A Study On The Campus Carbon Balance Of Chongqing University

Climate change that caused by carbon emissions has become a global environmental concern, and a threat to the human living environment. Reducing the emission of greenhouse gas, in particular, reducing the emission of CO2 is critically important. With the rapid industrialization and urbanization of China, energy consumption has led to the increased emission of CO2. City, a major source of global carbon emissions, has the unshakeable responsibity to reduce the emission. It is now an urgent issue for universities, an important part of city, to carry out low carbon campus construction in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, campus carbon balance research will help to analyze the campus carbon emissions and the role of vegetation during the process of carbon sequestration, and finally to seek the path of low-carbon campus construction. This study investigated the campus carbon balance based on the analyses of energy carbon emission and carbon sequestration by plants. The characteristic of campus carbon emission has been evaluated, and the current status of campus carbon balance, as well as the potential role of plants in campus carbon balance has been discussed. Lastly, proposals have been suggested to improve the campus carbon balance.Major findings of this study are:(1) Average annual campus energy carbon emissions is 19784.67 t and the per capita carbon emissions is 0.31t/y in recent 4 years for Chongqing University.(2) The energy consumption of the Chongqing University campus mainly dominated by electricity, with a proportion of 42.38%. The carbon emission of power is 45118.7t, with a proportion of 76.6%.(3) The teaching building, dormitory and canteen, which are the typical components of campus, have seasonal variations in carbon emission: during the winter vacation, the carbon emission was lower than in the rest of time.(4) The largest amount of carbon storage is 917.96 t in campus D, and the smallest in campus C, which is only 86.5t. The largest per carbon storage is 10.1t/ha in campus B, and the smallest per in campus D, which is only 4.0t/ha.The total carbon storage is 1976.61 t and total annual carbon sequestration is 539.09 t in four campus.(5) The campus carbon is in serious imbalance as the total annual carbon sequestration accounted for only 2.72% of the total energy carbon emission.