A Study On The Low-carbon City Development Mechanism Under Resources And Environment Constrains In China

The increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially the CO2emissionshave caused the global temperature to rise, and has drawn worldwide attention toattach great important to the energy consumption and environmental pollution issues.To combat the global climate warming and reduce the environmental pollution, manycounties have set out to explore a valid path to achieve sustainable development,while the low-carbon city model is proposed as the possible solution to save energyand reduce the associate emissions while maintain economic growth.As the economic, political and cultural center, city plays an important role inhuman life. It not only the hub of energy flow, material flow and information flow,but also the main source of energy consumption and environmental pollution. In2013,the C40cities climate leadership group indicated that the cities have a ravenousappetite for energy, consuming of the world’s energy and creating over70%ofglobal CO2emissions. Moreover, with the acceleration of the urbanization, theproblems of urban traffic, dwelling environment and working environmental arefacing great pressures. Meanwhile, the contradictions among the political, economyand ecological environment are becoming more and more complicated.Mitigation of CO2emissions has become a policy objective. As a developingcountry, China has made great efforts to reduce its CO2emissions intensity andimprove energy efficiency. In Copenhagen Climate Conference, China promised toreduce its CO2emissions per unit of GDP by40-45%in2020than in2005. And theoutline of China’s12thFive-Year Plan further indicated that the energy consumptionper unit of GDP should be cut by16%and the CO2emissions per unit of GDP shouldbe reduced by17%compared with the2010level. However, this is still a bigchallenge for China. Since the adoption of an open-door policy and economic reformsin1978, China has experienced spectacular economic growth and rapid urbanization.In2011, China announced that it has reached an urbanization rate of51.27%.However, along with the spectacular economic growth and rapid urbanization,tremendous energy has been consumed.Firstly, this dissertation analyzes the conditions of global climate change andenergy consumption, and simply introduces the status quo and existing issues ofChina’s urban development. Secondly, we make a detailed discussion about thetheory of low-carbon city development under resources and environment constrains. Moreover, we also make a systematic exposition on the research advances inlow-carbon city development at home and abroad. Thirdly, this dissertation discussesthe existing energy consumption and environmental pollution in China as well asinvestigates the causes of impeding China’s low-carbon city development from therapid urbanization, the unreasonable industrial structure, the immature clean energytechnology, the unbalanced regional economic development, the dislocated politicalachievement concept and the absence of supervision. Then, in order to verify whetherChina can achieve its energy conservation and emissions reduction targets in its12th-Five Year Plan (2010-2015) and to investigate the driving forces which influenceChina’s CO2emissions, this dissertation employs the grey forecasting model GM (1,1)to predict China’s CO2emissions in2015and applies the grey relational analysis toanalyze the influences factors of CO2emissions in China. On the basis, we constructthe theoretical system of low-carbon city development mechanism in China from sixaspects, that is, the driving mechanism, the propaganda mechanism, the planningmechanism, the incentive mechanism, the supervision mechanism, the feedback andoptimization mechanism. Finally, this dissertation illustrates the planning mechanism,the incentive and supervision mechanism, the feedback and optimization mechanismby studying the building energy planning based on Carbon Emissions Pinch Analysis,evaluating green performance of building products based on Grey Relational Analysisand Analytic Hierarchy Process, and evaluating the low-carbon city developmentunder resources and environment constrains based on decoupling theory in Tianjin,China. In addition, we put forward the corresponding countermeasures andsuggestions for China’s low-carbon city development.