Potentials And Costs Of Reducing CO₂ Emissions In China’s Transport Sector

With the continuous expansion of China’s transportation scale,the combustion progress of fossil fuels in transport sector emits a large amount of CO₂,which exacerbates China’s climate change.To derive cost-effective measures for CO2mitigation,the authors of this paper calculate the abatement cost and mitigation potentials of each measures to develop a marginal abatement cost（MAC）curve for China’s transport sector.MAC curves are derived which consider,among other uncertainties,the impacts of a carbon peaking policy and driver preferences for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles（PHEVs）.The results show that the intercity passenger sector（such as trains and aircraft）has a cost advantage and great potential to reduce emissions（38.8%of all CO₂emissions）.In addition,the freight sector is the most important contributor to CO₂emission reduction,accounting for 44.5%of all carbon emission reduction,and it plays an important role in the later stage of emission reduction.Carbon peak policy improves the efficiency of new energy vehicles,but increases the average cost of the overall emission reduction route.The higher the percentage of electric power used by plug-in hybrid drivers,the faster and more significant the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector.This paper also analyzes the sensitivity of the model for several exogenous variables.The results show that the change of discount rate and electricity price of marginal emission reduction cost curve is robust.While the increase in the price of fossil energy reduces the emission reduction cost of new energy vehicles,it also increases the emission reduction cost of some public transportation vehicles using fossil energy,which causes the overall right shift of the emission reduction cost curve and increases the difficulty of emission reduction.The change of traffic demand is positively correlated with the total carbon emission of China’s transportation sector,which indicates that demand-side management is one of the most effective measures to reduce marginal emission reduction cost.Importantly,the marginal emission reduction cost curve constructed in this paper provides valuable reference for the future low-carbon energy development strategy of China’s transportation sector.