Modelling China''s Energy Future: Climate Change, Air Pollution and Supply Security

Climate Change, air pollution, and energysecurity are three key policy issues in China’senergy sector. To address the aforementionedchallenges, JianJun Tu applied CIMS, atechnologically explicit and behaviourally realisticmodel to the most populous country. His researchfindings show that there are plausible energydevelopment paths that would enable China to continueeconomic development while ensuring security ofenergy supply and acceptable local and globalenvironmental quality. Advanced technologies havebeen identified as the key drivers to achieveambitious emissions control and energy securitytargets. In addition, This book reveals that while acarbon tax can effectively reduce both carbon andsulphur emissions, a sulphur tax is a policyinstrument more specifically targeting local airquality issues. Furthermore, it is essential tounderstand the inevitable tradeoff between differentpolicy goals and their associated costs. While a bestcase energy development path can be formulated toalleviate all three policy challenges, this path willbe inevitably associated with substantial costs,which imposes a challenge for China’s energypolicy makers in the years to come.

Kevin JianJun Tu is a Vancouver-based senior energy andenvironmental consultant, and a research associate of theCanadian Industrial Energy End-use Data and Analysis Centre.Kevin holds a B.Eng. in Chemical and Mechanical Engineering fromZhejiang University, and a master of Resource and EnvironmentalManagement from Simon Fraser University.