Long-term forecast and policy discussion on China’s carbon emissions

ABSTRACT By decomposing the changes of carbon emissions into effects of economic growth, industrial structural change, technological change and energy structure change, the paper firstly discusses the contribution of each effect to China’s carbon emission changes between 2020 and 2030, and forecasts China’s total carbon emissions in 2030. In particular, the paper strengthens that a decrease in population and a significant slowdown in urbanization will significantly reduce the construction demand, the main driver for high growth of carbon emissions in China, and provide a relatively favorable economic environment for China to achieve carbon peaking by 2030. The paper then discusses on how to achieve the ”dual carbon” goals with the lowest possible economic cost by relying on market and price mechanisms.