China's ambitious low-carbon goals require fostering city-level renewable energy transitions

Cities in China, as elsewhere, are increasingly playing a crucial role in mitigating climate change. We developed a panel dataset on renewable energy transition in Chinese cities, and assessed the CO2 emissions reduction of city-level renew-able energy transition. We found that city-level renewable energy transition only reduced 446 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from 2005 to 2019. Moreover, the 2030 carbon peak target will be missed in the busines-as-usual scenario. The CO2 emissions reduction of city-level renewable energy transition will signifi-cantly increase in the policy constraint scenario and in the technology break-through scenario, and the 2030 carbon peak target will likely be reached in both these scenarios, with a range of possible CO2 emissions in 2030 equal to 8.34-10.43 and 8.00-10.07 billion tonnes, respectively. In this study, we were the first to assess the historical contribution and prospective trajectory of CO2 emissions reduction of China's city-level renewable energy transition.