Sector-specific carbon emission trajectories in Beijing (2025–2035): a STIRPAT–LEAP coupled framework for identifying optimal decarbonization pathways

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:The coupled STIRPAT-LEAP framework provides a methodological template for sectoral decarbonization modeling in other cities.

🏢実務担当者:Sector-specific marginal abatement cost curves help prioritize cost-effective emission reduction measures in industrial, building, and transport operations.

🏛政策担当者:The study quantifies required emission cuts by 2035 and identifies policy levers (e.g., technology standards, retrofit acceleration, EV promotion) for each sector.

The two-fold carbon ambitions of China of ensuring its emissions peak prior to 2030 and carbon-neutrality before 2060 presuppose sectoral decarbonization plans to suit heterogeneous technological and economic limitations. The paper is based on a coupled STIRPAT–LEAP model to model the sector-specific carbon emission paths in the industrial, building, and transportation sectors of Beijing up to 2035 to identify the optimal (cost-effective and technically feasible) decarbonization pathways. Our estimation of the sectoral energy consumption elasticities in respect to population, affluence, and technology drivers comprises primary data; 400 industrial enterprises, 800 buildings, and 2,500 households; and 43 years of historical statistics (1980–2023). The findings indicate marked elasticity heterogeneity: the industrial sector has a negative output elasticity (−0.096), which implies that production and energy consumption are no longer coupled by structural transformation; the building sector has a unitarity of floor area elasticity (1.0), indicating the balancing out of a vehicle efficiency improvement; the transportation sector has supraunitarity of fleet elasticity (1.11), indicating an aggravation of vehicle efficiency regardless of policy measures. The LEAP sectoral modules find that marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves are very different between sectors: benefits of 5.4 MtCO 2 cost-negative efficiency potential in the industrial sector, 6.5 MtCO 2 in the building sector, and 5.9 MtCO 2 in the transportation sector. Four decarbonization scenarios (business-as-usual, policy acceleration, technology breakthrough, and integrated transformation) are elaborated by coupling STIRPAT and LEAP. The findings indicate that 8 MtCO 2 –12 MtCO 2 industrial cuts, 5 MtCO 2 –8 MtCO 2 building cuts, and 3 MtCO 2 –5 MtCO 2 transportation cuts that are required by 2035 would be achieved through sectoral differentiation: the industrial sector would focus on the use of technology-forcing standards and structural policy, the building sector must focus on the acceleration of retrofit and electrification, and the transportation sector would need to focus on the aggressive introduction of EVs and the expansion of public transit. The coupled framework offers imitable methodology applicable to the other Chinese cities and in foreign settings and offers policy acting information on meeting the national goals of carbon neutrality.

• crossref https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2026.1834206first seen 2026-06-18 06:37:22