Shared pooled mobility essential complement to decarbonize China’s transport sector until 2060

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emission reduction in the passenger transport sector is a main challenge for China’s climate mitigation agenda. Electrification and shared mobility provide encouraging options for carbon emissions reduction in road transport. Based on an integrated scenario-based assessment framework, a provincial-level projection is made for vehicle growth and CO₂ emissions in China under shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). This work illustrates how passenger car electrification and sharing contribute to China’s “30·60” climate goals (peaking of CO₂ emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060). The results demonstrate that China is en route to achieving the goal of a 2030 carbon peak (1.0Gt CO₂) under current conditions, and could reach peak emissions around 2026 with optimistic growth in EVs and shared mobility. Compared with no policy action, the single EV policy (shifting from ICEVs to EVs) can reduce 71% of emissions by 2060, thus narrowing but not closing the mitigation gap to carbon neutrality in passenger cars (302 Mt CO₂). Shared mobility can provide further emission reduction support, reducing emissions by 83% in 2060. Comprehensive climate actions (including electrification, sharing mobility to reduce car use, and improving vehicle efficiency and fuel carbon intensity) are needed to achieve deep decarbonization to net-zero by 2060 in the passenger transport sector.