The Impact of Carbon Emission Control on Economic Costs and Human Health in China

Dear Colleagues,

Since the Industrial Revolution, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to grow, and coal has become the greatest source of carbon emissions in the 21st century. Since the 1960s, the intensity of global carbon emission has shown a stable decreasing trend, but per capita carbon emissions have been steadily increasing. Since the 1960s, China's carbon emissions have increased from 781 million tons to 10.5 billion tons in 2020, which is about 14 times larger, and has obvious characteristics of high industry concentration, with the top four industries accounting for about 80% of total carbon emissions, and high regional concentration. The rise of the low-carbon economy is the result of the interaction between world economic development and changes in human living environments. In recent years, countries and economies around the world have adjusted their investment priorities and strengthened the construction of emission reduction guarantee systems, and the world economy has shown a shift toward a low-carbon development model. Carbon emissions intensity and per capita carbon emissions are significantly heterogeneous between developed and emerging economies. Compared with developed regions such as Europe and the United States, China is still in the stage of rapid economic development, and the overall carbon emission intensity of the country is gradually decreasing, while the per capita carbon emission shows an upward trend and the demand for oil and gas will remain high for a long time.

The development trend of the carbon pricing mechanism has already sounded an alarm to Chinese high-energy-consuming and high-emission enterprises. Carbon emission control will not only increase enterprises’ additional environmental costs , but the implementation of carbon taxes or carbon tariffs will also reduce the competitiveness of product exports and restrict product exports, which will in turn affect the demand for upstream bulk raw materials and impact China's petrochemical industry chain and the security and smoothness of the supply chain. Moreover, these adverse impacts on China's economy may last for a longer period of time. With the continuous promotion of carbon taxes, carbon emissions trading and other green financial tools, the measurement of the economic cost of carbon emission reduction by region and industry has become an important basis for the implementation of the dual carbon strategy. How to make cities form a positive interaction between economic development, greenhouse gas emission reduction, climate change response and air quality improvement is a key challenge for cities.

This Special Issue will focus on the mechanisms underlying the evolution of carbon emission patterns in the context of energy transitions, carbon emission forecasting and measuring the economic costs of implementing green financial instruments such as carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading on various regions and industries in China, with a particular focus on the economic costs of low-performing sectors with low carbon emissions, such as power and heat, transportation and industrial manufacturing.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Energy investment and layout;
• Mechanisms for the evolution of carbon emission patterns;
• Economic cost of carbon reduction by region and city;
• Economic cost of reducing emissions in the road traffic, electric power and heat, energy and chemical sectors;
• Carbon emissions forecasting;
• Carbon trading volume and price forecasting;
• Machine learning and artificial neural networks;
• Energy and environmental change in the Global Energy Transition;
• Economic, social and governance effects of climate uncertainty;
• Renewable energy deployment.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Jian Chai
Dr. Shaolong Sun
Dr. Quanying Lu
Dr. Chengyuan Zhang
Guest Editors

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• carbon emissions
• energy transition
• economic cost
• carbon tax
• carbon emissions trading