Energy demand, emission reduction and health co-benefits evaluated in transitional China in a 2 °C warming world

It is vital for human's sustainable development to control global warming well below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. In this paper, four scenarios, namely baseline (BAS) scenario, carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario, high electricity consumption (HEC) scenario and renewable energy (REN) scenario, are developed to estimate the energy demand and carbon emission during 2020–2050 in transitional China. Furthermore, the health co-benefits of different pollutants reduction are further estimated. Our results show that the final energy demand of China will increase steadily in the BAS scenario, reaching approximately 5200 million tons of coal equivalents (tce) in 2050. While it is likely to peak around 3500 million tce in 2035 if industry and energy structure reform is actively implemented. The CO₂ emissions will stabilize at 10 billion tons in the BAS scenario. The CCS, HIG and REN scenarios can all achieve the CO₂ emission target in China with the constraints of temperature rising no more than 2 °C in 2030. Only the REN scenario, however, can achieve the 2 °C target in the medium term. Regarding health co-benefits, in 2050,102.67, 187.11 and 222.84 billion USD are gained in China under the CCS, HIG and REN scenarios, respectively, compared to the BAS scenario. Another important finding is that industry, electricity conversion and transportation sectors have the greatest health co-benefits in China, and NO_x reduction plays a dominant role, which will reduce 291,000 mortality cases in the REN scenario in 2050.