DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
Speaker: DR. Nan Zhou
Title: Pathways and Challenges to a Carbon Neutrality Future
Speaker bio: Dr. Zhou is a Senior Scientist, the Group Leader of the China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She served as the Deputy Director between 2010-2012, and the Director of the $100M presidential bilateral program U.S.-China Clean Energy Center-Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE) between 2012-2021. Dr. Zhou also served as a Lead Author for the chapter on Mitigation and Development Pathways in the Near- to Mid-Term of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. She has more than 280 publications, including ones published in Nature Energy and Nature Communications.
Supporting institution: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Abstract: Addressing China’s emissions pathways is critical to achieving Paris Agreement goals. This seminar will focus on the latest findings of China’s energy and emissions pathways. Using a bottom-up and physical-based energy model, the results showed that many energy-consuming activities in China will need to be reduced, conducted more efficiently, or transformed to using renewable energy sources if China is going to be successful in turning around its current upward trajectory of both energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases. The study found that unprecedented near-term actions are needed to accelerate China’s emissions peak and pave the way to carbon neutrality.