Studies On The Development Stages And Paths Of Low-carbon City In China

The global climate change is not just an indisputable reality,but also the most complicated question human beings have met in the 21 century.Urban area is an important place that carry various activitis and industris of mankind.With the development of cities,population and economy will assemble to the urban and guzzle a lot of carbon-based energy.The cities are becoming the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions and more and more important in climate change.Therefore,one important way for adapting and slowing greenhouse gas emissions is to consturct and develop low-crabon city.In addition,low-carbon city is one of the hotspots in the study of low crabon.Low-crabon city,as a breakthrough point of the sustainable development of city,is the human socity pursues the higher demands after being content with the economic and social needs.As we kow,the city has a special law of the development.Low-carbon city is a kind of special form in the process of urban develpment.A core problem that whether the deveopment stages of low-cabon city exsits or not is proposed in this thesis,in order to discuss the life cycle law of the city from the perspective of low crabon.Analyzing the development law of China’s low-carbon city theoretically,dividing the development phases of China’s low-carbon city,describing the features in every phase,are the focal points to study.By establishing the ISM,facts affecting China’s low-carbon city incluing scale factors,structural factors,technical factors and institutional factors are analyzed.Using the data of 285 cities of China,analyze their time and space differentiation and judge the stage of the city development.Finally,China’s low-crabon development path uner the constraint of energy and environment are put forward through the scenario analysis and prediction.The conclusions are following:(1)Based on the carbon-based energy demand of the urban development process,as well as the inverted U-trend of urban carbon emissions,low-carbon city development are divied into three stages:primary stage(Ⅰ),growth stage(Ⅱ)and advanced stage(Ⅲ).The feature of the primary stage is that carbon emissions is at a low level and rising steadily.The feature of the growth stage is that carbon emissions increase firstly and then decrease gradually.The feature of the advanced stage is that carbon emisisons remains slow down after a rapid decline in the second stage.The growth stage is further divided in to three phases.The first stage of the growth one is steep rise stage in which urban sprawl,population concentration,industry booming,carbon-based energy consumption intensifying,and carbon emissions shooting up.The second stage of the growth one is carbon lock-in stage in which cities’ development relies on carbon-based energy and high-carbon industry.Although urban carbon emissions are decoupled from economic growth,urban crabon emissions are still rising with decrelerate speed until the inflection point hits,by a rusult of being influenced by the technology and regulations and so on.The third stage of the growth one is carbon lock-out stage in which urban carbon emissions break the inflection point and trend down.(2)The temporal-spatial diverstiy of China’s urban carbon emissions is significant.Firstly,the characteristics of urban carbon emissions about 285 Chinese cities,were continually extended as time increases.The Highest carbon emissions cities were mainly distributed in optimized development area such as the Yangtze River Delta(Shanghai et.al),the Pearl River Delta(Guangzhou,Shenzhen,et.al),Bohai Bay(Beijing,Tianjin,et.al),as well as the major development zone such as the Middle and South area of Hebei Province(Tangshan et.al),Central Plains Economic Zone(Zhengzhou et.al),Chengdu-Chongqing Economy Region(Chongqing,Chengdu,e.tal),the Middle Reach of Yangtze River(Wuhan et.al).The other three type cities of carbon emissions were around the high carbon emissions cities,showing a complicated state of cross-cutting.Secondly,urban carbon intensity of 285 cities took on the ascending trend with the time.The highest carbon intensity cities were distributed along the Yellow River Economic Zone in Ningxia,Central Plains Economic Zone and Beibuwan Economic Zone.The higher carbon intensity cities were in the northeast,north,southwest of Chian and Jianghuai District.Four types of urban carbon intensity were uneven distributed.Thirdly,the characteristic of per capita urban carbon emissions showed a rising trend,and that of the eastern region is higher than in the western region.The type of per capita urban carbon was changing from the lower and the lowerst emissions type in 2003 to the higher and the highest type in 2014,especially in the coastal areas.Forthly,the urban carbon emissions per unit was mostly increased with time-variation.The highest carbon emissions per unit was contributed in the areas surrongding Bohai Sea,the Middle and South of Hebei Province,Taiyuan Urban Agglomeration,Central Plains Economic Zone,the Yangtze River Delta and et.al.For the resean that urban area was without obvious adjustment in rescent 11 years,urban carbon emissions per unit was stable in spatial distribution.Fifth,the decoupling index showed irregual fluctuation.