A time-space-efficiency-benefit (TSEB) mix approach to carbon mitigation roadmap design

Carbon mitigation roadmap design is a complex system engineering that requires scientific answers to five core questions: how much to reduce, when to reduce, who should reduce, how to reduce, and what effects. This paper addresses four balanced challenges in carbon mitigation: the synergy between short-term and long-term, local and overall, government regulation and market mechanisms, as well as development and carbon mitigation. The author proposes a Time-Space-Efficiency-Benefit Mix optimization approach to carbon mitigation, referred to as the TSEB coordination approach. Among them, (1) Time coordination focuses on the intertemporal allocation of responsibilities and cost distribution for carbon mitigation, establishing a method for selecting intertemporal equilibrium pathways to address the issue of intergenerational equity.(2) Space coordination focuses on the allocation of emission mitigation responsibilities among regional actors and the coordination between local and overall emission reductions, establishing optimal emission reduction pathways at the global and national levels to address issues of regional equity and stakeholder interactions. (3) Efficiency coordination focuses on the design of carbon mitigation mechanisms, proposing solutions for optimizing the allocation of carbon mitigation resources under different mechanisms to address the trade-offs in mechanism selection. (4) Benefit coordination focuses on the assessment of the costs and benefits of carbon mitigation, establishing the China Climate Change Integrated Assessment Model (C3IAM), which features a bidirectional coupling of economic and climate systems, to address the challenge of reconciling short-term mitigation costs with long-term climate benefits.