Integrating Scenario Forecasting with SPNN-AtGNNWR for China’s Carbon Peak Pathway Projection

As the world’s leading carbon emitter, China’s ability to reach its pledged carbon peak by 2030 is pivotal for its own green transition and global climate governance. This research proposes a novel integration of spatial proximity neural networks with attention-enhanced geographically weighted neural network regression. This new model integrates spatial dependencies and an attention mechanism into the traditional geographically weighted neural network regression framework. The model demonstrates good performance in forecasting carbon emissions (coefficient determination = 0.904, root mean square error = 48.927). Using this model, alongside population, GDP, total energy consumption, and other influencing factors, the research integrated scenario forecasting to project China’s total carbon emissions from 2023 to 2040. Three policy-relevant scenarios—baseline, low-carbon, and extensive development—were set to forecast and analyze various potential outcomes under uncertain conditions. Under the baseline scenario, China’s emissions peak in 2029 at 9926.26 Mt; the low-carbon scenario advances the peak to 2027 at 9688.88 Mt; whereas an extensive growth path delays the peak to 2032 at 10,347.70 Mt. These findings underscore the urgency of optimizing energy structure, curbing fossil fuel dependence, and balancing economic growth with the deep decoupling of emissions. This research offers policymakers a robust, spatially explicit tool for evaluating future trajectories under diverse development pathways.