Exploring the impacts of a carbon tax on the Chinese economy using a CGE model with a detailed disaggregation of energy sectors

This paper applies a computable general equilibrium model to investigate the impacts of a carbon tax on China's economy and carbon emissions based on China's 2010 Input–Output Table. To obtain robust simulation results, we further disaggregate the energy sectors into eight departments according to energy use characteristics. The empirical results indicate that a moderate carbon tax would significantly reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption and slightly reduce the pace of economic growth. However, a large carbon tax has a significantly negative impact on China's economy and social welfare. Moreover, a large carbon tax would entail marked price changes in China. Of the fossil fuels in use, reducing coal consumption would have the greatest impact on reducing carbon emissions, and the ad valorem duty rate for coal would be the highest after levying a carbon tax because it has the highest carbon emission coefficient. Therefore, China should strive to promote clean coal technology, which may be crucial to reducing carbon emissions. Moreover, levying a carbon tax would improve the use of clean energy, which would be an effective means of reducing carbon emissions. Therefore, the Chinese government should formulate the regulations for and pass a carbon tax as early as possible to achieve its carbon emission abatement target and further contribute to mitigating climate change. •Restructuring the industry sectors to get a robust simulation results.•Simulating the carbon tax's impacts on China economy by using CGE model.•A moderate rate of carbon tax is an effective policy alternative for China.•Levying carbon tax has significant impacts on carbon emission reduction.