Emission Reduction Tournament Would Postpone Carbon Peaking in China

The mitigation of climate change is one of the most serious issues in global public governance. To address the climate crisis, Chinese government has proposed a clear target of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Regional efforts are expected to play a key role in delivering China’s pledge to peak CO₂ emissions before 2030. However, the emission reduction tournament would result in rapid increases in emission transfers among provinces in China. If the current trend of provincial economic development and associated emission transfer mode remains unchanged, we forecast that 24 progressive provinces in China would peak their CO₂ emissions before 2030, while 6 lagged provinces would peak later than 2030. However, if emission transfers were not existed, the nationwide carbon peaking time would be one year earlier and the corresponding carbon peaking level would be 13% lower. Furthermore, compared to the situation in 2012, the emission transfer mode in 2017 would lead to a higher carbon peaking level, indicating that the switch to the emission transfer mode from 2012 to 2017 had increased the difficulty of carbon peaking in China. We suggest that the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities should be applied when decomposing the national carbon peaking targets into provinces, and China must avoid a tournament among local governments on carbon peaking.