAs contributors. In Table 5, the plus values represent carbon emissions, while minus values represent the carbon absorptions.…”

“…A study on CEs in the field of LULUCF in the Vietnam mainland applied 10 years of land cover change data (2002-2012) as sources, processed those data with a specific software (ALU, v2014), and estimated the CEs based on the quality control and quality assurance work [37]. Some typical related research on CEs, land-use changing characteristics, and NST are listed in Table 1 [32][33][34][35][38][39][40][41][42][43]. A large number of previous works demonstrated the promising future and high efficiency of methods for land-use CEs calculation and relative correlation analysis based on the remote sensing (RS) data classification and the statistical data analysis via software processing.…”

The Impact of Low-Carbon Pilot Cities on the Development of Digital Economy: Empirical Evidence from 284 Cities in China

“…This kind of rapid economic development, achieved at the expense of severe environmental pollution, is unsustainable. What we should strive for is sustainable development, which encompasses not only the sustainability of capitalist profitability and accumulation but also the satisfaction of present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs while safeguarding the environment [1][2][3]. In order to cope with the increasingly severe environmental problems and achieve green, sustainable, and highquality economic development, the Chinese government put forward a dual carbon target at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference.…”