Analysis Of Urban Carbon Emission Reduction Strategies And Their Impacts On Carbon Emission

As the center of human social activities,cities are not only the main source of energy consumption and carbon emission,but also the main carriers of the adverse effects of climate change.Urban Low-carbon development has become an important way for countries to achieve low-carbon emission reduction targets.Urban carbon reduction strategies will affect the construction of low-carbon cities to a certain extent.Compared with global or national carbon emission reduction policy guidelines,local actions to mitigate climate change are easier to implement and can achieve results in the short term.In 2010,the National Development and Reform Commission of China issued the first list of low-carbon pilots,followed by the second and third batch of low-carbon pilots in 2012 and 2017.The cities nationwide responded positively to the national emission reduction call and formulated some carbon reduction strategies at the city level.Based on this,this study collected and compiled various carbon emission reduction strategies,plans and action plans formulated and implemented by 286 cities in China before 2015.From the two aspects of the detail level of emission reduction targets and the abundance of specific emission reduction measures,the paper analyzes the differences in urban emission reduction strategies,and clusters cities based on their differences.Finally,according to the strategic content analysis and clustering results,the impact of urban carbon emission reduction strategies on urban carbon emissions is studied.The results show that Chinese cities have significant difference in the formulation and implementation of carbon emission reduction strategies.Based on the detailed analysis of the emission reduction targets in the strategies and the richness of specific emission reduction actions,cities can be divided into the following three categories:1)The first type of cities have carbon emission reduction strategies,complete reduction targets and energy consumption targets,and have high mobility.2)The second type of cities has emission reduction strategies,but the emission reduction or energy consumption targets are not complete,the mobile power rating is acceptable.3)The third type of cities did not have an emission reduction plan before 2012(or 2015).Within the study time,the difference in the quantity of each type of city is very obvious.In 2005,all cities were classified as the third category because no carbon emission reduction strategies were introduced.In 2012,the first two categories of cities began to appear,but the number was small,247 in the third category,accounting for 87%of the total research scope.In 2015,the number of first two category cities continued to increase,with 27 in the first and 49 in the second category.The proportion of the third-category cities fell to 73%.However,the current research results show that the impact of urban carbon emission reduction strategies on urban carbon emissions is not significant,but overall it is on the rise.Compared with the other 15 socio-economic and physical geography factors that may affect urban carbon emissions,the impact of the category of emission reduction strategies on urban carbon emissions changed from 16/16 to 13/16 in 2005-2015.For each type of city,the main factors affecting its carbon emissions are different and change over time.Overall,local fiscal expenditures have a significant impact on each type of city,probably because local finance represents the comprehensive capacity of urban governance.This study further analyzes the impact of strategies on urban carbon emissions in the "Beijing-Tianj in-Hebei","Yangtze River Delta" and "Pearl River Delta" regions.The results show that the types of urban emission reduction strategies have no significant impact on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta region,and the impact on the Pearl River Delta region is more obvious.Overall,this study did not find that the differences in urban-level carbon reduction strategies had a significant impact on China’s urban carbon emissions.Based on the above findings,the study proposes the following policy implication:Cities should actively formulate and implement carbon emission reduction strategies in accordance with their own conditions,and fully consider the rationality of emission reduction targets and specific measures.At present,the formulation and implementation of China’s urban-level carbon emission reduction strategies still have problems such as the small number of cities that have formulated emission reduction strategies,the incompleteness of emission reduction strategies,and the lack of practical measures to reduce emission reduction targets.Therefore,when formulating and issuing emission reduction strategies,local governments should fully consider their own conditions,design reasonable emission reduction targets,and select practical and feasible emission reduction measures to promote urban carbon emission reduction.