Allocating China's 2025 CO₂ emission burden shares to 340 prefecture cities: methods and findings

Peak emission is an important policy/scheme for all the countries to respond greenhouse gas mitigation. The key is how to distribute the emission burden shares to its sub-regions. This study aims to develop a prefecture city leveled CO₂ emission allocation model by integrating multi-indicators method and benchmark method so that China's 2025 (end year of 14th Five-Year Plan, FYP) CO₂ emission burdens can be allocated to its prefecture cities and provinces. Results show that China's total CO₂ emission will reach 12 billion tons in 2025. The majority of such emission will occur in the east China due to its more developed economy and dense population. Cities with high emissions are usually allocated more emission quotas, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Tangshan, Yulin, Suzhou, and Ningbo. The top five provinces with higher CO₂ emission quotas are traditionally high-emission and energy-intensive provinces, including Shandong, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Henan, and Hebei. The national CO₂ emission intensity will decrease by 69.35% in 2025 compared to the 2005 level. The CO₂ emission intensity reduction rates among the 340 Chinese cities is found to be fluctuating significantly from 16 to 74% during the 14th FYP. Finally, policy recommendations are raised for mitigating city level CO₂ emissions by considering the local realities.