Research On Spatio-temporal Evolution And Promotion Strategy Of Low Carbon City Practice In China

Carbon emissions are considered as the major factor affecting sustainable urban development.The rapid urbanization has brought great pressure on emission reduction in China.Promoting low carbon city（LCC）strategies is the main approach for China to achieve the emission reduction goal promised to the world.Therefore,how to practice LCC is one of the key issues of the Chinese government.This study focused on how to practice LCCs in China by evaluating the LCC performance in Chinese cities.This study will build an evaluation system for measuring LCC performance,conduct empirical analysis in Chinese cities,and provide policy implications for the local and central government.This research follows the research process of proposing problems,analyzing problems,solving problems.The research content of this study are as follows.（1）This study examines the carbon reduction pressure of Chinese cities by conducting decoupling analysis between economy and carbon emission.The carbon emission data is collected from the data sets released by CEADs and the Night Time Light（NTL）data is used for measuring the performance of economy growth.（2）This study identify the connotation of LCC practice in China by using literature research method and content analysis method.（3）This paper examines the temporal and spatial evolution of LCC performance in China.The entropy weight method and the Topsis method are used to calculate performance score.The quartile method and the Boston matrix method are used to conduct temporal analysis and spatial analysis respectively.The data employed in this study was collected from 35 mega cities in China for the period from 2006 to 2019.（4）This study collected the LCC policy documents of international C40 cities and 35 mega cities in China,and proposed overall strategies by conducting policy instruments analysis.This study identifies good and poor performers in each dimension according to the empirical results,and proposed dimensional strategies by using text mining policy documents collected from good performers.The conclusions of this study are as follows.（1）The overall performance between China’s economic growth and carbon emissions in China has improved during the research period,and the year 2008 is the turning point year.The number of SD cities in China is small,which shows that the pressure of emission reduction in China is still very high.（2）Cities in the Northeast and Eastern regions of China have better decoupling performance than those in Western and Central regions,which is mainly caused by the different levels of technology.（3）The overall objective of LCC practice in China is to control urban carbon emissions and keep economical growth.The LCC dimensional LCC objectives are the optimizing industrial structure（D₁）,adjusting energy structure（D₂）,improving energy efficiency（D₃）,improving carbon sink level（D₄）and improving management mechanism（D₅）.（4）The overall LCC performance in China has impoved,and 2013 is the turning point year.Beijing and Tianjin have are good performance in overall LCC practice,while Taiyuan,Hohhot,Dalian and Changchun are poor performers.（5）The LCC performance in D₁,D₃and D₅ has been improved during the research period.The LCC performance in D₂ and D₄ has not significantly improved,which suggests the Chinese government should pay more attention to adjusting energy structure and improving the level of carbon sink.（6）The cities with better performance in D₁ are mostly located in the eastern coastal areas of China.The cities with poor performance in D₂ are mainly Northern cities.Most of the good performers in D₃are first-tier cities with relatively developed economic situations,while poor D₃ performance is mostly located in the Western region of China.Cities with better performance in D₄are mainly in Southern China.Cities with better performance in D₅are the first batch and the second batch of low-carbon pilot cities in China.（7）There are following LCC policy instrument deficiencies in China,insufficient coercive instrument and high reliance on voluntary policy instruments.To be more specific,there is a lack of insufficient regulatory tools,direct supply,personal household and community tools,market tools,and the information and advocacy tools are very repetitive and inefficient.（8）This study proposes strategies to improve the overall LCC performance in China,such as increasing regulatory tools and establishing carbon trading markets.The following strategies are proposed to improve the dimensional LCC practice,such as,eliminating backward industries;developing new energy types.The theoretical and practical significance of this study can be highlighted as follows.Theoretically,this study contributes to literature development in the research domain of low carbon city by proposing the LCC evaluation method system in the context of China.Practically,this study provides a holistic picture of the LCC practice in China and provides supportive references for policymakers to make tailor-made measures for improving the LCC performance in China.