Leveraging opportunity of low carbon transition by super-emitter cities in China

Chinese cities are core in the national carbon mitigation and largely affect global decarbonisation initia-tives, yet disparities between cities challenge country-wide progress. Low-carbon transition should preferably lead to a convergence of both equity and mitigation targets among cities. Inter-city supply chains that link the production and consumption of cities are a factor in shaping inequality and mitiga-tion but less considered aggregately. Here, we modelled supply chains of 309 Chinese cities for 2012 to quantify carbon footprint inequality, as well as explored a leverage opportunity to achieve an inclusive low-carbon transition. We revealed significant carbon inequalities: the 10 richest cities in China have per capita carbon footprints comparable to the US level, while half of the Chinese cities sit below the glo-bal average. Inter-city supply chains in China, which are associated with 80% of carbon emissions, imply substantial carbon leakage risks and also contribute to socioeconomic disparities. However, the signifi-cant carbon inequality implies a leveraging opportunity that substantial mitigation can be achieved by 32 super-emitting cities. If the super-emitting cities adopt their differentiated mitigation pathway based on affluence, industrial structure, and role of supply chains, up to 1.4 Gt carbon quota can be created, rais-ing 30% of the projected carbon quota to carbon peak. The additional carbon quota allows the average living standard of the other 60% of Chinese people to reach an upper-middle-income level, highlighting collaborative mechanism at the city level has a great potential to lead to a convergence of both equity and mitigation targets.@2023 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).