At the EU-China Summit in September 2020, the EU called on China to meet its climate ambitions by reaching the highest level of CO2 emissions by 2025 and zero by 2060 (Simon, 2020). At the 75th session of the UN General Assembly on 22 September 2020, President Xi Jinping said that China would “increase its planned contributions at the national level” and “reach a peak in CO2 emissions before 2030” (FMPRC, 2020). Most Chinese climate models are either CGE models such as IAM and China-in-Global Energy Model (C-GEM) or bottom-up models such as the built-in MARKAL-EFOM (TIMES) and long-range energy planning system (LEAP). None of the existing models fully reflects all the major climate policies that, in reality, already affect China`s CO2 emissions. CGE models reflect climate policies that are subject to price mechanisms in the event of a fully efficient economy and often use, for simple reasons, a carbon price as a substitute for all types of climate action.3,8 Bottom-up models may include more detailed sectoral policies on climate change, but they often do not cover macro-economic climate change policies and policy interactions. Energy Innovation and the NCSC built the first version of the system`s dynamic model. The name of this model is the China Energy Policy Simulator. China-specific data for the model were collected largely from public sources or provided by NCSC. A public web version of the model is available under china.energypolicy.solutions.
The structure of the model is entirely open source and has been verified by other institutions, including Argonne National Lab and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Readers can experiment with the online model to get an idea of how this model works. Some construction baseline assumptions have been updated in the version developed by Energy Innovation and NCSC for this study, including reduced renewable energy capacity, updated capacity factors for different production technologies, and fuel consumption standards for passenger cars. All directives were coded on the basis of assumptions about the annual rigour and timing of each directive on the basis of current literature. All guidelines can be activated separately or in conjunction with others, so that interactions between them can be taken into account. To assess whether China`s climate policy can achieve its objectives, we have only modelled two scenarios: first, the baseline scenario, which is business as-usual, where no climate change policy is applied, and the other is the “political package” scenario, in which all existing and future climate change policies are activated (Table 2). The policy package scenario was developed by Tufts University`s Climate Policy Lab based on the policy inventory and expert development. “Xi`s commitment to neutral co2 neutrality by 2060 is a shad,” said Thom Woodroofe, a former climate diplomat and senior adviser to the Asia Society. “For the first time, there is a clear long-term path to decarbonization in China.” It will also put pressure on the host nation of the Cop26. Although the Uk holds the presidency, it has not yet committed to making a new national contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement this year, the official date.