Modelling China's Energy Future

Climate Change, air pollution, and energysecurity are three key policy issues in China'senergy sector. To address the aforementionedchallenges, JianJun Tu applied CIMS, atechnologically explicit and behaviourally realisticmodel to the most populous country. His researchfindings show that there are plausible energydevelopment paths that would enable China to continueeconomic development while ensuring security ofenergy supply and acceptable local and globalenvironmental quality. Advanced technologies havebeen identified as the key drivers to achieveambitious emissions control and energy securitytargets. In addition, This book reveals that while acarbon tax can effectively reduce both carbon andsulphur emissions, a sulphur tax is a policyinstrument more specifically targeting local airquality issues. Furthermore, it is essential tounderstand the inevitable tradeoff between differentpolicy goals and their associated costs. While a bestcase energy development path can be formulated toalleviate all three policy challenges, this path willbe inevitably associated with substantial costs,which imposes a challenge for China's energypolicy makers in the years to come.

Autorentext

Kevin JianJun Tu is a Vancouver-based senior energy and environmental consultant, and a research associate of the Canadian Industrial Energy End-use Data and Analysis Centre. Kevin holds a B.Eng. in Chemical and Mechanical Engineering from Zhejiang University, and a master of Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University.

Klappentext
Climate Change, air pollution, and energy security are three key policy issues in China's energy sector. To address the aforementioned challenges, JianJun Tu applied CIMS, a technologically explicit and behaviourally realistic model to the most populous country. His research findings show that there are plausible energy development paths that would enable China to continue economic development while ensuring security of energy supply and acceptable local and global environmental quality. Advanced technologies have been identified as the key drivers to achieve ambitious emissions control and energy security targets. In addition, This book reveals that while a carbon tax can effectively reduce both carbon and sulphur emissions, a sulphur tax is a policy instrument more specifically targeting local air quality issues. Furthermore, it is essential to understand the inevitable tradeoff between different policy goals and their associated costs. While a best case energy development path can be formulated to alleviate all three policy challenges, this path will be inevitably associated with substantial costs, which imposes a challenge for China's energy policy makers in the years to come.