Modelling China's Energy Future

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.