@article{liu2026china,
author = {Liu, Zhu and Ke, Piyu and Deng, Zhu and Ciais, Philippe and Andrew, Robbie and Bastos, Ana and Bai, Yan and Canadell, Josep G. and Guan, Dabo and Dou, Xinyu and Davis, Steven J. and Dai, Fangfang and Friedlingstein, Pierre and Huang, Xiaoting and Hu, Yifan and Jackson, Robert B. and Janssens-Maenhout, Greet and Jones, Matthew W. and Kammen, Daniel M. and Li, Yun and Li, Tao and Liang, Shunlin and Liu, Laibao and Poulter, Benjamin and Peters, Glen P. and Sitch, Stephen and Wang, Lixin and Wei, Wei and Xi, Fengming and Gui, Xiaofan and Bian, Jiang and Wang, Yuan and Xue, Jinjun and Yan, Jinyue and Yue, Xu and Zhang, Ning and Zhang, Xian and Zhang, Xiaoling and Lu, Yonglong and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim and Zhang, Xiaoye and Dai, Minhan and Gong, Pengfeng and He, Kebin and Wang, Guangqian},
title = {China’s net-zero budget},
year = {2026},
month = {May},
abstract = {Efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions in China are central to achieving global carbon neutrality. In this Perspective, we compile bottom-up and top-down estimates to provide a comprehensive regional carbon budget for China between 1970 and 2024. This framework closes the regional budget by explicitly accounting for lateral fluxes with rivers and trade, while also separately tracking avoided emissions (termed scope 4) to assess progress towards net zero. In 2024, China’s regional CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes were 11.64 ± 1.71 Gt per year, which were partially offset by land carbon sinks (0.86 ± 0.33 Gt per year) and land-use change sinks (0.49 ± 0.05 Gt per year). Marginal-sea sinks accounted for 0.05 ± 0.09 Gt per year but are not considered to offset fossil-fuel emissions. Between 2019 and 2023, scope 4 emissions averaged about 2.87 Gt CO2 per year but are projected to cumulatively avoid 163 Gt CO2 between 2025 and 2060 owing to fossil fuel replacement and efficiency improvements, which will reduce emissions to about 1.6 Gt CO2 per year by 2060. Although natural sinks and anthropogenic carbonation sinks have the potential to remove about 1.7 Gt CO2 per year, their long-term stability is uncertain and so gigaton-scale deployment of negative-emission technologies and enhanced mineral carbonation are needed to ensure carbon neutrality. Future research should prioritize improved measuring, reporting and verification of regional carbon budget components to better inform China’s strategies towards net zero.},
url = {http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/research/publication/chinas-net-zero-budget/},
journal = {Nature Reviews Earth & Environment},
}