What is it about?

Carbon neutrality is a key human endeavor to deal with global climate change while China is the country producing the most publications on carbon neutrality. However, what are the focuses of carbon-neutrality research in China? To answer such an important question, this study adopts a bibliometric approach to analyze carbon-neutrality journal publications from China-based researchers during the period of 2008–2022 using CNKI and Scopus.

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Why is it important?

Our findings showed that carbon-neutrality publications in Chinese and English journals by Chinese-based researchers increased from 4 in 2008 to 2879 in 2022. Additionally, most these publications focused on policy and technological development. Emphasis shall be paid to social change and changes in people’s behavior, sectoral carbon emissions, and carbon leakage in future research.

Perspectives

Carbon neutrality can be achieved by two options i.e. reducing carbon emissions and utilizing carbon offsetting. Once again, we reminded that the second option - carbon offsetting shall be carried out with great caution. It is because the slow carbon cycle takes million years for one cycle (i.e. turning "old" biomass to fossil fuels, and under some circumstances the fuels stored underground turning to carbon dioxide, etc.) while the fast carbon cycle takes ten/hundred years for one cycle (i.e. CO2 to and from "new" biomass). Carbon offsetting may blind people to believe that we can somehow remove “new” CO2 (due to the burning of fossil fuels i.e. “old” biomass) by capturing CO2 using plants i.e. “new” biomass and other sequestration technologies. From the system perspective, humans shall stop using fossil fuels.

Professor W.M. To
Macao Polytechnic University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Carbon-Neutrality Research in China—Trends and Emerging Themes, World, August 2023, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/world4030031.
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