Carbon Emissions Accounting And Prediction Of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomerations From Multiple Perspectives

Carbon emissions have a significant impact on global climate change.To mitigate and address climate change,various carbon emission reduction policies and measures have been introduced in different regions of the world.It is an important spatial unit for urbanization and prosperous development in urban agglomerations(UAs),but there are complex interactions and ties between cities and sectors,resulting in serious challenges for urban agglomerations to reduce carbon emissions and maintain stable economic growth.Regarding the carbon reduction targets,cities within UAs are faced with the challenge of allocating carbon emissions reduction tasks while balancing economic development and emission reduction across different sectors.To address these issues,a coupling method was proposed for accounting and predicting carbon emissions in UAs from multiple perspectives based on a multi-regional input-output(MRIO)analysis.The aim is to provide fair and effective policies for carbon reduction in UAs.To evaluate the flow of goods and services within UAs,the MRIO model for assessing carbon emissions of UAs,cities,and sectors was constructed from perspectives of production,consumption,and income,considering multiple factors influencing inter-city interactions,inter-regional and inter-sectoral carbon flows within UAs driven by final demand and primary input were tracked,incorporating the Leontief model and the Gaussian model,respectively.Additionally,based on the government’s planning goals,development status of cities in the UA,and policy planning indicators,the carbon emissions in UAs under economic fluctuations were predicted,using the MRIO model,Biproportional scaling method,and Latin hypercube sampling.To validate the effectiveness of this method,the Pearl River Delta(PRD)in China was chosen as a case study.The main results are described as follows:(1)MRIO table for the PRD was compiled.Under the principle of ensuring the reliability of the original data as much as possible,based on the development concept of the 13 th FiveYear Plan for the PRD,24 indicators were selected to comprehensively characterize the impact of the five dimensions of social and economic development,opening up to the outside world,innovation driven,people’s living and environmental conditions on the interaction between cities.Finally,the 2017 MRIO table of the PRD was obtained,which include one primary industry sector,38 secondary industry sectors,and three tertiary industry sectors.(2)Carbon emissions from the perspective of production,consumption and income of the PRD were calculated.It was found that the consumption side would be the greatest impact on the carbon emissions of the PRD,and the income side were the smallest.At the city level,Guangzhou would be the largest carbon emissions from different perspectives,while Zhuhai would be the smallest.When acting as a producer in an economic entity,the size of the sector’s carbon emissions was mainly determined by the amount of fossil energy input;Carbon emissions on the consumption side were mainly concentrated in the industrial sector with communication equipment,computers and other electronic equipment,construction and the production and supply of electricity and heat,and the consumption side relies on imported products;Carbon emissions from a supply perspective mainly would come from the energy supply sector,and in addition,the tertiary sector emits significantly more carbon emissions than the production side and consumption side when it is the initial supplier.However,regardless of the economic entity,the production and supply of electricity and heat,as well as transportation,storage and postal services,were the most important contributors to the carbon emissions of the PRD.At the same time,the study further analyzes the upstream sectors driven by the consumption side and the supply side,identifying the upstream sectors that consume energy-intensive raw materials and those that rely on energy-intensive process investment.(3)Carbon emissions of the PRD in 2025 and 2030 were predicted.Overall,the population and economic agglomeration areas in the PRD were still the regions with the largest carbon emissions(the largest would be still Guangzhou),but the average annual growth rate would remain low overall.In addition,cities with low carbon emissions,low output value and low urbanization rates are the areas of PRD that need to be focused on in the implementation of carbon emission reduction policies in the future.The development of cities in the PRD would be inclined to the service sector,while the growth rate of carbon emissions in the industrial sector would decrease.In addition,the production and supply of electricity,and heat and the transportation sector would continue to be the main contributors to carbon emissions in the PRD.However,the future increase in carbon emissions from the power sector would be lower than in 2017.It provides policy recommendations for carbon emissions reduction from different perspectives by coupling the "calculation and prediction" of carbon emissions in UAs.The aim is to promote regional collaborative emission reduction and sustainable development and provide references for carbon reduction in other UAs or regions.