Low carbon policies and programs in China

As the country with the world's highest annual carbon emissions, China is under increasing international and domestic pressure to control its carbon emissions. To address this issue, the Chinese government has implemented a large number of policies and programs that aim to control the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions. This chapter provides a review of these policies and programs, with the aim of exploring their diversity, linkages, coverage, effectiveness and shortcomings. It explains an assessment of China's carbon emissions from 1990 to 2011 and detailed descriptions of four categories of low carbon policies and programs: renewable energy, transport, industrial energy conservation and building energy conservation. The chapter analyzes a discussion of the future direction of low carbon policies in China. It demonstrates that China has initiated multiple policies to reduce emissions through energy conservation and the use of renewable energy.