Temporal-spatial evolution analysis on low carbon city performance in the context of China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2021.106626Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The overall LCC performance in China has been improved in recent years.

  • The low carbon pilot project contributes to LCC performance improvement.

  • The year 2014 was the turning point of LCC performance in China.

  • The LCC performance of Southern cities is better than Northern cities in China.

  • Good LCC performance are those economically developed cities.

Abstract

Carbon emission reduction in the Chinese cities can make significant contributions to the mission of global emission reduction. Therefore, the promotion of low-carbon cities (LCC) in China is of great importance to achieve this mission. This paper examines the performance of practicing LCC in China by conducting a temporal-spatial evolution analysis on LCC performance. By combining the entropy weight method and the linear weighted sum method, the LCC performance score is calculated to help establish performance grades. The quartile method and the Boston matrix method are used to conduct temporal analysis and spatial analysis respectively. The data employed in this study were collected from 34 cities in China for the period from 2006 to 2018. The findings are as follows: (1) The overall LCC performance in China has been improved in recent years and the implementation of the low carbon pilot project (LCPP) has made contributions to this improvement. (2) The LCC performance of those cities in Southern China is generally better than that in Northern cities. (3) Good LCC performance cities are those economically developed cities, in which the industrial structure is dominated by low carbon industries. This study provides a holistic picture of the LCC practice in China and also provides supportive references for policymakers to make tailor-made measures to improve the LCC performance internationally.

Introduction

Greenhouse gases are mainly contributed by carbon dioxide and have caused global climate change and which has posed a serious threat to human beings (World Bank, 2016; Chen et al., 2019; Lou et al., 2018; Shuai et al., 2017; Lou et al., 2019; Shen et al., 2021). According to the fifth report of IPCC (2018), if the growth rate of carbon emission is not controlled, the global temperature will rise by 1.1–6.4 °C and the sea level will rise by 16.5–53.8 cm in the 21st century. The global climate change and sea-level rise will not only lead to a large grade of land submerged, but also cause land subsidence, soil salinization, coastal storm surge, and other disasters (Dong et al., 2019; Dong et al., 2018). A study by Huang et al. (2017) from Natural Climate Change indicates that more than half of the land in the world will become dry land by 2100 if global emissions continue to increase. Particularly, the continuously increasing population in developing countries will produce more emissions in the future, and global warming will continue to increase and drought will become more severe. This suggests that the reduction of carbon emissions in developing countries is of great significance to global carbon emission reduction (Gomi et al., 2010).

It is well appreciated that as the most populous developing country, China is the largest carbon emitter in the world (Du et al., 2021; Liu and Zhang, 2021; Wu et al., 2019). The carbon emission of China in 2018 is 11,299.878 million tons and accounts for 29.7% of global total carbon emissions (Crippa et al., 2019). The increase of carbon emissions in China in recent years is promoted by consuming a large volume of fossil-fuel energy in its rapid urbanization and industrialization process (World Bank, 2018). To reduce carbon emissions, The Development and Reform Commission of China (2020) has set the goal of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Previous studies have shown that 80% of carbon emissions in China come from cities (Dhakal, 2009; Zeng, 2017). Therefore, the promotion of low-carbon cities (LCC) is the main strategy to achieve the aim of emission reduction in the country (Lou et al., 2019). The emission reduction in Chinese cities can make a significant contribution to the mission of global emission reduction (Wu et al., 2019).

In order to promote LCC in China, the Low Carbon Pilot Projects (LCPP) have been introduced by the National Development and Reform Commission of China, in which three batches of LCPP have been implemented. These three batches include 8 cities in 2010, 28 cities in 2012, and 45 cities in 2017 (Song et al., 2020). LCPP aims at developing low-carbon industries and advocating low-carbon lifestyles to promote the implementation of China's greenhouse gas emissions control target (Cheng et al., 2019). A great number of resources have been invested in low carbon pilot schemes, according to Li et al. (2018), a total of 3.615 billion yuan had been invested to support 68 low carbon projects in these pilot cities by the end of 2012. It has been reported that carbon emissions have declined in some pilot cities in a specific year (Qiu et al., 2021). For example, the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP in the eight pilot cities have declined significantly in comparison to those non-pilot cities in 2010–2011(Shi et al., 2018). Three low carbon pilot cities, Hangzhou, Xiamen, and Shenzhen reduced carbon emissions by more than 200,000 tons annually during the period from 2005 to 2010 (Liu and Qin, 2016; Qu and Liu, 2017). However, the overall performance among low carbon pilot cities during the past two decades remains unclear. This absence can hinder the overall effectiveness of LCPP from promoting the low carbon city strategy in China.

It is very important to examine the overall low carbon city performance in the past two decades. The overall LCC performance in China can be revealed by examining the evolution of LCC performance from a temporal perspective. Good and poor LCC performers can be identified by comparing the LCC performance of different cities. These examinations and identification can help policymakers share both experiences and lessons between cities (Shen et al., 2018a). The temporal and spatial evolution analysis on LCC performance in the context of China can help provide a holistic picture of the LCC practice in the country.

Therefore, this study will analyze the evolution of the LCC performance in the context of China from the perspective of temporal-spatial. The reminder of this paper is organized as the following: Section 2 presents literature review. Section 3 introduces the research method and the data for conducting this study. Section 4 displays the results and analysis by applying the data collected from 34 sample cities in China. Section 5 presents the discussion on LCC performance, followed by conclusion in Section 6.

Section snippets

Literature review

Many previous studies have assessed the LCC performance in the context of China, and these existing research can be divided into two categories. The research in the first category focuses on the assessment of the LCC performance by comparing the value of carbon emissions. There are three parameters used to measure LCC performance, namely, total carbon emission, per GDP carbon emission, and capital carbon emission. For example, Song et al. (2015) assessed the effectiveness of LCPP between a

Research method

To conduct temporal-spatial evolution analysis on LCC performance in the context of China, the following methods will be adopted in this study, as shown in Fig. 1.

Results

By applying the data described in Section 4.1 to the formulas (1)–(7), the LCC performance value for sample cities can be obtained, as shown in Table 6.

Temporal evolution for LCC performance

To show the temporal evolution of LCC performance, the performance scores of sample cities in Table 6 are divided into four grades by using the quartile method. According to the calculation result of LCC value in Table 6, the five quartile values are: 0.22 (minimum), 0.32 (25th percentile value), 0.36 (median), 0.43 (75th percentile value), and

LCC performance evolution

The analysis results in the previous section suggestion that the LCC performance has been improved significantly in China during period from 2006 to 2018. This indicates the implementation of the low carbon pilot project (LCPP) has made contributions to the improvement of LCC performance in China. This finding is consistent with previous studies which concluded low carbon pilot project (LCPP) is effective in some cities for a specific year (Chen et al., 2021, Chen and Zhuang, 2018, Li et al.,

Conclusion

As the largest carbon emitter in the world, China has been attempting to reduce its carbon emissions to achieve the emission reduction mission promised to the world. The promotion of low-carbon cities (LCC) is the main strategy to achieve the aim of emission reduction in the country as about 80% of carbon emissions in China come from cities. This study has analyzed the evolution of the LCC performance in China from the temporal-spatial perspective. The following findings can be drawn. (1) The

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research work was supported by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of China (No. 17ZDA062), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71973039), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (No.2020CDJSK03PT18), Special major projects for research and development of Henan Province (Scientific and technological projects) (No. 202102310297).

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