Evaluating rare-earth constraints on wind power development under China's carbon-neutral target.

China proposed a target to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Wind power is crucial for mitigating climate change and achieving carbon neutrality. However, its development depends on the potential constraints of rare-earth elements. Therefore, first projecting the rare-earth demand for wind power equipment in the context of achieving carbon neutrality and identifying potential obstacles are necessary. However, the carbon-neutral pathway for China's power sector is unclear, let alone the corresponding rare-earth demand. Consequently, this study explores a potential cost-effective carbon-neutral pathway for China's power sector and quantifies the demand for rare-earth elements used for producing wind power equipment under different pathways, by integrating dynamic material flow analysis and a national energy technology model. The results showed that the rare-earth supply may be inadequate for wind power development in terms of achieving carbon neutrality in China, especially for dysprosium and terbium. To neutralise the carbon emissions of China's power sector, the cumulative rare-earth demand during 2021-2060 would be 222-434 kt, of which at most 1/3 could potentially be obtained by circular usage from end-of-life wind turbines. However, the existing low secondary recovery rate of rare-earth elements makes the available circular amounts very small. Shifting to a wind power market dominated by direct-drive turbines may increase the cumulative rare-earth demand by up to 34 %. Without material intensity reduction for the wind power technologies, an additional 38 % demand for rare-earth elements will occur, exacerbating the risk of shortage.

Approaching national climate targets in China considering the challenge of regional inequality.

Achievement of national climate targets and the corresponding costs would entirely depend on regional actions within the country. However, because of substantial inequalities and heterogeneities among regions, especially in developing economies, aggressive or uniform actions may exacerbate inequity and induce huge economic losses, which in turn challenges the national climate pledges. Hence, this study extends prior research by proposing economically optimal strategies that can achieve national climate targets and ensure the greatest local and national benefits as well as regional equality. Focusing on the biggest developing country China, we find this strategy can avoid up to 1.54% of cumulative GDP losses for approaching carbon neutrality, and more than 90% of regions would obtain economic gains compared either with existing independently launched targets or with the uniform strategy that all regions achieve peak carbon emissions before 2030. We also provide optimal carbon mitigation pathways to regional peak carbon, carbon intensity and energy consumption.

The global mismatch between equitable carbon dioxide removal liability and capacity.

Limiting climate change to 1.5°C and achieving net-zero emissions would entail substantial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere by the mid-century, but how much CDR is needed at country level over time is unclear. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of when and how much CDR is required at country level in order to achieve 1.5°C and how much CDR countries can carry out domestically. We allocate global CDR pathways among 170 countries according to 6 equity principles and assess these allocations with respect to countries' biophysical and geophysical capacity to deploy CDR. Allocating global CDR to countries based on these principles suggests that CDR will, on average, represent ∼4% of nations' total emissions in 2030, rising to ∼17% in 2040. Moreover, equitable allocations of CDR, in many cases, exceed implied land and carbon storage capacities. We estimate ∼15% of countries (25) would have insufficient land to contribute an equitable share of global CDR, and ∼40% of countries (71) would have insufficient geological storage capacity. Unless more diverse CDR technologies are developed, the mismatch between CDR liabilities and land-based CDR capacities will lead to global demand for six GtCO2 carbon credits from 2020 to 2050. This demonstrates an imperative demand for international carbon trading of CDR.

Response of China's electricity consumption to climate change using monthly household data.

Intensifying climate change significantly impacts residential electricity consumption, especially in developing countries, such as China, that are experiencing rapid income growth. By combining meteorological and monthly household consumption survey data, this study explores the response function of residential electricity consumption to temperature in China from a micro perspective. Future residential electricity demands and related CO2 emissions are then forecast under different climate scenarios. Overall, the response function is U-shaped, and one additional day above 34 °C will increase monthly residential electricity consumption by 2.11%. Global warming will more likely increase the electricity burden on low-income groups. There will be notable seasonal changes in electricity demand in the future, and the largest increase will occur in August. The total demand for residential electricity caused by temperature change will show a fluctuating growth trend, from 0.8% and 1% in 2025 to 2% and 2.9% in 2060 under the RCP4.5 scenario and RCP8.5 scenario, respectively; meanwhile, this demand will be accompanied by a cumulative increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

Air Pollutant Emissions Induced by Population Migration in China.

Large-scale population migration accompanied by rapid urbanization is expected to cause the spatial relocation of air pollution because of heterogeneous energy use and consumption preferences of rural versus urban areas in China. In this study, we adopted an integrated approach by combining a population migration model and environmentally extended input-output analysis to quantify impacts of rural-to-urban (RU) and urban-to-urban (UU) migrations on emissions of NOx, SO2, and primary PM2.5 in China. Results indicate that population migration increases NOx (1.42 Mt), SO2 (1.30 Mt), and primary PM2.5 (0.05 Mt) emissions, accounting respectively for 5.4, 4.8, and 0.4% of China's total in 2012. RU migration, involving 54% of the migrating population, significantly increases NOx and SO2 emissions because of high urban indirect per-capita emissions from consumption and investment. RU migration influences negligibly primary PM2.5 emissions reflecting the small rural-urban difference in per-capita emissions. Interestingly, UU migration, mostly from inland to coastal provinces, leads to a slight emission decrease for the three pollutants, attributable to the greener development in coastal cities. A significant emission growth can be traced back to heavy and utility industries, suggesting that future emission control of these sectors should reduce the exposure to air pollution of the growing urban population.