Economic Cost, Energy Transition, and Pollutant Mitigation : The Effect of China's Different Mitigation Pathways Toward Carbon Neutrality

China is confronted with considerable mitigation challenges to achieve carbon neutrality due to a tight timeline and its high coal use. Mitigation pathways have a vital role in realizing carbon neutrality, and each pathway produces differentiated socioeconomic effects. this study assesses the economic cost and energy transition effects of different policy scenarios based on an improved dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The main findings are as follows: (1) energy structure optimization (E2) and integrated policy scenarios could potentially achieve the carbon neutrality target; in addition, carbon sink is another key factor that can offset remaining emissions. (2) Projected GDP losses in 2060 fluctuate from 0.7% in the carbon trading scenario to 4.92% in E2. Energy structure optimization and energy technology scenarios exert greater impacts on the power and iron and steel sectors. (3) The energy structure optimization scenario (HR: 9.23 billion tce) has the largest impact on energy consumption, whereas the energy technology policy scenario (E2: 9.48 billion tce) has the smallest effect on energy consumption. (4) One integrated policy scenario (HRC4E2: 7.1 × 10 4 tons) has the largest air pollutant reduction potential, followed by LRC2E2 (25.0 × 10 4 tons) and HRC3E1 (10.1 × 10 4 tons)