Megacity pathways in China under the dual carbon goal: The case of Shanghai

The pathways to achieving carbon neutrality at the city level are diverse due to varying energy supply and demand conditions. Shanghai faces obstacles such as limited land resources, high costs of renewable energy technologies, and instability of renewable energy. These challenges hinder the city’s efforts to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality (dual carbon). Therefore, Shanghai must identify and optimize its development path for renewable energy under the dual carbon goal. We employed the Low Emissions Analysis Platform-Shanghai (LEAP-SH) model to simulate the impact of policies, such as industrial upgrading, energy efficiency improvement, energy structure optimization, increased technical innovation on energy, and ecological restoration, on the carbon emission pathways from 2022 to 2060 using five different scenarios. Our results indicate that Shanghai has the potential to achieve carbon neutrality in 2059 by promoting carbon reduction, pollution control, and green expansion. Moreover, we determined that the manufacturing industry; power generation industry; and transportation, storage, and mail services are the three major sectors for emission reduction under the dual carbon goal. Furthermore, the capacity and output of coal-fired power plants will be gradually replaced by offshore wind power in the dual carbon pathway. Finally, this study proposes countermeasures and suggestions for Shanghai to attain the dual carbon goal and high-quality development.