Factors driving the change of household CO2 emissions through 2040 in China: based on decomposition and scenario analyses

With China’s economic transformation into a consumption-driven model, household CO2 emissions (HCEs) become an increasingly essential part of China’s CO2 emissions. However, how will the HCEs change in urban and rural areas and what are the driving forces of HCEs through 2040 are not clear. In this paper, we project nation-level HCEs up to 2040 by the scenario analysis, and analyze the drivers of HCEs during 1997–2040 by the decomposition analysis. We find that the HCEs kept a persistent growth during 1997–2017 as energy intensity reduction and energy structure optimization cannot offset the rapid growth of consumption and population. During 2017–2040, in the current policy scenario, the rural HCEs will decrease, while the peaking of the total HCEs and urban HCEs would not be achieved. In the sustainable development scenario, the total HCEs, urban HCEs and rural HCEs will peak before 2030 and afterward decrease, because the energy intensity will induce a 51% and 76% reduction in the total HCEs and urban HCEs, respectively. Moreover, the decrease in the share of coal consumption due to the development of non-fossil fuels and natural gas will cause a more than 25% reduction in HCEs in the sustainable development scenario.