Bridging China’s Climate Targets and Mitigation Capacity through Sectoral Policy Implementation

Wang, H., Liu, Y., Wu, F., Dai, H., Duan, H., Guo, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6415-8083, Hultman, N., Lu, X., McJeon, H., Miller, A., Tong, D., Yu, S., Yuan, W., Zhang, D., Cui, R., Zhang, Q., & Ou, Y. (2026). Bridging China’s Climate Targets and Mitigation Capacity through Sectoral Policy Implementation. Environmental Science & Technology 10.1021/acs.est.5c11232. (In Press)

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Abstract

Delivering on climate pledges hinges not only on setting ambitious targets but on translating them into credible, equitable, and regionally feasible action. In China, current policies over the past 30 years have driven a sustained decline in carbon intensity and pushed total installed renewable capacity to 2.16 TW, exceeding 40% of the global total. China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal is supported by a growing suite of detailed energy and climate policies, yet whether near-term actions are already on a pathway that converges with that target remains uncertain. Here, we evaluate how sectoral policy measures adopted between 2019 and 2024, and their plausible near-term extensions, shape China's decarbonization trajectory using a policy-informed integrated assessment model with provincial detail. Our results show that, compared to Current policy, national CO2 emission intensity falls by 12% to 0.35 kgCO2 per 2020USD and the nonfossil share of primary energy increases from 33% to 44% by 2035 under Continued policy strengthening. Most near-term reductions are driven by solar and wind expansion as well as industrial and building efficiency gains. However, sustaining such momentum exposes regional disparities: in several western provinces, annual power sector investment requirements are comparable to more than 5% of 2023 provincial GDP. Nationally, cumulative power sector investments exceed $13 trillion through 2060, concentrated in solar and wind technologies. By linking national targets with disaggregated policy and investment pathways, this study provides an actionable framework for assessing the feasibility and equity of deep decarbonization in heterogeneous economies.

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