Regional Low-carbon Development Policy Making Research Based On SD-IDMI

The low-carbon economy development, being a comprehensive economictransformation, has been labeled as a “top-down” governmental measure due to thefact that fossil fuels are still the main energy in today’s world, which means thelow-carbon economy implementation must be initiated or promoted by nationalpolicies. Therefore, policy formulation and the effects of implementation, no mattershort-term or far-reaching, are all important orientations when researching onlow-carbon economy. In some sense, the policy, being good or bad, is the key factorfor the region whether it can finally achieve the low-carbon development. Thepolicy-making process is a complicated decision-making process, which requires a lotof theories to support and should be comprehensive, fair and objective as far aspossible.This paper puts forward the SD-IDMI method with its theoretical basis andmethodology. The SD-IDMI method is an innovative decision-making approach, thecombination of System Dynamics (SD) and Interlink Decision Making Index (IDMI).The IDMI method is objective and simple as a new multi-objective decision-makingmethod. By improving each other, the SD and IDMI methods form a theoreticalsystem for regional low-carbon development policy-making research, includingsystem dynamics model, policy setting, scenario simulations, IDMI calculation andoptimal solution chosen. This paper, taking Mainland China as an example, carries onthe empirical research using the SD-IDMI method.According to China’s carbon emission reduction target, carbon emission intensity inChina in2020should be reduced by40%-45%compared to levels in2005. The firststep of empirical research of this paper is using the data of the Statistical Yearbook ofChina to validate the SD model. Then different policy sets are chosen for thesimulation and generate data of future scenarios. After that, IDMI method is used todeal with the data and chose the best policy set according to the carbon emissionreduction target. This paper greatly avoids the subjective interference of thedecision-makers when making the choice of policy options under specific preferences by the innovative application of SD-IDMI approach. Besides, by the simply anduser-friendly calculation the optimal policy set can be chosen for the low-carbondevelopment of China.