Introduction by the guest editor

Abstract

Papers in this special issue are works resulted from a research project organized at the National School of Development, Peking University, and sponsored by the Energy Foundation (China). The motivation of these works is simple: Climate change in China has been evolving over time as a diplomatic issue, a scientific issue and a political issue. As China adopts a ‘Dual Carbon’ goal for the future four to five decades, it has become a major economic issue as it is at the core of China’s economic growth pattern change and will be the deciding factor in allocating economic resources for the society in near to mid-term future. The tremendous importance of the ‘Dual Carbon’ goals on China’s economic development path calls for greater analytical efforts from mainstream economists. What will be true cost of climate change on Chinese society? What is the size of economic resource needed to achieve the ‘Dual Carbon’ goal as conforming to the international community’s common pursuits toward 1.5 degree control target? Will climate action be synergic to China’s other socio-economic goals, such as poverty alleviation, healthy aging society, etc.? What kind of structural changes are needed to reduce carbon emissions in the most efficient and effective way? What are the implications of energy transition? On energy security? On employment? On cost of the transition and burden sharing? What kind of carbon removal technology is viable to provide low-cost offset to the remaining carbon emitted around 2060? What kind of policy mix should be in place to ensure long-term and steady change in the economy toward the accomplishment of the ‘Dual Carbon’ goals? These questions must be answered by the best economists that China has. The National School of Development (NSD) of Peking University is the top think tank in China basing its work on modern economic theory and methodology. It has built an international reputation in the studies of labor, health, digital, political and development, as well as environmental and energy economics. This project features contributions from NSD’s leading economists who used to focus on labor and health issues, digital economy, political economy and all important aspects of energy and climate economics. They use diversified tools to address their respective questions and have produced diversified and insightful outcomes for this project. In total 13 very interesting papers have been produced. This special issue selects six papers, only half of the works out of the project, due to the size limitation of one issue of the journal. In this selection, we try to first limit the general scope to more basic side of climate change economics, namely the understanding of