Measuring Carbon-Neutral Readiness Index of China's Provinces

In this study, an index namely Carbon-Neutral Readiness Index (CNRI) is designed to compare the carbon-neutral readiness among China’s 30 provinces. The CNRI is decomposed into a hierarchical structure that combines four dimensions and associated 19 quantitative indicators. Several indicators are newly proposed such as ‘per capita carbon trading volume’, ‘maturity degree of carbon capture and storage deployment’, and ‘percentage of ocean cover’. To determine the importance weight of indicators, an improved Criteria Importance Though Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) approach is developed by considering the correlation between indicators. Then, the weighted averaging operator is used to evaluate the CNRI of China’s provinces. Our results indicate that: 1) the correlation between most indicators is significant, of which 3.51% has an extremely strong relationship; 2) the indicator ‘per capita steel production’ owns the largest weight (0.113); 3) Beijing provinces ranks first, followed by Sichuan and Yunnan province; 4) the spatial differences of CNPI show a pattern of ‘strong in the central and south provinces, week in north provinces’; 5) the sensitive analysis reveals that the ranking results are relatively robust.