Carbon neutrality and socio-economic development

Abstract

To achieve the 1.5°C goal, the world needs to reach carbon neutrality by the mid-century. The achievement of carbon neutrality not only relates to climate change mitigation, but also delivers unprecedented and tremendous changes to society in green economic growth, responsible consumer behaviours, human well-being, and health. This special issue originated from the China-UK Workshop on Climate Change Economics held by Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology and Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London. This special issue serves as a platform for the researchers to have a discussion on the balance between socioeconomic targets and actions for decarbonization strategies. The papers in this SI cover topics on decarbonization of economic growth, transition in energy system, firms’ commitment to carbon neutrality, and the trends of carbon neutrality-related research in recent decades. China’s commitment to carbon neutrality is critical to the global efforts in climate change mitigation since it has been the world’s largest emitter since 2006. The achievement of carbon neutrality in China should be based on a thorough transition of the economic growth mode in the process of industrialisation and urbanisation. The old approaches of heavy investments in physical infrastructure, with a focus on manufacturing, high-carbon infrastructure and fossil fuel, need to be abandoned. By linking the 14 Five-Year Plan and carbon neutrality goal, Stern and Xie (2023) proposed a new growth story for China to shift from overexploitation of natural resources and the chase for material wealth to a multidimensional conception of human well-being, protection of natural resources, boost of sustainable technologies, and changes in consumer behaviour. Investment in sustainable growth and low-carbon innovations is vital to promote the structural transformation of industries. In achieving the carbon neutrality goal, energy transition is one of the most important approaches. By establishing an evaluation indicator system, Li et al. (2023) assessed the progress in the energy production revolution during 2015–2019 in China. Results indicate that the production revolution in the supply-side management of energy and clean development and the efficient utilization of coal are the most prominent aspects of revolution advancements. A slowdown of the energy production revolution in 2018 and 2019 is also shown. China’s energy system is facing some challenges, including insufficient technology innovation, weak consumption and storage capacity for clean energy, sluggish construction of the energy product standard system and transaction management system, the brittle cross-regional transmission of energy, and the backward construction of an energy production intelligent system. R&D investment in clean power generation technology, the establishment of intelligent energy production, supply, storage and marketing systems, and the improvement JOURNAL OF CHINESE ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS STUDIES 2023, VOL. 21, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/14765284.2023.2182013