The mitigation efforts of China are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of China has led to an increasing share in the world's total CO2 emissions. This paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing China's national mitigation targets submitted to the UNFCCC as part of the Copenhagen Accord; that is, to reduce the intensity of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 40–45% by 2020, as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non‐fossil fuel consumption, through regional allocation of emission allowance over China's provinces. Since the realization of China's mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem, an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model, which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation, is proposed in this study. By utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of China's economic growth, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption, a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for China by 2020 is proposed. The allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction, energy intensity reduction, and share of non‐fossil fuels increase.
