Exploring pathway to achieving carbon neutrality in China under uncertainty

China has announced its long-term goal of achieving carbon-neutrality before 2060, and it is necessary to identify the main driving forces of carbon emission, so that future carbon emission can be projected and effective measures to reduce carbon emission can be identified under uncertainty. Using a structural decomposition analysis model, China’s CO2 emission change within the period 2002–2017 were decomposed into the changes of six factors, classified as efficiency effect, structure effect and scale effect, and the key driving forces of CO2 emission are identified. By aggregating the driving forces, the future CO2 emissions are projected and the potential contribution of each driving force to reaching carbon–neutral is examined under uncertainty. The results show that in the period 2002–2017, economic growth increased CO2 emission by 11.4 billion tons as the largest driver of CO2 emission growth, while energy efficiency improvement contributed most to reducing CO2 emission by 3.38 billion tons. The projection analysis shows that multiple carbon reduction policies are needed simultaneously for China to achieve carbon neutrality, and accelerating the energy efficiency improvement and energy mix transformation plays key role. Moreover, negative carbon emission technologies is still necessary, which needs to contribute to reducing CO2 emission by at least 1.82 billion tons.