Urban Carbon Emissions Inventory And Its Related Factors

With the continuous progress of human society development and the accelerated paces of industrialization, climate-related disasters have occurred frequently, and both the human society and natural systems have been obviously affected by climate change. The issue of climate change has gradually become the focus drawing the most attention from countries over the world. Although the causes of global climate change is quite complex, but the greenhouse effect caused by greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions especially the carbon dioxide is considered one of the main driving factors of GHG derived from human activities. Thus, the problem of GHG emission has become a challenge which human beings on the globe have to face with. Cities, which are entitled variety of condensed resources within a certain geographical area, having played a role of main area of human economic activity during the globalization, have been unprecedented developed and prospered. However, due to condense of population of city and cities'rapid expanding, the sustainability of development of cities has become the most practical challenge currently. Considering the fact that the urban ecosystem has its own particularity and limited capacity of self-repair and self-adjustment, the study of city level GHG emission and city emission inventory which precisely accounts the city's GHG emissions and analyze it, has therefore been recognized the core while tackling with the problem of climate change and cities' sustainable development.In this paper, based on summary of the previous theory and researches, the author conducted case study of international cities, sorting out the driving factors systematically. Then a estimation of big cities in China was done considering the situation of Chinese particularity. After that, a quantitative method was applied to analyze the relationship between the city CO2 emission and the influencing factors. The Chapter1 and Chapter2 state the background and significance of the research, as well as review the relevant theories and researches. The main content were arranged from Chapter3 till Chapter6.The chapter 3, a comparative case study of typical international cities was conducted by analyzing and interpreting emission inventories of those cities, which are located in different places including the mid-Europe, Asia and North America. The outcomes and method applied in city emission inventory were compared and analyzed in qualitative way, in order to identify the similarities and differences of various cities, and to explore the reasons caused the discrepancy. The finding are that the inventory applied for the national level is not appropriate for city level estimation. The city usually adopted a bottom-up method combining view of production and consumption, this estimation method is more diversified and flexible. Besides, the major cities around the world have not agreed on one methodology yet. In addition, through the case study and analysis, it has been illustrated that the transportation, electric power generation are the main source for city CO2 emission, while the endowments, industrial structure and consumption habits in one city could have great impact on the emission inventory outcomes.Secondly, in chapter 4 the city emissions derived from energy consumption from 1995-2000 in three major cities in China including Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin were estimated using a unified method by reference of international city inventories, with consideration of the data availability. Adjustments were made to the transportation sector in accordance with widely-accepted practice, and then there will be 5 contributions:agriculture, industry, tertiary industry and transport, inhabitant consumption. Then a clear structure of city emissions will be shown. Studies have shown that, among the three big cities, in descending order of total they were ranked: Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, where Shanghai, Tianjin has faster growth in total and generally all the three cities on the rising trends. The per capita carbon emissions of the three cities decreased first and then increased after 2003, and it continues to rise with fastest in Shanghai. The carbon intensity of the three major cities showed an overall declining trend, the difference is mainly because of different contributions of the secondary industry in GDP.Finally, in chapter 5 the author use a quantitative analysis to further examine the relationship between urban carbon emissions and factors including population factor, economic factor and technical factor. By regression with the widely-used theoretical model of IP AT (STIRPAT Model) and panel data analysis of big cities in China, the extent of effect from each factors were estimated. Population, wealth, consumption structure and technology of urban carbon emissions have significant effects on the city-level emission, while the impact of family size changing is not obvious. Among them, the elastic coefficient between carbon emissions and urban population is around 1, which is quite the same with national-level and global-level study result. The elasticity of factors of wealth, consumption structure, technology are about 0.5. In addition, the authors used the per capita GDP, average real wages of workers as an indicator to examine the relationship described by EKC hypothesis and not find the reverse U relation.Considering the urgency in development of low carbon city and energy saving, as well as taking the special situation and particularity of Chinese big cities into consideration, integrating international city's experience, this thesis put forward some suggestions to the China's big cities on strategies, policies and measures aiming to develop and low-carbon city and reduce the emission within the city. As industry and transportation are major emissions sources of China's large cities, the positioning of the city through a clear strategic perspective and industrial structure adjustment between industries will be helpful to achieve the goal. On the other hand, the city government and authorities could improve and enhance public transport efficiency through a scientific and rational decision-making process, as well as collaboration in urban planning, to provide better-quality transition service and promote low-carbon transportation, thus reducing private vehicles emissions. In addition, the level of consumption and their consumption structure of inhabitants also have an impact, in case of a increasing population, the government still can change their consumption habits and lifestyles through education or a reasonable guide to control the demand and needs, thereby to achieve the low-carbon development. The recommendations here will hopefully offer hints and inspirations as well as supportive suggestions for the development of low carbon cities in China.