Achieving Paris Agreement temperature goals requires carbon neutrality by middle century with far-reaching transitions in the whole society
Open accessAbstract
The concept of carbon neutrality is much emphasized in IPCC Spatial Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C in order to achieve the long-term temperature goals as reflected in Paris Agreement. To keep these goals within reach, peaking the global carbon emissions as soon as possible and achieving carbon neutrality are urgently needed. However, global CO2 emissions continued to grow up to a record high of 43.1 Gt CO2 during 2019, with fossil CO2 emissions of 36.5 Gt CO2 and land-use change emissions of 6.6 Gt CO2. In such case, the global carbon emissions must drop 32 Gt CO2 (7.6% per year) from 2020 to 2030 for the 1.5 °C warming limit, which is even larger than the COVID-induced reduction (6.4%) in global CO2 emissions during 2020. Recently, China has announced scaling up its national commitments, aiming to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Achieving these goals requires rapid and far-reaching transitions in the whole society. On the one hand, deeper emissions reduction in all sectors includes decarbonization of energy, electrification, increasing share of renewables, energy efficiency, sustainable land management, decarbonization of transport, reducing food loss and waste, as well as behavior and lifestyles changes. On the other hand, possible actions by removing CO2 from the atmosphere involves enlarging land and ocean net carbon sink, CO2 removal technologies (such as Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), and CO2 capture, utilization and storage technologies, but should be caution for their scales and tradeoffs.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Different regions, countries, and cities have developed strategies to improve carbon removal or sequestration and achieve carbon neutrality.
“Different regions, countries, and cities have developed strategies to improve carbon removal or sequestration and achieve carbon neutrality (Hepburn et al. 2021; Pedersen et al. 2020; Huang and Zhai 2021), yet achieving net-zero carbon emissions is challenging (Wang et al. 2021).”
From Strategies to achieve a carbon neutral society: a review (2022) · cites this paper as Huang and Zhai 2021
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
(2019) · Cited by 3,602 · see citing works
Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Sitch, S., et al. (2020) · Earth System Science Data · doi:10.5194/essd-12-3269-2020 · Cited by 2,544 · see citing works
Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the covid-19 forced confinement
Le Quéré, C., Jackson, R. B., Jones, M. W., Smith, A. J. P., Abernethy, S., Andrew, R. M., De-Gol, A. J., Willis, D. R., Shan, Y., Canadell, J. G., et al. (2020) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x · Cited by 2,258 · see citing works
Friedlingstein, P., Jones, M. W., O’Sullivan, M., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Sitch, S. A., Quéré, C. L., et al. (2019) · Earth system science data · doi:10.5194/essd-11-1783-2019 · Cited by 1,692 · see citing works
Near-real-time monitoring of global CO2 emissions reveals the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
Liu, Z., Ciais, P., Deng, Z., Lei, R., Davis, S. J., Feng, S., Zheng, B., Cui, D., Dou, X., Zhu, B., et al. (2020) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18922-7 · Cited by 798 · see citing works
Freund, R. J., Wilson, W. J., & Mohr, D. L. (2010) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-374970-3.00001-9 · Cited by 574 · see citing works
Energy Technology Perspectives 2017: Catalysing Energy Technology Transformations
Abergel, T., Brown, A., Cazzola, P., Dockweiler, S., Dulac, J., Pales, A. F., Gorner, M., Malischek, R., Masanet, E. R., McCulloch, S., et al. (2017) · Cited by 228 · see citing works
COVID curbed carbon emissions in 2020 — but not by much
Tollefson, J. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00090-3 · Cited by 166 · see citing works
The Ethics of Carbon Neutrality: A Critical Examination of Voluntary Carbon Offset Providers
Dhanda, K. K., & Hartman, L. P. (2011) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-011-0766-4 · Cited by 128 · see citing works
Predicted Chance That Global Warming Will Temporarily Exceed 1.5 °C
Smith, D. M., Scaife, A. A., Hawkins, E., Bilbao, R. A. F., Boer, G. J., Caian, M., Caron, L., Gokhan Danabasoglu, C., Delworth, T. L., Doblas-Reyes, F. J., et al. (2018) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1029/2018gl079362 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Consistency of global warming trends strengthened since 1880s
Li, Q., Sun, W., Huang, B., Dong, W., Wang, X., Zhai, P., & Jones, P. D. (2020) · 中国科学通报：英文版 · doi:10.1016/j.scib.2020.06.009 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Self-citationContinental scale surface air temperature variations: Experience derived from the Chinese region
Li, Q., Dong, W., & Jones, P. D. (2019) · Earth-Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.102998 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- IPCC, 2014. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contri- bution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Strategies to achieve a carbon neutral society: a review
Chen, L., Msigwa, G., Yang, M., Osman, A. I., Fawzy, S., Rooney, D. W., & Yap, P.-S. (2022) · Environmental Chemistry Letters · doi:10.1007/s10311-022-01435-8 · Cited by 1,326 · see citing works
A review of cleaning technologies for biomass-derived syngas
Rey, J. R. C., Longo, A., Rijo, B., Pedrero, C. M., Tarelho, L. A. C., Brito, P. S. D., & Nobre, C. (2024) · Fuel · doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2024.132776 · Cited by 149 · see citing works
- Authors
- Huang, M.-T., & Zhai, P.-M.
- ORCID
- Huang, Meng-Tian
- Venue
- Advances in Climate Change Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-04
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 281-286
- ISSN
- 1674-9278 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3138573286
- Cited by
- 502
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 81 · 2025: 125 · 2024: 111 · 2023: 95 · 2022: 66 · 2021: 24
- FWCI
- 56.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Advances in Climate Change Research (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- China Academy of Meteorological Sciences (2020 Y004, 2018 YFC1507700)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Energy, Environment, Economic Growth
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Keywords
- carbon neutrality, Paris Agreement, 1.5 °C warming target, global CO2 emissions, emissions peak, decarbonization, energy transition, electrification, renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable land management, transport decarbonization, food loss and waste, behavior change, carbon dioxide removal, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, carbon capture and utilization
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
