A cost-effective climate mitigation pathway for China with co-benefits for sustainability

Climate mitigation policies have broad environmental and socioeconomic impacts and thus underpin progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through national-scale integrated modeling, we explore the spillover effects of China’s long-term climate mitigation pathways (CMPs) on achieving all 17 SDGs, and then identify a cost-effective CMP for China with co-benefits for sustainability. Our analysis indicates that the 9 original CMPs and 180 bundled CMPs can both substantially boost the SDGs, resulting in an increase of 6.33–8.86 and 5.90–9.33 points in overall SDG score (0=no progress, 100=full achievement) by 2060, compared to the Reference pathway of 70.75 points, respectively. The identified cost-effective CMP deals with the trade-offs among sustainability, CO2 emissions and mitigation cost, and maximizes the synergies between them. This CMP can inform future directions for China’s policy-makers to maximize the potential synergies between carbon neutrality and long-term sustainable development.