CAS- Climate: SRS-- U.S.-China: A Comparative Analysis of the Regional Dynamics Influencing Decarbonization Pathways

越来越多的城市、州和地区正在制定净零排放目标，以激励和引导向低碳经济转型。这些地区实现这些目标的途径将是独特的，并受到积极排放行动的影响，如当地制造能力，以及用新技术抵消排放的潜力，如生物能源与碳捕获。该项目的目标是创建所需的建模工具，以了解净零计划将如何受到区域条件的影响，以及这些因素将如何影响全球结果。目前使用的全球规模模型没有能力捕捉到许多将影响净零路径的区域规模特征。通过关注美国的三个代表性地区，而清华大学和中国石油大学北京分校的中国合作伙伴使用相同的技术研究中国的三个代表性地区，该项目将更好地了解区域经济和环境特征如何有助于加速或在某些情况下阻碍全球经济脱碳的努力。该项目开发的工具可供决策者在选择不同的净零路径时使用。此外，这些工具，沿着研究成果，将用于开发一个美国-中国气候领导技能合作课程。这两个最大的温室气体排放国之间的国际合作将导致美国更好的减排战略，与中国的减排战略相辅相成，避免可能无意中在全球范围内造成更大温室气体排放的路径。这项工作的目标是在州或省一级发展对净零计划动态的基础工程，经济和政策理解。该项目将扩展决策者必须了解区域如何合作或相互合作的工具套件，以及净零政策，土地使用情景或基础设施的区域规模实施将如何最终推动全球规模的目标。作为世界上两个最大的温室气体排放国美国和中国之间的合作，开展这项研究对于创建能够引领世界其他地区走向低碳未来的框架至关重要。美国和中国的综合评估模型将使用工业生态学的工具进行扩展，包括考虑区域规模的资源可用性，技术基础设施和偏好。该小组将使用全球变化评估模型（GCAM）、其两个国别模型（GCAM-美国和GCAM-中国）以及区域经济动态的可计算一般均衡模型。将选择三个州和三个省，以了解与净零计划相关的一系列影响，并描述以农业，制造业或服务业为主的地区的脱碳拓扑结构。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A growing number of cities, states, and regions are setting net-zero emissions targets to motivate and guide the transition to a low-carbon economy. The pathways these regions follow to achieve these goals will be unique and influenced both by positive emissions operations, such as from local manufacturing capacity, and the potential to offset emissions with newer technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture. The goal of this project is to create the modeling tools needed to understand how net-zero plans will be influenced by regional conditions and how these factors will affect global outcomes. Currently used global-scale models do not have the ability to capture many of the regional scale characteristics that will influence net-zero pathways. By focusing on three representative regions in the US, while Chinese partners at Tsinghua University and the China University of Petroleum-Beijing study three representative regions in China using the same techniques, this project will build an improved understanding of how regional economic and environmental characteristics will help accelerate, or in some cases, impede, efforts to decarbonize the global economy. The tools developed in this project can be used by decision-makers when choosing different net-zero pathways. Additionally, these tools, along with research results, will be used to develop a U.S.-Chinese collaborative course on climate leadership skills. This international collaboration between the two greatest greenhouse gas emitting countries will lead to better strategies for lowering emissions in the United States that are complementary to those in China, avoiding pathways that could inadvertently create greater greenhouse gas emissions globally.The goal of this work is to develop fundamental engineering, economic, and policy understanding of the dynamics of net-zero plans at the state or provincial level. This project will extend the suite of tools that decision makers have to understand how regions might work together or against each other and how regional-scale implementation of net-zero policies, land use scenarios, or infrastructures will ultimately drive global-scale targets. Conducting this research as a collaboration between the United State and China, the top two greenhouse gas emitting countries in the world, is critical to create frameworks that can lead the rest of the world to a low carbon future. Integrated assessment models for the United States and China will be extended using the tools of industrial ecology to include consideration of regional-scale resource availability, technological infrastructure, and preferences. The team will work with the global change assessment model (GCAM), its two country-specific models, GCAM-USA and GCAM-China, and computable general equilibrium models of regional economic dynamics. Three states and three provinces will be selected to understand a range of impacts associated with net-zero plans and characterize topologies of decarbonization in regions that are dominated by either agriculture, manufacturing, or services. The resulting regional models will then be used to inform technology preference and policy pathways in GCAM-USA and GCAM-China.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.