(3)Study and Judge the stage of Chinese cities.Based on the feature of low-crabon city development stages such as urban carbon emissions,that carbon emissions of 285 cities were rising with time-variation,all cities were in the growth stage.215 cities were in the carbon lock-in stage of the growth stage.70 cities were in the steep rise stage.Beijing,Shanghai and Tianjin et.al as been known low-crabon pilot citis were in the crabon lock-in stage,while the other low-crabon pilot cities were in the steep rise stage.(4)Establish the inteerpretative structural model of Cina’s low-crabon city to research the relationship of the factors.There are 19 facts divided into five levels.The higher the factors level,the more critical impact on the development of China’s low-carbon city.The core factors are "the government" and "low-crabon city standard".Some factors in different level influence each other while others are independent of each other.The hierarchy figure of factors is shaped like a "spindle".The first level consists five factors including land use,energy efficiency,consumption patterns,urban transportation and urban construction.These factors are independent and superficial ones for affecting low-carbon city development.The factor of the second level is public.Public awareness,attention and participation of low-carbon city will change their consumer behavior,thus change urban carbon emissions.The third level consists 10 factors that are urbanization,economic development level,energy structure,industrial structure,low carbon strategy and planning,low-carbon regulation,low carbon propaganda and education,carbon emissions market,enterprises and urban type.These 10 factors interact with each other and have a direct or indirect influence on level one and level two.The factor of the fourth level is urban carbon emissions statistics which affects the other factors of the former three levels directly or indirectly.The fifth level includes government and low-carbon city standard which are the key fators affect each other and also impact low-carbon city development in China.(5)Under the constraints of energy and enviornment,analyse the urban carbon emissions of three scenarios for 285 Chinese cities and forcast the urban carbon emissions.In a baseline scenario,a turning point of urban carbon emissions will came after 2040 year.In the constraint of energy scenario,the turning point will come in the 2030～2040.In the constraint of environment scenario,the turning point will come in 2020～2030.Different development path of low-carbon city under different scenarios are put forward.In the constraint of energy scenario,some methods were proposed to mitigate the energy consumption of industry,transportation,building and resident in order to reduce the urban energy consumption as a breakthrough.In the constraint of environment,synergy control strategies were used to respond climate change and air pollution prevention.Through studying the coordination effect between urban air pollution and carbon emissions,synergy control strategies of low-carbon city development were suggested from technology,policy and different sectors.(6)Various types of Chinese cities,different development level and resources endowment lead to the difference of the urban stage,which may vary the low-carbon development path.In the steep rise stage,development ways for city of different type such as resource-based city and tourism city were proposed.In the carbon lock-in stage,combined through formal system and informal system,build an efficient low-carbon system and overcome the technical lock,and finally find the way for urban transformation.In the trasition stage between the steep rise stage and carbon lock-in stage,diverse urban low-carbon development paths were raised based on function zoning.Cities belonging to the optimizing development zones should achieve energy conservation,modify the industrial structure and adjust population stucture by transforming production mode and updating the industrial structure.Cities in the key development zone should use the energy efficiently,strengthen the transformation of traditional industy,improve the infrastructure construction.Cities in the restricted development zones should reduce energy comsumption,blossom speciality industry and lead the population flow rationally.Cities in the forbidden development zones should use non-pollution energy,encourage renewable energy and protect the eco-system sustainbale.